NEW YORK (Reuters) - Anybody who's eaten at one of New York's many big-name restaurants may like to think the food was lovingly prepared by a celebrity chef. The reality is it was more likely made by a poorly-paid Mexican immigrant.

If all the city's immigrants walk off the job in a nationwide protest called for Monday against proposals to crack down on illegal immigration, many New Yorkers will go hungry, or at least be forced to eat at home for a change.

Anthony Bourdain, author of "Kitchen Confidential" and executive chef at Brasserie Les Halles, said immigrant workers are an often invisible presence in New York restaurants.

"I really think there's a resistance to having a mestizo-looking guy walking around the dining room in a French restaurant," said Bourdain, whose own chef de cuisine, is a naturalised Mexican.

"Every time you read a restaurant review they always say 'The chef has a sure hand with the spices.' If the chef's name is widely known, the chances are it's really some Mexican guy who has a sure hand with the spices," Bourdain said.

Sean Meade, assistant manager of Colors, an upscale Manhattan restaurant cooperatively-owned by a group of immigrant workers whose colleagues were killed in a top floor restaurant in the attack on the World Trade Centre, said immigrants frequently climb the ladder from dishwasher to busboy to cook.

"They do a lot of the work that many American citizens do not want to do because they think it's beneath them, they fill that void," said Meade.

Doing the dirty work

It was unclear how many people would respond to the protest call. It was prompted by a bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in December making it a felony to be in the country illegally and proposing a fence along parts of the Mexican border.

While many immigrants are working legally, a significant number are not, according to managers interviewed by Reuters at several eateries. Most asked not to be identified to avoid unwanted attention from immigration authorities.

The manager of a diner in Inwood at the northern tip of Manhattan said the industry would fall apart without illegal immigrants. "It would be a disaster," he said. "These people work hard, they will do whatever, they sweep the floors, wash the dishes. If they go away you would have to pay Americans top dollar, and the next thing you know, a hamburger would cost $5."

The Restaurant Opportunities Centre of New York which promotes workers' rights says 70 percent of the New York food workforce of 165,000 is foreign-born, and up to 40 percent of are undocumented. Workers of Chinese background are the largest group, with many Latin Americans, Arabs, Africans and Afro-Carribeans, said the centre's director Saru Jayaraman.

The U.S. food services industry employs 1.6 million foreign-born workers, according to the Bureau of Labour Statistics.

Julee Resendez, the beverage director of Colours, likened today's immigrant experience to that of her great-grandparents who came from Mexico to work in America's cotton fields. "Immigrants are the backbone of this country. They do the dirty work that others don't necessarily want to do."

Bourdain said immigrants were often more committed to a job than their American-born counterparts.

"If you're a white kid from a culinary school who's thrown into a busy New York in a kitchen, chances are your chef hands you over to Hector who's been there five, six, seven years, and that's who takes you under his wing," he said.

While celebrity chefs have made the industry glamorous, the bulk of the workforce has always been immigrants, he said, just like in Paris in the 1920s when eastern Europeans and other refugees staffed the most prestigious restaurants.

"Now with this added prestige, parents cheerfully send their kids off to cooking schools and then the kids get out of school and are looking to do six-month apprenticeships at one restaurant after another," Bourdain said. "It was always a moving workforce who change jobs quickly, except for the Latinos who tend to come in and stay put."