You Need to Understand Every Aspect of a Restaurant to Be a Great Chef

I came into the food industry with a rather "street-minded" attitude. I had just gotten out of the army and thought I wanted to work as a mechanic since that is what I did while I was serving.

Until the day one of my cousins asked, "What about a job in cooking?" My parents used to own a fast-food Chinese restaurant, so I tried it out. I decided to go to cooking school after that.

On my first day of school, I got a job at Water Grill as a dishwasher working under chef David Lefevre. I had never worked in a professional kitchen and got the job by going to the back door and asking for work. I moved up the ladder, but you can only move up so far at a restaurant that focuses more on the quantity of food. It was an oyster bar, after all. It was a great first experience, but after a year I needed to do something else.

I loved eating sushi, so I thought, Why not try working at a high-end sushi place? I made it my mission to work at Urasawa in Beverly Hills, which is the most high-end place in LA. However, that goal was not going to come easy. The chef and owner, Hiro-San, would simply not take me. I called him and he would hang up on me. I would go to the restaurant and knock on the door, and he wouldn't open it for me. I took this guy as a challenge.

He finally opened the door for me one day and I told him, "I want to work here!"

He had two conditions. First, he wasn't going to pay me for the first month. Second, I had to start from scratch. So there I was, going to cooking school to learn new techniques only to have my duties at Urasawa included everything but cooking. I did all the dirty work: sanded the cypress wood sushi bar; washed more dishes; swept; mopped; cleaned the restroom; took reservations; opened doors for people; was a server.

All of these duties may not have made any sense for a cook who was well on his way to graduate from cooking school, but I was OK with this. What helped me get by is understanding the cultural differences between American and Japanese culture. I didn't understand why but there was this certain sense of satisfaction that you get when you do something repetitively and get really good at it, even if that something is cleaning the toilet.

You get better at it. You get faster. You grow to eventually enjoy the moment when a table is super-clean and smooth. (You get even happier when guests recognize that the table was perfect, too.) I was the only guy out of 30 employees—some who quit after just a few hours at Urasawa—who could hang with Hiro-San's commands and insults. I eventually started chopping vegetables and making food. But little did I know then that doing all of those little non-cooking tasks at a restaurant would prove to be helpful throughout every step of my cooking career.

I graduated from cooking school while working full-time. I didn't get much sleep during those days but I wanted to finish what I started. Ten years later, the discipline gained from all that experience has helped me open my first restaurant in San Francisco,

As we all know, a restaurant is not just about the food. It is about the logistics, the system, the service, and everything else going on in a restaurant. I can safely say that this realization of the intense amount of labor involved when you open a restaurant with a limited budget in San Francisco is rooted in my time at Urasawa. I enjoy doing things like making all the reservations and sending out emails. I enjoy playing the role of a manager, and of course, I still enjoy cooking.

It is my fourth month of business right now and it is all about survival, but I wouldn't be where I am now without my past experience, working every restaurant job that you can think of—glamorous or otherwise.

As told to Javier Cabral

This interview has been edited for length and clarity

Sung Anh is the chef and owner of Mosu, a new, contemporary American kaiseki-style restaurant in San Francisco. He has previously worked at Benu, The French Laundry, Urasawa, and Water Grill. For more information on his food, visit his restaurant's website.