It is an issue that has been simmering away in the restaurant world for years. But, last month, like an unwatched stockpot left bubbling on the hob, the shortage of skilled chefs suddenly boiled over into a full existential crisis – one which, ultimately, will affect how and what we eat out.

Nottingham’s two-Michelin star Restaurant Sat Bains announced that, from November, it will only open for four days a week, in order to recruit and retain the best chefs – acknowledging that even the glamorous end of the industry is now struggling to find talent. Daniel Clifford, chef-owner at the two-star Midsummer House in Cambridge, agreed, warning that if the chef shortage is not addressed, “we are going to lose the industry we love”. Meanwhile, writing in the food periodical Lucky Peach, Noma’s René Redzepi bemoaned a macho, abusive kitchen culture that drives away gifted young chefs. “I’ve been a bully for a large part of my career,” he confessed.

Cheffing has always been a transient occupation with high staff turnover, but, argues Gary Usher, owner of Chester’s highly rated Sticky Walnut, TV shows such as Great British Menu do not help. They have given budding young chefs an entirely unrealistic view of the daily grind of top-end cooking: “People think they’re going to get famous cooking, but there’s nothing glamorous about it, nothing. Kitchens are not great working environments. I’m straight with people. I will teach you everything I can, but … the boys get here at 7.30am and finish at midnight.”

It is not just high-end dining rooms that are struggling to fill vacancies. New restaurants are opening at an unprecedented rate, but skills development agency People 1st reports that 51% of catering colleges have seen enrolments drop, in an industry which, by 2020, will need a predicted 11,000 new chefs. This week, a Recruitment and Employment Confederation report confirmed a dire shortage of both temporary and permanent staff, while the Bangladesh Caterers Association has warned that – for subtly different reasons, namely issues that owners face in bringing in chefs from outside the EU – we may soon see a raft of curry houses closing down.

The new food: a lobster roll from Burger & Lobster. Photograph: PR

While the industry mulls over solutions, chefs’ wages are rising to unheard of levels. David Strauss runs the Goodman steak restaurants, whose head chefs can now earn £60-70,000 a year (a rival recently tried to poach a Goodman chef with a package worth £125K). This seems a lot of money for the relatively straightforward task of grilling steaks, but good chefs are a precious commodity. “You need that mentally stable, hard-working, creative person and there just aren’t that many,” says Strauss. “You’ve got some massively skilled chefs who are fundamentally flawed, be it alcohol, drugs, gambling. They can put in three great months and, suddenly, meltdown … eight out of 10 of them are just … narcissistic … egotistical. It’s part of the business.”

This lack of great chefs and the pressure to pay them higher wages is already changing the way we eat. Riskier restaurant concepts that rely on the original, creative cooking of a team with a wide repertoire of kitchen skills are being sidelined in favour of, say, high-end, high-spend steakhouses or high-volume, fast-casual restaurants (which generate plenty of service charge to help boost wages), which serve limited menus of conveyer-belt dishes (burgers, hot dogs, fried chicken etc.), that are easy to cook. Burger chains such as Byron, Meatliquor and Goodman’s sister-restaurant, Burger & Lobster, are not just growing because they are popular, but because they are relatively easy to staff. As are those Hawksmoor-esque steak restaurants that have popped up everywhere.

The future looks particularly parlous for those small independents, just below Michelin level, that want to produce serious, innovative food. “If opening a restaurant, will you have the staff with the skills to cook the food you’d like?” asks Restaurant magazine editor Stefan Chomka, rhetorically. “If not, you’ll rethink your model. If the skills shortage worsens, people will have to think about making [restaurants] as de-skilled as possible.”

Michel Roux Jr: ‘Agencies are fuelling the crisis.’ Photograph: Rex Features

Historically, says Strauss, London was full of chefs earning £18,000 a year “being absolutely thrashed” on a 70-hour week. He wanted to break with that norm, so those paid hourly at Goodman earn from the minimum wage up to £14 an hour (plus a percentage of tips) for a 50-hour week maximum. “The big change is that chefs no longer want to give up their whole life to work,” says Strauss, who knows that happier employees stay put. London’s Duck & Waffle is a 24/7 operation but, says its executive chef Dan Doherty, that non-stop schedule means he can be unusually flexible about hours and avoid painfully long or split shifts. He employs five dads who work nights and one who works 8am-5pm, weekdays only. “It’s not normal to work 90 hours a week and be psychologically bullied,” Doherty says. “It doesn’t happen in my kitchen. That’s why I have a full team and I’m not constantly searching for staff. Of course, it is hard work, but lots of jobs are.”

How hard that work should be is a moot point. A traditionalist such as Michel Roux Jr still sees cooking as a vocation, a set of craft skills that requires a single-minded determination to master. In kitchens such as his two-Michelin star restaurant, Le Gavroche, new recruits can expect basic wages, long hours and the occasional bollocking. It goes with the territory. “Great chefs won’t mind pushing themselves to their absolute limits, because that’s their nature – they want to achieve,” he says. “However, good rest days and working conditions are important: time to sit and have a meal, no abuse, reasonable pay … Hours are not the only issue.”

Le Gavroche has no problem filling vacancies, but is doing so with applicants from around the EU. Roux believes that British chefs are, instead, opting for the short-term perks of agency work: “Young English chefs no longer knock on a door, begging for a job, saying I’ll work for a day free. They go to an agency, which six months later says, ‘Do you fancy moving here, for £100 a month more?’ Agencies are fuelling this crisis.”

But are punters adding to the problem? The Bangladeshi Caterers Association claims that the £29,570 it must pay non-EU chefs is too high. It may be, if diners refuse to pay more than £10 for a curry. We want chefs to be treated well. We want to eat ethical, quality ingredients. But we also want to eat as cheaply as possible. It is a contradiction that restaurateurs are only too aware of, and one that cannot hold in perpetuity. In ambitious restaurants that serve technically complex food, as staff costs rise, so will the price of dinner. The question is, will we swallow it?