Philadelphia chefs aren’t just serving up some of the city’s most delectable dishes, they’re doing it in style—tattooed style, that is. The Bear, a recent hit dramedy about the inner workings of a Chicago kitchen, reinforced the brooding “tattooed chef” archetype that populates kitchens. Traditional flash designs of chef’s knives, the deconstructed anatomy of a pig, and sensual prints of pin–up girls smatter the bodies of chefs in The Bear. Beyond the silver screen, however, tattoo culture permeates kitchens of all cuisines and in all cities. While tattoos aren’t always associated with an elaborate backstory and meaning for those who choose to commit to the long–term holy matrimony of skin and ink, they are, in a way, the physical badges collected by chefs throughout their time in the culinary industry.
This month, Street sat down with local chefs to document the artistry of tattoo culture in some of Philadelphia’s most beloved restaurants. These are their stories.
Chef Aidan Williams of Middle Child Clubhouse found his start in the culinary industry as a dishwasher while studying at Temple University. But then he lost his job when the restaurant he worked for closed. He recounts, “I had to take a leave of absence and lost my scholarship as a result.” After he left school, he dove into the culinary industry and learned to cook more extensively. Like his venture into cooking, he dipped his toe into inking himself before he took the full plunge.
Describing his first tattoo, he says, “It was summer 2020, and there was nothing better to do [than] have my friends stick and poke my arms.” Since then, his collection of ink has developed as he’s grown in the industry. “The initial project was to do this arm with all herbs and spices. I try to remember I made the incredibly stupid decision to start with a hand, and then kind of went to one guy once a month for about three and a half years and filled out the rest of the arm.”
When I ask about his process of selecting the designs for his patchwork sleeve of herbs and spices, he confesses, “I would [just] look up, ‘Herb name, botanical drawing.’ So if I’m being totally honest, some of these might not actually be what I think they are, because [they’re] just Google Image search results.”
If you’re wondering whether he finds any of his tattoos to be particularly notable, you’ll learn that no, in fact, he does not. “I don't know if I really have notable ones. You get to a certain point where getting tattoos is just a thing that you do when none of them really stand out at a certain point.”
When he divulges that he hopes to get out of the culinary industry in the near future, I wonder aloud if he holds emotional sentiment with his food–related tattoos. He tells me that he doesn’t think of his tattoos often, saying, “Honestly, it’s just kind of stuff someone else’s art all over my arms.”
If you’re wondering whether Philly chefs all secretly know each other, they practically do, because chef Cody Williams of Suraya in Fishtown works just a few doors down from Aidan Williams of Middle Child Clubhouse. While they are unrelated, they’ve joked that they are “father and son”—whether because of the shared surname or a secret third reason, I will never know.
When Cody enters Street’s cozy photo studio on a Wednesday evening, he warms the space with his jovial grin. He got his start in the culinary industry young. “I got started when I was 15. It was just a way to make money during high school, you know, gas money. And then when I went to college and spent my summers cooking at a lobster restaurant in Connecticut, where I’m from, just the whole time I really enjoyed it.”
Like Aidan, Cody didn’t necessarily intend to pursue a career in the culinary arts. “After I got out of college, it was tough to get a job, and so I was making pizza for a living and never intended for [cooking] to be a career.” But then, like most postgraduates, he got a desk job and found himself hating the drudge of a corporate 9–to–5 job. “I absolutely hated it,” he confesses. So he went back to what he knew and loved—food.
Home, for Cody, is the kitchen, but it’s also the island off the coast of Connecticut where he grew up—the home he memorialized on his upper arm in ink with his sister.
The sporadic art on Cody’s body maps the places and things he loves, and he’s been successful thus far in avoiding any cliché chef tattoos. In fact, instead of a chef’s knife, he got an oyster shucker instead to pair with the tattoo of an unshucked oyster right below. The meaning behind the pairing? “I love shellfish. I just love seafood,” he gushes. “I was just like, ‘Fuck it: I’m gonna get an oyster.’”
Now, years out of his desk job, his days are filled with kitchen routines, cleaning, prep, cooking—rinse and repeat. But the repetition of restaurant life is interspersed with the brilliant joy of cooking for people, Cody tells me. When he was in his postgraduate desk job, he laments, “I was just not fulfilled, like I didn't really just feel like I was an actual person.”
