Food Is Humanity In The Age Of AI: PART TWO

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The knives chopped on the boards. The peelers whisked back and forth. There was sizzling from the griddles, bubbling gravy in the cauldrons, and an ocean of cranberries slowly stewing in the tilt skillet. Still, there was something to be heard among all the other sounds making up the cacophony of a busy kitchen, and that sound was laughter.  Dozens of cooks, all working overtime at one of the most stressful times of the year, and they were laughing? Yes, they absolutely were, and that's how we know we are on the right track.

This was just a few weeks ago, during our run-up to Medinah's epic 1,900-meal Thanksgiving Day. Still, really, it could have been any year and any place in the world where I have participated in Thanksgiving preparations over the past 33 years. 

When working with chefs Mark Gallaudet and Josh Goetz in Hong Kong, we marveled at how similar the vibe was in all the Chinese kitchens preparing the same Thanksgiving foods we love here in America for our American Club membership. 

The struggle against the ever-ticking clock, the camaraderie of knowing the only way we make it is together, of knowing this food would make other people feel comfortable and happy, and of undertaking a giant process of creation for the wellbeing of people we did not even know.  The sense of unity and mission in preparing food for such a large audience in Asia is the same as it is here in Chicago, Illinois, and I love that.

In preparing to write part two of this article, I spent time observing our cooks, stewards, servers, bussers, members, and their guests in the heart of the holiday season dance here at the Club. I find myself more convinced of what I’ve felt for many years now: that hospitality life is strong in the Private Club world. 

We ended the last blog entry with a few heavy-duty questions that we owe answers for, so let's get started. ~Matthew Gilbert, Culinary Director, Medinah Country Club. 

If machines are stronger than I am and AI agents are more intelligent than I am, then what can I do? 

This answer will unfold over the next couple of thousand words, but the short version is: put down the phone, be present, and push yourself to make connections with other people In Real Life. (IRL)

If I am more connected to the world than ever before, but also lonelier, what is the path forward? 

It is not too late to find genuine human connections that help you feel less lonely (or not at all, for a start). But it will take some effort. 

Friends and romantic partners are not as automatic as DoorDash and Amazon Prime; we must put in time and care. (A Japanese woman recently married her chatbot, ditching her real-life fiancé for “someone who truly understood her” (her algorithm), so we know that will soon be a thing. Door Dash as a life partner, talk about historical societal shifts!)  

As leaders, we are but one person, needing to do the work of hundreds, so we must accomplish this as a team. To transcend in hospitality is to understand that mastery of "the things" is essential, but is also naturally paired with the necessity of the people part.

Also, having a personal meaning and purpose at work helps us feel more connected and less lonely, especially if part of that arc is giving to others.  Luckily for chefs, we must be crazy enough to stay in the business long term.

As more industries shift away from human employment, where will I find my career?

The good news for chefs is that, like the resurgently popular careers of plumbers and electricians, we have hands-on expertise in something that, for the moment, is difficult for a bot to replicate. While those career trajectories promise a longer lifespan than, say, coding or data entry jobs, the cooking and serving of food remain so humanly intimate that their arc could last even longer, with at least a subset of the masses still preferring something made by hand and from the heart.​

​While these existential problems seem like large ones, as chefs, we face a constant and never-ending stream of issues every day, so no big deal, right?

My chef team often jokes that when we wake up in the morning, it’s not a question of whether things will go wrong later today, but which things will. It can be fun, as the day goes by, to see which shit hits which fan! (speaks in sarcasm, ha-ha) 

A good chef understands that problems are part of the natural terrain on which we tread and prepares accordingly.

One mindset I fervently push in the kitchen leadership world is acknowledging the problems we face without becoming victims of them. 

For sure, we should be realistic about these challenges; life is full of problems, and we need to acknowledge that. But as leaders and future leaders, we should focus on preparing, strategizing, and overcoming them rather than just complaining about them. 

