A Day in the Life of a Private Chef!!
The Chef's Cut
Adrienne Cheatham and Joe dive into the real, unfiltered day-to-day life of a high-level private chef, debunking the glamorous social media
Key takeaways
- Private chef work is not a glamorous lifestyle but a high-pressure, unpredictable schedule driven by client needs rather than fixed routines.
- The most successful private chefs prioritize relationships, reputation, and professionalism as much as culinary skill.
Main topics
- Daily routine of a private chef
- Client communication and scheduling unpredictability
Notable quotes
"I live and die by my pantry. That is the key to success in private work."
"You don't have a team. You're on your own. It's like being an away game every day."
Conclusion
Being a private chef isn't about luxury or ease—it's about relentless preparation, adaptability, and emotional
Transcript preview
Speaker 1 (0:14) Today on The Chef's Cut, we are taking you behind the scenes for a day in the life of a private chef. I'm messaging with the garden staff every morning and they're telling me what they're harvesting. We'll tell you just how much time private chefs actually spend in the kitchen. I cook more now than I ever did as an exec-sue or exec-chef. And I'll share some private chef secrets that you can use in your own kitchen. Joe, I live and die. by my pantry. That is the key to success in private work. All right, Chefs Cut Nation, you know what time it is. Please take 10 seconds of your day to rate and review the show wherever you get your pods. It really helps. Speaker 2 (1:03) Age, welcome back. I mean, you're seaside right now. Speaker 1 (1:07) Yeah, I'm back in France. Speaker 2 (1:09) So speaking of France, speaking of you, I'm sure a million people have sent it your way. I'm sure you've read it. The Wall Street Journal piece that just came out with our friend, friend of the pod, Olivia Tiedemann. Speaker 1 (1:21) Yeah, I'm Speaker 2 (1:22) talking about private chef work with her client, actually, too, in the article, which I thought was really cool and really interesting because a lot of times. You know what Speaker 1 (1:28) I Speaker 2 (1:28) mean? There's kind of, there's a big church and state there, right? Like you could talk about what you do, but you can't talk about the money. So I thought that was really interesting and cool. But also it's just, I feel like in the last, this summer, it's nothing but articles. Talking about private chefs, talking about private work, especially, I mean, you know, you have the huge New York focus in that media. So I think especially centering around like the Hamptons and that whole vacation area. Speaker 1 (1:51) And have you seen on TikTok, the private chef hashtag? It's got over a billion views searching on that hashtag. But that's crazy. I mean, this time of year, I feel like the focus on private chefs is real because it is one of the busy seasons for private chefs. Summertime, it goes down. Speaker 2 (2:09) Well, especially where you live. You know what I mean? Especially New York, especially with the Hamptons. And I think it's a really interesting thing because people are fascinated by people who live that lifestyle, right? Like everybody dreams of having a private chef. Even as chefs, like somebody to cook every meal for you, you're like, oh, this is fantastic. That's why we love going to restaurants because somebody cooks a meal for us and it's really, really nice. As much as we love cooking, we also love being cooked for. But so there's been a ton of attention on that. And then I think also from like the perspective of the industry, private chef work is, you know, something where it went from like, oh, like kind of like naughty, don't talk about it to like now. I mean, half the chefs you talk to are like, well, maybe I'll just go be a private chef. Speaker 1 (2:49) And Speaker 2 (2:49) I feel like I kind of know what it means, right? Because you and I are great friends. I worked for Art Smith, who's one of the most famous private chefs ever because he worked for Oprah, Miss Speaker 1 (3:00) Winfrey. Maybe Speaker 2 (3:01) you've heard of her. I have like a little bit of the veil of like what it is, but I think there's still a lot of mystery about, you know, we always have the joke of like, what do you actually do for a living? But like that day to day. So I thought today it'd be really cool to kind of get into not like. the overarching of what you do as a private chef, but like really the nitty gritty, like a day in the life of Adrian Cheetah, because they all see this. They all see this, right? You are on a balcony in France. You are having a glass of wine. The sea is in the background. The sun is behind you. You know what I mean? And they're like, I want to be a private chef. Speaker 1 (3:33) Right. It looks, it looks. Very chill and glamorous. Don't get me wrong. It does. The appearance is one thing, but behind the scenes is a completely other thing. Just like they romanticize chefs in restaurants. It's like, you know, everybody is like Bradley Cooper in that movie Burnt. It's like, no, there's spreadsheets and there's meetings and there's the minutia that people don't see. And my day in private chef work is wild. And it's probably not what people would expect. Speaker 2 (4:05) Okay. So I want to break it down a little bit. One of the things we talked about in the past, which