the long ramble: Reclaiming the Kitchen
written by Niv Hachlili

In the months leading up to our radical community kitchen, I took time to speak with several (all migrants) chefs and cooks - those working in the “food industry” kitchens. I made space to listen to their experiences and reflections on the systems that have perpetuated themselves over the last 20–30 years.

Working in an industrialised kitchen was described by those willing to share as an act of "craziness." These kitchens were portrayed as spaces defined by strict hierarchy, exploitation, and humiliation. If you were lucky enough to climb the food chain - enduring long hours, physical and emotional strain, self-harm, and abuse from kitchen leads - you’d eventually earn the right to do the same. And, for some reason, the survivors are then celebrating these degrading mechanisms.

At the end of that process, the food served to “customers” is born of suffering - a fact people are oddly proud of. But it raises the question: can we truly believe this doesn’t affect the food itself?

That question expands when we examine the entire capitalist food system. One driven first by cost calculations, and second (whether consciously or not) by exploitation. If not the temporary migrant kitchen workers, it’s the seasonal field labourers. If not them, it’s the small farmers barely earning minimum wage. If not the farmers, it’s the truck drivers caught in Brexit bottlenecks, or the night workers at New Spitalfields Market. And if not them, it’s the soil, seeds, and plants under relentless assault from overuse, pesticides, and climate breakdown.

Another layer of disconnection is revealed in testimonies from chefs in large industrial or "ghost" kitchens - some cooking for tens of thousands of children or workers daily. Their routines involve using powders, processed products, and substitutes that turn food into mere commodity, pulling us further from nourishment in its true form.

What materialises through all of this is a life cycle of pretence, not just by the food makers selling us illusions, but by us, the “clients,” who consume them. We’re conditioned to believe that nourishing food must be “beautiful,” “unique,” and made through complex, almost magical processes. But we disregard how the food arrived to us, what it’s been through, how those who grew and cooked it were treated, what it contains, and its environmental cost.

So we order food or dine out to feel nourished, to explore new tastes, to feel community. But often, we’re engaging with a false system - one that pours vast resources into distracting us from life’s meaningful elements, tricking us into thinking that food is “good” just because of how it looks, or who endorses it.

We’re robbed of our ability to distinguish basic tastes and smells, numbed to our body’s warnings, and drawn into addictive and harmful substances used to mask the absence of real nourishment. The impact reaches far beyond food, into how we think, relate, and engage with the world.

Just like with online maps or AI, we’re losing our inner compass. We rely more on external reassurances, disorienting ourselves and distancing from self-trust and simple truths. We lose the ability to practice critical thinking and authentic communal connection.

Reclaiming the kitchen means building a new language together. As a community that seeks not just survival, but true nourishment. It’s about flourishing and growing a movement that challenges the very mechanisms designed to fragment and polarise us, to increase their grip on how we think, consume, and live.

These insights lead us to see that reclaiming the kitchen is an act of liberation. It demands constant effort - not only as a community trying to revive slow food, dignity, and care for those who grow and prepare it, but also for those we serve: reintroducing real tastes and holistic ways of thinking. It’s about exploring the full life cycle of food, honouring the time and commitment it takes to reach the table, and creating space for new encounters and conversations.


For Further reading -

* Extreme violence and abuse commonplace in elite kitchens around the world, study reveals
* Solidarity Across Land Trades
* Basic Income for Farmers
* The Dirty Dozen (Pesticide Action Network UK)
* London After Dark: The Reality of Working at Night in the Capital
* The Price We Don’t Pay: modern slavery in food delivery and distribution
* Food and agricultural workers in the UK: organising against exploitation
* Exposed: European trucking’s systemic exploitation of workers
* Lorry drivers stuck in Dover queues treated like 'animals' with no food, water or toilet access

photo gallery