At Suraya, he confesses that he romanticizes the highs of the service industry while acknowledging the challenges of grueling hours in the kitchen. “I really love that my entire career is built around making people happy. I’m making a ton of food for a ton of people everyday. People are coming in and eating for birthdays, anniversaries, reuniting with long lost friends—[and] they choose our establishment to have one of their best days.”
For others like Lauren Hooks, her tattoos align with her culinary intents as a chef. The full–leg sleeve of fruits and vegetables sprouted from her love for everything of the earth. Unlike the other chefs who are still enmeshed in the day–to–day tedium of the culinary industry, Lauren is currently the Kitchen Manager at Penn’s Food Innovation Lab.
Lauren found her love for school in her early 20s while working as a home–health aide during nursing school. She recalls, “I had a big passion for helping people, taking care of people. I realized the effect that nutrition had on people’s late life because I saw it every day with people I really cared about.” Her experience working as a health aide sparked her interest in nutrition and veganism. After realizing that one of the biggest gaps in health and nutrition was a lack of education around home cooking, she says she “just started feverishly learning how to cook.”
Her career in the culinary industry, since learning to cook, has been diverse, from working in kitchens, as head chef at HipCityVeg, and in culinary management consulting. Lauren’s tattoos, like her career path, follow a similarly diverse patchwork of her passions.
The first tattoo she got was a section of a Candyland board, and her most recent is a detailed heart on the palm of her hand. Between the first and her most recent tattoo, she’s gotten at least a dozen more. In fact, any inhibitions she had about getting inked quickly faded.
She recalls, “It was funny, because in the beginning, [tattoos are a] ‘job stopper.’ But everybody in kitchens has them. Then when I started running kitchens, I’ve had bosses tell me, ‘get more tattoos, so you look the part.’ So it's just nice in that way; kitchens are very embracing.”
Nowadays, Lauren hopes to bring the same sense of acceptance and accessibility to cooking that she has fostered throughout her career as she works with Penn undergraduate and graduate students interested in culinary innovation.
Chef Ben Ynocencio of Illata, has a home–grown love for cooking. From the start, he says, “I’ve been working in kitchens professionally for probably eight years now, but I’ve been cooking since I could hold a spoon.”
While some chefs try to subvert the stereotypical tattoos of animal anatomy charts (like pig parts) or chef’s knives, it’s nearly impossible for them to avoid all food–related ink. But Ben’s dedicated tattoos still manage to take on a tender sense of individuality. One of his favorites was drawn by his friend upon request. He recalls telling his friend, “My favorite foods are sushi, rice, and chocolate milk,” and telling him that he could draw whatever he wanted and he would get it tattooed to memorialize his reverence for his ultimate comfort foods.
When Ben first started to get tattoos he was endeared to the experience itself, but he says he is making “a point to wait an extra year or two [now] to have the right person” to do any future ink because he wants to be more intentional about his design choices now.
His same thoughtful approach to the act of inking his body is telling of his general approach to life decisions. When he considered entering the culinary industry, he weighed the pros and cons of trying to turn his hobby into a career. “I was nervous about [cooking] as a profession, because there’s lots of people that have hobbies that they love, and then they try to turn into a career and say, ‘Oh, like, I don’t like this.’”
Reflecting on the community he has found in the Philadelphia restaurant scene, he says, “I think that the food scene here is really great because there’s so much connective tissue between a lot of the great restaurants and, especially having cooked in a lot of them over the past seven or eight years, everyone’s really supportive of each other. It’s like a tight knit community.”
As for the kitchen, according to Ben, it is often “like the ‘Island of Misfit Toys’ of people.” Regarding chef tattoo culture, Ben says, it “makes a lot of sense, [because] we're, generally speaking, people that are okay with some discomfort and pain, whether it be long hours or just the discomfort of getting a tattoo.” Perhaps the perception of tattoo culture is less about a particular design or archetype but more so about the act of tattooing itself: collecting badges to document years gone by and memories commemorated in the indefinite matrimony of skin and ink.
