In the culinary world, few things carry as much weight as mentorship and lineage. A young chef trained under a famous, Michelin-starred mentor doesn’t just learn about plating, menus, and philosophies of flavour. They inherit a reputation and tie themselves to a legacy.
This can be a gift, a burden, or something in between.
“There’s downsides and upsides, like any path in life,” said Daphne Demetry, Associate Professor of Strategy and Organization at McGill University.
In her research, she explored how culinary protégés build their careers after mentoring with a well-known chef. Some chose to distance themselves, rejecting the advantages of trading on their mentor’s name. Others chose to carry on their mentor’s legacy, preparing similar dishes with similar techniques.
Demetry focused her research on elite chefs because mentoring is central to the culinary world—a chef’s public identity is often closely tied to the famous mentors who trained them. But her findings are about more than inter-chef dynamics. They reveal the complexity of mentor-mentee relationships overall, and how protégés carve out their space in competitive creative industries.
Fork in the road
In the culinary world, mentorship can act as a double-edged sword. A well-known mentor can provide credibility, visibility, networking, and investment opportunities. However, when protégés are too closely aligned with their mentors, they may find themselves constrained by external expectations.
To understand this phenomenon, Demetry turned to the theory of optimal distinctiveness. It comes from psychology and refers to the desire to both belong in a group while also holding individual differences. But it can also be used in organizational theory. Here, it describes the choices that entrepreneurs make for their organizations, such as the degree to which a protégé should continue identifying their organization with that of their mentor.
Demetry found that, in the culinary arts, protégés tend to follow one of two trajectories: legacy or divergent.
“These are long-term paths, at least in this industry,” said Demetry.
A protégé following the legacy trajectory stays closely aligned with their mentor’s reputation. By signalling continuity, protégés benefit from the trust and reputation attached to their mentor’s legacy. A high-profile reviewer may visit their restaurant because of who they trained with. Customers may dine at their establishment because they’re familiar with the mentors’ work. Protégés with well-known mentors may also win more awards for their cooking.
“There are a lot of positives in this industry to taking a legacy trajectory,” she said. “The downside is that you’re forever linked to this person.”
Indeed, chefs on the legacy trajectory may find themselves boxed in, unable to express themselves fully through their work. They’re expected to stick to certain cuisines and techniques, earning criticism if they stray too far from what they and their mentor are known for.
That’s in part why some mentees take the divergent trajectory. They distance themselves early on from their mentors to establish a more distinct identity. They may choose to explore new cuisines, departing from the foods they were trained in. Or open a restaurant in a smaller market, trading the fast pace of city restaurants for a less stressful environment. And they can do that because they’re unburdened by the expectations of their mentors’ legacy, explained Demetry.
But the divergent trajectory carries risk. Straying too far can weaken the credibility and recognition that come from established lineage, making it harder for others to place and evaluate the mentee’s work. It can also lead to less commercial success and fewer opportunities for praise and recognition.
Go your own way
Demetry found that, when choosing between divergent and legacy trajectories, reasons varied widely. The legacy trajectory was the norm—most protégés continued and built on their mentors’ work. Among those who diverged, some did so for interpersonal reasons. They didn’t have a good experience working with their mentors. In other cases, they felt it was awkward or inauthentic to leverage their mentor’s reputation, opting instead to build their own.
Trajectories also depended heavily on how the protégés defined success. Some sought status and awards, so they tended towards the legacy path. Others valued independence and sustainability in their life and work. In that case, a divergent path was more appropriate.
Demetry’s study focuses on culinary mentorship, but it’s not hard to imagine similar dynamics playing out in other industries: a musician diverging from his instructor, a professor diverging from her PhD research supervisor, an executive leaving a company to launch her own venture.
Regardless of the industry, mentorship is always supposed to be a temporary relationship, said Demetry.
“It’s just the natural evolution of it,” she said.
The rest is up to the mentees.
This article was written by Mahin Siddiki and Eric Dicaire. Inspired by the research paper “Cutting the apron strings: Establishing optimal distinctiveness from mentors in creative industries” by Daphne Demetry and Rachel Doern.