As chefs, we need to be resourceful, proactive, and optimistic every hour of every day. Our profession demands immediate results, with no option but to “make it happen.” The problems aren't going to go away magically, so we can’t just lie down to wait for someone else to handle them for us. With AI, we have identified potential challenges. Let’s start thinking about solutions.

An excellent team purpose for us chefs is to refocus on our shared, basic Humanity for our cooks and for our members: different income brackets, but all just human beings. 

Spend real effort and energy on creating and supporting a united, talented, and passionate team that will consistently put their hearts into the plate. Then unleash your team’s passion and creativity on the diners you serve. It takes a lot of energy to build and maintain a high-performing team, but once you get it going, the potential is sky high.

Things to consider:

Define the mission.  

Put it into words. Sometimes we assume that the people on our teams already "get it," and they likely do to some extent, but we should make it crystal clear that we are in the Humanity business first and foremost, and that our actions grow from that desired outcome. 

There is a power in putting something into words, whether written or spoken. It gives clarity.  One can either be for or against, but at least they understand what is expected. Say it to your team and say it often, and it will begin to take shape.

In Will Guidara's indispensable read Unreasonable Hospitality, he refers to the pre-shift meeting as "a lever," and it truly is. This is the platform on which we can lift our entire team.

We all know what pre-shift briefings often look and feel like: going through the motions, rote, corporate, stiff, 
mechanical, the ticking of boxes. I've been witness to more than enough embarrassing and soul-destroying briefings to fill a lifetime, but that is not what I am talking about.
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Spending years each in free-standing fine dining restaurants, international luxury hotels, and private clubs, I can say with conviction that, while in all three of those worlds chefs strive to create superlative and transformative offerings for the diners who seek them out, the best environment to care for the Humanity and wellbeing of a whole community is undoubtedly in Private Clubs, and by a mile.

It really is essential to put passion before the group. A leader vs. a manager. Someone with charisma who clearly cares about those they serve and about what we are all here, thousands of hours per month, to do. A person with a sense of humor but with equal parts competence, someone with the EQ to read the room but also the gravitas to get things done.

Those 15-20 minutes each day can make a bigger difference than the hundreds of hours spent in the trenches setting direction, clarifying goals, and breathing life into the team's mission. 

At Medinah, the mission is to send every member, family member, and guest out of the gates feeling better than when they arrived. Feeling happy, valued, listened to, cared for, and thought of: deeply human emotions. But if we roll the dice on the GUESS that our staff somehow “get it” naturally, we will most certainly fail. We need to speak it first and then work to build and fortify it. Once the team understands and agrees to their roles, the mission begins. Focus on clarity in your message.

The Thing Business vs The People Business. 

At the crux of what we are here to do, and when things are not working very well, it helps us to understand where we are going wrong.

As a young cook and chef, I thought that food and beverages were only about things. Objects. The best ingredients, the sharpest knives, burners with the highest BTUs, mise en place efficiency, and station ergonomics.  Like a blind fanatic, I was so obsessed with these factors that I often ignored what guests said they wanted because, as chefs, we knew better than they did. I sharpened my knives maniacally every day, read about ingredients fervently, and was frustrated by any cooks in my periphery who seemed not to care about these details as much as I did. 

For sure, I was not a good teammate and was a pain in the ass to more than one of my patient, chef mentors. But I was a good cook and driven, and The Thing Business took me a long way until it didn't.

At a certain point, I began bonking my head on a ceiling that no one told me about. By then, I had gone from small, fine-dining restaurants to international luxury hotel chains, and then into the Club sector in Hong Kong. On that level, of course, you must have mastered “the things,” but your success and upward movement at that point have much more to do with relationships and your ability to motivate and mobilize large groups of people.

As so many high-level leaders know, how you work with others (things are so much easier to manage than people, ha-ha) determines your success more than any ‘hard skill’ ever could. And who works with more types of people than chefs? 

The cooks, servers, stewards, communications team, event sales team, front desk, concierge, human resources, finance, purchasing, vendors, salespeople, technicians, media, diners, members, guests, and the list goes on. Difficult to imagine success in a high-level role in which relations with all these factions were not positive and proactive. 

