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What's a Personal Chef?

Featured Author:

Janaki Jitchotvisut

Janaki is a personal chef, cook, and baker-at-large. She owns and operates Big Chef Personal Chef Service in Chicago, where she maintains a semi-regularly updated blog called The Spice Is Right concerning all things cooking-related. She also cooks Thai food at Happy Elephant, and bakes bread on weekends at Lynfred Winery.

She is most often powered by large amounts of tea. In her free time, she can be found watching movies, knitting, and relaxing with her photographically-gifted co-conspirator Joe and cutest-cow-splodged-bunny-ever Moo.

More articles from this author:

• Winter Blues for Greens
• Keeping the Faith: How to be a Successful Personal Chef
• Motorcycle Food Diaries

Imagine this: you’ve been at work all day, and you’re exhausted. Maybe you’ve been working on a project for days on end, barely stopping to eat lunch along the way. Maybe you’ve been on your feet all day, so the only thing you want to do when you get home is relax. Not hard to imagine, is it? Everyone’s busy, and everyone’s stressed—-no matter what it is that you do for a living.

When you reach that point, the last thing you want to do when you get home is cook. It doesn’t matter if you adore cooking, and it certainly doesn’t matter whether or not you do it professionally. Sometimes, you just don’t feel like it. But you’ve still got to eat, right? Out come the takeout menus. Maybe they already came out while you were at work, so you could place an order before leaving so you could pick it up on your way home. Or maybe you hit a drive-thru instead. Anything to fill your rumbling belly and leave your tired mind and body in peace while eating!

That’s where a personal chef can make your life a million times better – or something pretty close. I’m not talking about a private chef. That’s a whole separate matter, and one I’m not in any way qualified to address as I’ve never been one (yet). But a lot of people get the two confused, which is why I bring it up.

So what’s the difference? A personal chef doesn’t usually live with their clients. A personal chef is also not on-call 24/7 to come fix your food whenever you feel like it. A private chef, by contrast, is always available, no matter what time it is—-which is why a private chef is most often a salaried member of your household, and usually seen as a bit of a luxury. So what is a personal chef, then?

Think of a personal chef as being similar to a personal trainer. Usually, both work with several clients on an appointment-only basis, designing highly personalized plans of attack for whatever it is each client wishes to accomplish. This might include any special dietary needs or restrictions a client might have, food allergies, food preferences—-anything you can think of, a good personal chef can do for you. Many have specialties, and some are licensed nutritionists into the bargain, so those services might be things for you to contemplate as well. Now, I won’t lie to you: it’s not going to cost the same as going through Taco Bell’s drive-thru. But when you factor in what you’re spending on takeout, drive-thrus, restaurant visits (and tips), and whatever groceries you’re buying that end up either going unused or (in the worst case) going rotten, a good personal chef will actually save you money in the long run. Why? Because they’ll be making food you’ll want to eat, and let’s face it: all the good intentions in the world can’t make you want to eat something. And very simply, the less you waste, the more you save.