TONY chefs' survey by the numbers

80: average number of hours worked each week by our respondents.

138: average number of meals prepared per night

When asked how many times a week they burn, cut or otherwise injure themselves in the kitchen:

12 said zero
14 said one
6 said two
4 said three

0: number who say they have spat on or otherwise molested a patron's food. “Give me a break," joked one. "I only molest the food destined for someone famous."

14: number who have sent out a dish they knew to be a total flop. “Sometimes you got no choice,” explained one culprit. “It’s either that or close down for the night and throw it out. And even I, with my very limited business sense, know that’s not an option. It’s inevitable—to make good and interesting food, you can’t be afraid of fucking up. We don’t all have the luxury of shutting down for six months to experiment and perfect.”

30% have served something that they knew to be past its prime. “When it’s rotten, make it au gratin.”

55% have imbibed on the job. “Little nips in between.”

27% have done drugs on the job. “I smoke pot all the time,” admitted one, although nobody copped to being coked up. “Snow blowers are out there,” assured another. “And the worst to work for.”

5% admit they are less likely to hire a woman than a man.

13% have stiffed their purveyors.

55% have thrown someone out of their restaurant.
• “I kicked out a drunk asshole and self-proclaimed paella expert.”
• “One woman misbehaved so egregiously so many times that I couldn’t take it. She was a celebrity hairdresser, if that’s not the most ridiculous thing in the world. Not even the celebrity—the fucking haircutter of the celebrity!”
• “Once a customer repeatedly sent food back to the kitchen—three separate dishes which I tasted and were perfectly fine. I went to the table and told them I was sorry to have wasted their time and refused to waste any more, and here is your check and your coats. It was very cathartic.”
• “Yes. I can’t stand rude, uneducated diners who act like two-year-olds.”
• “A drunk guy made a girl cry. My entire kitchen staff escorted him out.”

55% have yelled at the help in their kitchen. And 65% have made cooks cry, to the chagrin of one chef who stuck up for his staff. “That’s a horrible way to treat the very people who allow you to exist,” he said. Countered another: “I yell. With love.”

47% say that kitchen hazing does happen. “You always give new people a bit of a hard time to see if they’re going to perform,” said one. “But we stopped branding cooks with coat hangers in the ’80s.”

32% have knowingly ripped off someone else’s menu. “And so has every chef that’s ever picked up a knife.”

47% have seen a cockroach in their kitchen. “It’s NYC, and anyone who says no is lying.”

32% have seen a rodent in their kitchen? “Do mice count?” asked one. (Yup.)

30% consider Anthony Bourdain an antihero (rather than an asshole). Twenty percent went with both, and others called him “freak,” “a terrible chef but a great writer” and an “industry god.”

57% prefer the cuisine of the “new guard” of cooks (under 50), “but not like that pussy Marcel from Top Chef.”

52% say steak should be cooked medium rare. Nine chefs said “rare,” one said “medium” and only one said “however the guest wants it.” But be careful when ordering: “There are only five temperatures,” explained one chef. “Pink is not a temperature. Between medium and rare is not a temperature. If you want a steak well, then order it that way.”

75% occasionally snack on cheap hot dogs. Gray’s Papaya is the fave.

75% say three or more languages are spoken in their kitchen, including “English, Spanish and what I’ve dubbed Kitchen-glish.”