When J. Kenji López-Alt landed a job as a line cook at the elegant No. 9 Park restaurant, he wasn’t expecting to spend his first day standing in the corner with a figurative dunce hat on his head. He was being punished by the chef for incorrectly chopping the chives. He later worked at other expensive restaurants too, even spending a few weeks working for the famously cruel Gordon Ramsay, where he watched another cook have a hot pan tossed at him. Now the head chef of his own restaurant, López-Alt is taking the lessons he learned from those jobs to run a kitchen that’s cruelty free. This week on Man Up, he talks with Aymann about kitchen machismo, and what it took for him to unlearn it.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices