Jaioli: Cook's Ink

Tattoos are not widely accepted in many professional fields and if you do have tattoos, the boss might encourage you to cover them at work. But, in the kitchen, it's a different story. For some odd reason, it's normal to see cooks with ink. So if you have a lot of tattoos and can't find a job, start cooking, just kidding.

Quick story: When I was working at Tabla as a line cook, I remember I kept my sleeves down to hide my tattoo from Chef Floyd Cardoz. I was cooking papadum in the salamander (I miss those crab cakes) and of course Chef saw it. "AY! what's that?!" I replied, "Chef, it's a tattoo" (I probably looked a little embarrassed) and I remember him saying, "this is why I shouldn't give you guys a day off, you always go off and do something crazy." HAHAHA, well a couple of hours later he told me something in the lines of, "it's okay, it's how you express yourself, I'm not against it." I was really relieved.

My tattoo started last year on September 1st, 2010. It's still in progress and I'm guessing it'll be done by next month. The parlor I go to is located in the Bronx, called Bronx Ink Tattoo & Piercing. Hoga is my tattoo artist, also one of my close hyungs. He's a very talented man that specializes in Asian art. I'll post up progress pictures I took in the course of 7 months to show you how it started and ended for those who are interested. By the way, it's a full sleeve of koi fish. I know my former senior cook Josh would hate me for posting these pictures up, he's one jealous dude, just kidding on that too.

Hoga working