Who Gets to Be Called a Chef?

So let's get right into it. Is a chef only a person with a culinary degree? Is a well experienced cook who now runs a kitchen a chef? Is a celebrity with a cookbook a chef? The answer will vary depending who you ask. 

This debate of "who" is allowed to be seen as top tier talent isn't only a question in foodservice. Consider when Macklemore won the Grammy for Best Rap Album over Kendrick Lamar and ended up being labeled by many as a symbol of America’s ignorance of hip-hop culture, despite his best intentions. Then, there was the debate, can he be crowned in hip-hop? Why didn't the world see the artistry of Lamar? The same happens in the food industry, because, like music, the culinary world is both an art and a science.

Chrissy Teigen’s Cravings cookbooks—both New York Times bestsellers—wasn’t quite as ruinous for her career, but she still had to spend some time on the defense. She admitted that she’d “never been so bummed” when a NYT critic said she was "horrified about her spinning a Target cookware line off the success of her cookbooks." That writer eventually apologized, after some work-related consequences, but the legion of internet haters haven’t offered a mea culpa. Because, if a person is sharing recipes that have been passed down in their culture, why should that bother anyone?

After Delish published an article comparing chefs to, um, The Little Mermaid’s characters, the point of consternation wasn’t if Teigen was a Sebastian but if she was even a chef. She doesn’t publicly call herself a chef often, if at all, but it appears tying her to that title even through satire takes some audacity. “Chrissy Teigen is considered a chef? But cooks at restaurants aren't....?” asked one of the responses.

The difference between a cook or a model or someone who happens to prepare food well and a chef isn’t as cut and dry as other professions. Terrible musicians are still musicians if they’re paid, and the same goes for writers or painters. But the bullet points on the criteria for who’s a chef and who’s not seems to pop up as you give it some thought. “A chef is someone who gets paid to cook” doesn’t quite work because that would also qualify someone who flips burgers at a fast food joint. “A chef is a paid cook who’s really good” doesn’t fit either because, well, line cooks do exist in prestigious restaurants.

But being a chef is something that demands some constant display of honed expertise. Queer Eye’s Antoni Porowski, the Fab Five’s food guy, purposely teaches his mentees simple recipes because it’s easier to start them off with learning to cut an avocado than giving them a Michelin ranking-worthy dish. But to some, that simplicity was a reflection of his ability, and critics were aghast that he’d be considered a chef even though he never claimed himself to be one.

The obvious examples of what is a chef—the non-multi-hyphenates who became known for cooking first—aren’t as obvious. Before being an Emmy-winning world traveler, the late Anthony Bourdain graduated from the Culinary Institute of America and had been running restaurants decades before he became a household name: He’s a chef. Gordon Ramsay spent some of the ‘80s under the tutelage of the infamous Marco Pierre White before cussing out Hell’s Kitchen competitors: He’s a chef. Rachael Ray has been publishing cookbooks and working in the service biz well before she got a daytime show: But she’s not a "chef" according to many.

Ultimately, we landed here: a chef is a really good cook at the very least with specific training, whether it’s another chef’s tutelage or through culinary school. They also hold extra responsibilities, including using their in-depth knowledge to decide what recipes go into the dishes, which ones make the menus, managing kitchens, and others. The types of responsibilities depend on the chef’s position (the names tend to stray away from the English language: sous chef, chef de partie, the boucher, etc.).

Satisfying those responsibilities takes years of study and dedication. That said, you don’t necessarily need to consider a chef or a cook within some sort of hierarchy. A different set of qualifications doesn’t reflect skill, and the culinary world is like many other art forms in that regard. Miles Davis dropped out of Julliard, but there’s not a lot of graduates who've had his impact. And in Queer Eye’s case, the people who Porowski’s helps probably don’t care if he’s Chef Antoni or not.

“Tom Jackson never saw the inside of an avocado before,” he told the New York Times, referring to one of the show’s made-over stars. “We had all these other components that we made for that food demo that I wanted to show him how to make if we had a chance to. But when I cut open that avocado, he looked over in this childlike wonder and was actually amazed.”

So there you have it. Spongebob, we may all agree is not a chef even though he cooks at the Krusty Krab, but, cooking is an art, and there are a variety of ways to define what makes a chef. Now a good chef or a bad one? That's a different story altogether.