So, at this point, what do you do if you are like I was, waking up to this blunt reality? Burn like the phoenix to rise from your own ashes? Start to learn new things. A whole new set of skills, maybe ones you used to make fun of. 

For me, it will sound cliché, but it was Simon Sinek and that first TED Talk about The Power of Why. That began a rabbit hole of people learning that I went down and still have not come out. 

But the only success I have had has been through productive relationships with others. As leaders, we are but one person, needing to do the work of hundreds, so we must accomplish this as a team. To transcend in hospitality is to understand that mastery of "the things" is essential, but is also naturally paired with the necessity of the people part. 

To get our members to feel the wonderful things we want them to feel, the TEAM must touch them first, and that is in our hands. After getting ‘the things' locked down, focus on The People Business!

As the world becomes more digital, discerning people with the means to acquire what they seek will place greater value on food produced by humans. Warm service that a human gives. Music that is written and played by a human. A piece of art painted by a human. And a feeling of being important and cared for, as a human.
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The beauty of the societal situation we find ourselves in, at least in the short term, is that we as cooks and chefs are already good at one of the most important art forms this world has ever seen: the conversion of raw ingredients, with the assistance of heat, fire, and technique, into momentary creations of beauty that diners not only enjoy with their eyes, but with their noses, taste buds, bellies and minds as well. They don't call it soul food for nothing!

We have the immediate opportunity to realize that we absolutely can “make an impact” as creative and inspired people. There is great value in giving something of value to others, and with the skills we acquire as chefs, we are well-positioned to deliver meaning to our diners on a deep and lasting level. 

Spending years each in free-standing fine dining restaurants, international luxury hotels, and private clubs, I can say with conviction that, while in all three of those worlds, chefs strive to create superlative and transformative offerings for the diners who seek them out, the best environment to care for the Humanity and wellbeing of a whole community is undoubtedly in Private Clubs, and by a mile. 

In a world that increasingly features automation, loneliness, isolation, and a lack of real connection, the Club space offers the perfect environment for creative human cooks of all ages and backgrounds to do what they love best!

With each passing day, month, and year, I increasingly see the immense value of what we, as chefs, do with and for our membership. We are speaking here in a golf magazine, but one commonly repeated phrase at Medinah is that "while only some people golf, everybody eats." With over 1,000 members and a dining community of more than 3,000, there are plenty of opportunities for creativity!

For sure, world-renowned golf is what the wider populace knows about our Club and hundreds of others like it. 

Still, inside that sphere, there is a whole community that spends their lives in our eateries, shares their essential family, business, and friendship meals in our dining rooms, and celebrates their most cherished life milestones in our ballrooms.

In clubs, we have the opportunity to get to know members and their families deeply. Their diets, the dishes they love, the ingredients they hate, what matters deeply to them. If we remember these things and act on them without needing to be reminded, the result is a deep level of contentment at the human level. We are not here to be right; we are here to create experiences that our members value.

Welcome people onto your team. Be imperfect. Have a personality. Have a sense of humor. Human emotional qualities like laughter, enthusiasm, anticipation, surprise, empathy, gratitude, and contentment are all readily available in the Club space, and AI doesn't do these things!

As the world becomes more digital, discerning people with the means to acquire what they seek will place greater value on food produced by humans. Warm service that a human gives. Music that is written and played by a human. A piece of art painted by a human. And a feeling of being important and cared for, as a human.

So, in conclusion, what should we do? While, of course, we need to always look after ourselves, our families, friends, and interests, we should realize the power we have to make a positive impact on others right now; we don't have to wait. 

We can always improve the lives of others. With our cooking skills, we are perfectly positioned to focus on one of the main factors that still binds us together in this increasingly bot-driven age: our shared Humanity. Do these things for others, and guess what, we win too.

Even in uncertain times, there is a future in our industry.

Service + Humanity = Hospitality. 

"Where do I fit in?"

You fit in right here.

~ Matthew Gilbert
Culinary Director
Medinah Country Club

To truly honor a chef’s craft, food photography must embrace the real thing—no shortcuts.