People Can Taste Your Happiness in The Food

Hanalei Souza:  Yeah, my name is Hanalei Souza and I am a sous chef in the Western US. Been in the industry for about eight years now and I run or sous chef a high volume, fast paced American style kind of restaurant. And I also make social media on the side. I've been doing that since 2020. Started off as a silly little meme page, started doing real, started gaining a lot of chef audience and making really neat chefy kind of jokes. And so now I run the page Lady Line Cook. I'm still a full-time sous chef, of course. I also wrote a book about my experience in the kitchen and in the ski resort industry too. So the title of that book is Nice Work Boys. It's been out for about five years now. And yeah, that's me.

Hanalei Souza:  Yeah, so I came up with the idea of Nice Work Boys when I was actually working in the ski resort industry before the kitchen. So I wasn't cooking, I was actually working out on the mountain. And that was a very male dominated field, as you could imagine. It was like, the department was like 60 men and me, it was mountain operations. And I remember thinking to myself, if my life were a book, the title would be Nice Work Boys. And I started, I always wrote in journals. So I started writing about my experience there, but it wasn't long enough for a book. It was like three chapters it ended up being. 

Then after that winter, I needed a summer job and that's when I started cooking in the kitchen. And that was a similar demographic. Like at the ski resort, I'd also been promoted to supervisor. And so going into the kitchen, taking a lot of that with me, learning how to lead in these types of environments, taking that into the kitchen, writing about my experiences in the kitchen, starting from zero and going up to sous chef, and how I navigated all that is like a 21, 22 year old woman in these fields and it's really a lot of funny stories, a lot of people that I met along the way and a lot of the lessons that I learned about life and about leadership as well.

Hanalei Souza: That was like the overall. It was like several departments within Mountain Operations. So my department was like 30 and just me. And then obviously we shared an area with like lift mechanics, vehicle maintenance and like ski patrol. And then I was doing the terrain park building, which is cool. I had a lot of fun in that job. I really liked it, but it wasn't year round. And then I ended up working in the kitchen. I didn't think, I thought it would just be a summer job. And then I ended up staying.

Hanalei Souza:  I think you need to have confidence and I know that's difficult but it'll come with experience and time. I feel like I dealt with lot of imposter syndrome more at the beginning and I feel like you just have to accept that as a natural part of your journey and realize pinpointing it as a thing like, you know, that's not real, that's just imposter syndrome. Once I push through that, I feel like I don't really deal with it anymore just because of time, experience and having a lot of wins and success over a couple years. You know, get win after win and you're like, okay, maybe I do belong here. So I think having confidence in yourself, your own skills, knowing that if someone's like trying to, what's the word? Like I've butted heads with people in the past and like them definitely like trying to question if I should be there. And this is all in the book too, but like me just showing them with my skill and just outworking them, and you know, it always has worked out for me.

Hanalei Souza: Yeah, I know. I would say don't try to be any different. That would be my advice is like, you know, treat; I think there's a line, I think there's obviously still like harassment and stuff like that happening in kitchens, but I think it doesn't matter man, woman, whatever, like no one should be harassing anyone in kitchen. There's jokes, there's humor. We crack a lot of funny jokes, some of them questionable, but like no one in the kitchen, man or woman, should feel intimidated or offended or personally attacked based on their gender, race or whatever. So I would say like, there's a woman, try not to harass her. 

But I think that's kind of a stupid answer because I don't, I think that's, I'm hoping that that's moving in the right direction for everyone. So I want to say like, treat her the same as everyone else. And that the same would be like, we don't harass or intimidate anyone. So that will be my advice, hopefully. And I'm not saying no jokes, no everyone's sad face. No, like I think the kitchen that I work in is very balanced, very happy, very like, yeah, we tell jokes, we say stuff that might not fly in our office, but it's, we're not making each other uncomfortable, you know?

Hanalei Souza:  I love being hands-on in the kitchen. I'm not one of those people that started social media to try and do it full-time, be an influencer. I never set out to do that. I just wanted to show the chef life in real time as I was experiencing it. And I really enjoy doing both side-by-side. Like, I feel like if I didn't have my job, then I would have nothing to post about. And the content feel, it's like they go so hand-in-hand, even though I do try to keep them separate. 

Like, I don't film at work, I film at home, but it's all stuff that's inspired by work. So it's a cool outlet for me too. So like I might have a stressful day at work, but like something funny happened. And so I can grab onto that like funny story and like talk about the funny thing that happened. And I feel like for me, that's an outlet and helps me kind of like stay, help me decompress, I guess.

