But why don't they want it? What do young people see when they enter, and what exactly do they not like about it?

We spoke to three people who entered the kitchen as youngsters and emerged when they were still young. Here's what they think about taking the heat and getting out of the kitchen.

1. It's stressful. Really, really stressful.

While the dinner rush can certainly also be an adrenaline rush — it's what many cooks love about the job — it can also take its toll, night after night. The emotional stressors of being a line cook and keeping a cool head while navigating a thousand moving pieces isn't for everyone. In fact, it's only for a tiny swath of the population, and that fact alone could be reason enough why kitchens are not filled to the brim with would-be chefs.

The initial challenge of getting through the nightly rush was satisfying, says Jared Lallier, a wait assistant who worked as a cook for two years, starting at a corporate chain. He went from there to a small suburban scratch cafe and then one of the most prominent fine dining restaurants in Minneapolis. But there were days when he wasn't sure he could physically keep up. "I never walked off of a line in my life, but I thought about it hundreds of times. I didn't know if I could humanly do it."

Nichole Burke, a pastry chef, can empathize. She was forced to cook behind the line in addition to her baking duties at her former job at a neighborhood bistro.

Says Burke, "As a baker, you have an idea what needs to get done when, and you have a plan of how to get that done in the time you have. But as a cook, 20 tickets are piling up at a time, and people are literally sitting on the other side of the door waiting on you. People are breathing down your neck. It's chaos."

Daniel Newkirk's dad owned restaurants the entire time he was growing up, so the business is in his bloodline. Still, he found cooking to be too stressful.

"I know how to flip an egg. It's not a problem for me. But as a cook, I wanted to kill everybody, always. Put me 16 tickets deep and I'll want to kill you. I found happiness in none of it."

He quit cooking after two years and has spent the last decade working as a bartender, which he loves.

2. There's no money in it.

Lallier says that as a wait assistant, he regularly makes about two times what he made as a cook. There are certain nights where he can make three to four times as much.

"And I never, ever work as hard as I did behind the line. Never."

During the time he was cooking, about a decade ago, Newkirk says he was making no more than minimum wage.

"And I worked in all different kinds of places from low-end to high-end and everything in between." He finally threw in the towel when a boss docked his pay for breaking eggs. He then became a front-of-house staffer and there he remained.

"You start to see how different it can be when you become a tipped employee. I almost feel sorry for people in the kitchen these days because it's so tough financially." He adds that the local and national minimum wage increase for all employees [including tipped employees] is going to make it that much more difficult for employers to increase cooks' pay, a shift that is desperately needed in the industry.

"More money, less problems," he says succinctly.

3. They're getting thrown in over their heads.

The cook shortage is turning into a snake eating its tail. People who should be spending another year working the salad station are now on grill. Grill cooks are becoming sous chefs and sous chefs are becoming executive chefs. Pastry chefs are becoming line cooks. The added stress of an expectation to perform beyond their ability level is enough to discourage young cooks for good.

Lallier gave this telling anecdote: "I sliced my finger wide open on the first day at the cafe. Three months later the owner was coming to me asking if I'd be interested in running the kitchen if the chef were to leave. I mean I probably didn't have any business working in that kitchen to begin with, much less run it. And people were all too happy to throw me in that way, because I was available."

He originally got into cooking both because he enjoyed home cooking, but also because culinary jobs are so readily available. He is in his early 20s and still unsure about a long-term career.

Lallier went on to work at a fine dining restaurant, where he says there was not a shadow of a doubt he didn't belong. "The chef's ideal of perfection was different than mine. And while I wanted to get really, really good, I just wasn't there yet."

He quit after seven months.

Burke, naturally, says the same thing. "I was like I was worthless as a team member unless I could work behind the line, and yet I didn't have any training. I didn't know how to cook meat temperatures. And so I would just say a little prayer. And my lack of experience made me feel super insecure that what I was putting out wasn't the correct level of awesomeness."

4. There's a limited future in it and it's thankless.

While he had a passion for cooking after spending a lot of time in his mother's kitchen growing up, Lallier says he always knew he had no interest in having a restaurant. "Knowing that 90 percent of them close or whatever the crazy number is and those three percent profit margins?"

So, without the ambition of someday ownership, he wasn't sure where the career would lead him. "And plus, out of the thousands of people cooking in this city, I can only name a tiny number of them. And step outside the tiny foodie circle, and nobody knows what a James Beard award even is. I'd say it's a pretty thankless profession."

5. Cooks can be disrespectful and bitter people.

And so all of these factors take their toll, say my young, would-be cooks. What's more, they say they could look down the timeline of life, at the oldsters behind the line, and they didn't want that to become them.

"I see a lot of discontent," says Lallier, who still works in the industry, but on the other side of the line. "A lot of people don't seem incredibly happy and it starts to rub off on you and you start to get bitter, too. Part of it comes from knowing that people on the other side of the line are making three and four times the money and you start to more aggressively show how discontented you are."

He says he sometimes has a hard time even talking to the line staff unless the thing coming out of his mouth is: "OK! This is the last ticket!"

"It's a trap," he says.

The bitterness can take shape in the form of harsh words, attitude, and yelling: We're all too familiar with the likes of Gordon Ramsay. Burke says insults in her kitchen have devolved to the point where she was called worthless, and while she's aware not all kitchen behavior goes that far, she still sees a general lack of respect behind the line. "I don't like the military-style of barking orders. I understand we're under pressure, but you don't have to degrade people." On the flip side, Newkirk says he takes special joy from his current position as a bartender. "I get paid to provide a good time to people who are spending their hard-earned money. I never, ever felt that way as a cook. I mean, I didn't get to see [guests'] faces. But now, on a good night if you're good at what you do? It's not even work. When I was a cook there was no camaraderie. No one wanted to hang out with me because I was such an asshole." It's worth noting that all the individuals I spoke to stayed in the industry in some capacity, but left the kitchen.