Naturally, cooking ranks with the Navy and the yakuza as one of the great tattooed vocations, though the images sometimes differ. The most committed chefs are known to ink tools and ingredients onto their bodies -- a sign that they're in it for more than just the endless desserts. Not that chefs aren't already marked by their trade. Look at their hands, and you'll see cuts, calluses, scars; look at their arms, and you'll see burn marks from reaching into an oven in a busy kitchen.

Once a friend was buying a knife at Bridge Kitchenware, and he asked for a professional discount, a standard practice, but he had forgotten his restaurant's business card. He held up his ruined hands and asked, ''Will these do?'' The chefs on these pages could have shown their tattoos. OLIVER SCHWANER-ALBRIGHT