Hanalei Souza:  Well, that's difficult, but I say like, I love being a chef, hands down, like, I love being in it. And so I would pick being a hands on; being an actual chef, because there's no point if you're just an influencer or not. You know, you don't have any like, okay, sure, I had eight years in the industry, but like, that's actually not that much time. Like, I feel like it's cool that people see. I started this account six years ago. So I only had years in the industry. So people kind of saw me go from nothing to where I am now and a lot of people followed from the very beginning and saw this in real time. So it's like in my heart I'm just a chef and I'm not an influencer so I would yeah.

Hanalei Souza: I would say keep it fun. I feel like you could taste the food when someone is like, when the employees are happy. Like it sounds crazy, but I feel like other people say this too. If you're in a kitchen where you're terrified of making a mistake and you get screamed at and pants thrown at you versus a kitchen where it's like, you know, someone's not afraid to admit that they overcooked the steak. And so they told the chef and the chef's like, okay, fire a new one. And so you get the correct, it's like a lot of things add up to where you're getting, it's just way better if the employees are having fun. 

I've had the best compliment I ever got as a chef was, this was like when we were in a closed kitchen, but we were doing construction. So one of the walls was left open and like you could see into the dining room and one said, your employees look like you're really having a lot of fun. And the food was great and it was amazing. Everything came out really fast and really smooth and you guys run a really smooth operation. But I peeked in the kitchen and you guys looked like you're having so much fun

Hanalei Souza: Yeah, that's a good one. I would say sense of urgency and also like within a couple minutes or even just an hour, I can tell if someone's looking around for what needs to be done instead of standing and waiting to be told what to do. Even if you're brand new, like you're coming in and there's food on the floor, you're asking, hey, where's the broom? Can I sweep? Can I do this? Can I bring; I'm gonna go help the dishwasher. Like you don't have to know everything and you can admit and say, hey, I don't know where the broom is, where's the broom? I'm gonna sweep this here. 

Versus I've worked with people who come in and they just kind of stand and then you tell them to do a task and then they finish it and they just stand and you're busy. know, it's not my full-time job as a sous chef to watch you. I have 24 people that I manage. So like, I'm not standing there watching you. And then I come back and you've just been standing there for 10 minutes waiting for me to tell you what to do next. I'm like, oh don't, you know, that's what I look for. Definitely.

Hanalei Souza: A green flag, I would say there's a lot of them. I mean, that was one of them where you got your head on a swivel and you got a sense of urgency. But I would also say like asking questions and being willing to admit when you don't know things. Like to me, that's a green flag instead of like, it's kind of a red flag if someone like doesn't ask any questions at all, because then I know there's going to come a day where they're going to be on some huge prep task and they're going to make a huge mistake because they don't ask questions and I'm gonna have to throw the whole batch away. Like I just know that that day is coming versus if someone asks a lot of questions I'm like okay I know that they're never gonna go too far like without you know without realizing something's wrong or being like hey I don't know the next step let me ask I'm not sure so that would be my green flag.

Hanalei Souza:  A red flag is, I think, when somebody, now that I've like, worked in the industry long enough, I've met a lot of different people, there's only a certain number of like, art types of people. And so sometimes I'll be interviewing someone. And in my mind, I'll be like, they kind of give off the same vibe as like this other person who is dreadful. And like, sometimes I'm, I pushed through that and then they quit in exactly the same way. 

Like, I'll give an example, this one guy gave the same vibe as this other like an older man who kind of went off the rails and went crazy. And when we were interviewing this new guy, he kind of reminded me of him. The head chef ended up hiring him and then like three days later, he went on a bender and disappeared and had gambling problems and borrowed money from everyone and it was just a mess and I was like, I need to trust my intuition more.

Hanalei Souza: Yeah, yeah, definitely. I would say you got to push through some hardship. Like it's still not going to be perfect out there. There's so many guys who don't want you next to them. Even in this day and age, you may or may not. Like I feel like it has gotten better, but don't let one guy make you feel like you don't belong here. Don't let that dictate the whole industry because there are a lot of great kitchens out there. 

Sometimes the first job you end up in might not be a good fit. And so that's when you can't just say, the whole industry is like this. There's a lot of great kitchens out there. You need to keep looking for another job and not accept, you know, how you, if you're being treated bad, like how you're being treated at that first job. There are still bad kitchens out there and bad chefs. But if you keep looking, you'll find a better one.