When you think about the word “chef,” you probably think of a man or a woman wearing a white apron and a big floppy hat, standing in a kitchen full of food. Chefs are highly trained professionals that are in charge of the heart and soul of the food in a restaurant. There is a distinct difference between a chef and a cook, but often, people get them confused.
Chefs go to culinary school to become trained in the culinary arts. Real chefs are not just responsible for making sure the food gets cooked; real chefs work in non-chain restaurants and are in charge of more than just making sure the food is made and delivered. Chefs are artists. That means that they know how to cook, create, prepare, and present the food based on knowledge of tastes, smells, and aesthetics. Real chefs don’t follow a recipe. Instead, chefs create dishes based on their knowledge of tastes and how they go together.
So what is a cook? A cook is a person who is in charge of the actual cooking of the food. This could range from a line cook in a really nice restaurant to a cook in a chain restaurant that isn’t culinary trained and cooks the food based on recipes. Real chefs don’t use recipes; they create them.
In a classic non-chain restaurant, there are lots of people in the kitchen involved in the food process and product delivery. The chef is often referred to as the executive chef, and he may not actually be the one working directly with the food. The executive chef is usually the one planning the menu and organizing the food process. An executive chef in a top tier restaurant is highly trained to not only be able to cook the food, but to also be able to run the kitchen. An executive chef has a whole line of people working to create an exquisite product. In a single kitchen, there might be one executive chef running the show, a sous chef who assists the executive chefs, a pastry chef, a saucier, a station chef, and line cooks. In this kind of restaurant, there is a hierarchy of chefs in the room, but all of them are culinary school trained. The executive chef is probably the most senior and most successful of all of the levels of chefs.
If you enjoy the culinary arts, becoming a chef is a great profession, but it’s a lot of time and dedication. Make sure you understand the difference between restaurant cooks and professionally trained chefs.
