Chef Tattoos: The Utilitarian Version

Amy Scattergood

Wendy Liu, former cook at Church & State

Tattoos in the kitchen can articulate a lot of things: personal history, pictorial resumes, culinary idées fixes, embarrassing testaments to off-duty binges, a reminder that the chronically overworked chef in question has real family members with actual names. But although chefs can display a lot of completely ridiculous artwork on their personal canvasses (if you need inspiration, maybe consider looking beyond Mel Blanc), they can also showcase gorgeous art, beautifully realized and exactly rendered by artists who have progressed a long way from calligraphying beached sailors and dilapidated rock bands. Chefs -- and apprentices and cooking school interns and prep cooks and caterers and anyone else who likes a little personal embellishment while making coq au vin at home after work -- can also get tattoos that are highly functional. Utilitarian even. Need to know exactly how break down a potato into a brunoise cut? A carrot into a batonnet? Use your hands.

Rulers for knife cuts. Concentric circles for baking measurements. Ratios for stocks and sauces and country-of-origin meringues. What other examples of utilitarian kitchen tattoos are out there? With pictures, please, if you have them.