Bad boy chef Tim Raue, who went from gang member to owning Michelin-starred restaurant, has a new cookbook

Few will admit to having been a thug but German chef Tim Raue goes further and credits his gangster past with helping him prepare for the relentless grind of a top kitchen.

At the age of nine, Tim waved goodbye to a normal childhood when he went to live with his abusive father in Baden-Württemberg, in south­west Germany, leaving his mother behind in Berlin. There, he fell in with football hooligans and learned to fight (his speciality was the low kick, “which left few people standing”). Later, having returned to Berlin, he joined a violent street gang.

On finishing his schooling, Raue took a job in a restaurant, where he soon realised “the kitchen was my second home [...] There were few places where my experi­ences as a street fighter could have been more useful than in my new job. On the one hand, the behavior and swear words used among the chefs were hardcore. Even the Frankfurt hooligans seemed like innocent lambs compared to the fierce, politically incorrect expressions uttered by chefs who were at the end of their tether [...]”

“Nerves were always frayed, people would be shouting, swearing, and making threats, and everyone would be on a knife-edge at their station – yet, for the most part, it was like water off a duck’s back for me. My idea of stress was a physical threat; my body would release adrenaline whenever I approached a pack of opponents. I did not consider a frenzied chef or the nervous blubbering of a head­waiter as reasons to lose my cool. My radar was used to going off for existential threats, not for things like how five chicken drum­sticks were going to be ready to serve in the next two minutes.”