I think is the greatest challenge of private chef work, is that you don't have a team. Speaker 1 (4:15) Right. So Speaker 2 (4:16) I cook and I'm cooking a dinner tonight in a private residence in, you know, the Four Seasons in Chicago. Right. But Speaker 1 (4:22) quick question. Are you bringing prep from the restaurant? Speaker 2 (4:26) This is what I was going to say. That Speaker 1 (4:27) people have done for you? Yeah. This Speaker 2 (4:29) is what I'm going to say. I have not. You know what I mean? I will not touch that product with a knife till I show up. Somebody else wrote the prep list. I sent the menu. They wrote the prep list. It's getting packed out. It's organized. Trevor is at the restaurant right now as we record this podcast, getting us ready for this event tonight. I have a server who's worked for me for five years coming with me. So they know the deal. Like it's, it's set, locked and loaded. I have team. I have support. You know what I mean? I didn't have to order the food myself. I don't have to get the equipment. I just show up and I get to chef it. I get to just walk in and like I'm like a TV chef. Just like, oh, yeah, hand me that. You know, I'm yelling bam while I'm throwing the salt. But so you're doing, you're playing, you know, a lot of away games. I think especially on the level, you know, because you're at the, I think people also need to understand the level of private chef you're at is the S tier. Speaker 1 (5:23) Well, okay. And that's something that a lot of people don't realize. There are different types of private chefs. There are private chefs and you see a lot of them on social media or maybe you know a couple, but they book different clients for different one-off dinners. So they can pretty much build their schedule. If they say, hey, I want to take the month of May off to go travel or go see family or do a TV show, they just schedule the clients that they book around that. Then you have the type of private chefs that do prep at home and drop off meal kits. That's popular when actors and people are traveling to other cities and they don't want somebody in their hotel or they don't want somebody in their apartment that's been rented for them by the studio. They just want the meals there in the refrigerator. So that's another type of private chef. And then you have people like me who are on salary with one client. So I am working. This person essentially pays for priority in my schedule. So when this person says, hey, I need you in France for these dates, I'm in France for these dates. When this person says, hey, we're back in New York, regular schedule, that means Monday through Friday, I'm on call. Speaker 2 (6:40) Yeah. So I want to talk a little bit more about schedule. So for like your schedule, just in general, you know what I mean? I guess my curiosity is, is like, you know, like, because I'm always very curious about how people run their days. Like, do you write a month schedule at a time? Do you have a year schedule at a time? Do you have three months, two weeks? Like, how does it like begin to function? The Speaker 1 (7:00) only thing I know about my schedule is that I don't know what my schedule is going to be from week to week. Sure. Speaker 1 (7:08) My client has homes all around the world. I don't travel with my clients all the time. So when my client travels and I don't need to go, I'm off. I'm completely off. I don't care if it's two months. I don't care if it's two days. I'm done. But if my client is in New York, it could be dinner for one person. It could be dinner for two people. So the way I start my day is typically texting my clients. And this is wild because a lot of people on this level have a middleman or somebody that contacts with the staff. Sure, yeah, Speaker 2 (7:43) they go through the house manager or the estate manager. Yeah, Speaker 1 (7:46) or the Speaker 2 (7:46) chief of staff. Speaker 1 (7:47) Yeah. Speaker 2 (7:48) My Speaker 1 (7:48) client prefers to be more involved in it. So I text my client every morning between 8 and 9, say, hey, home for dinner tonight? What's going on? Could be four people, could be two people. If there's a dinner of 10 people or 20 people, I'm giving more notice. It's not like, oh my God, I've got 20 people coming tonight and we need to do five courses. No, that would be like, hey, next week, Tuesday, we've got 20 people want to do five courses wine pairing. But typical day to day, Monday through Friday, I'm texting my client and saying, hey, what's up? Are you home tonight? And sometimes the answer could be, nope, I'm out. See you tomorrow. Speaker 2 (8:25) So then on that day, are you like, that day you're just like, ah, cool, I'm doing whatever. You know what I mean? I'm putting my sweatpants back on. Or are you going to go like, Because there's stuff like, going back to, like you said, you're like, well, are you taking prep from the restaurants? You must have a base pantry going on, at least at home base in New York, right? Speaker 1 (8:43) Joe, I live and die by my pantry. That is the key to success in private work. And this is actually something that I learned from my mother. If she had a little bit of extra time or my sister and I had a sleepover or we were at our aunt's house or hanging out, she would get stuff done in the kitchen. to stock up. So that's what I do. If my client says I'm out for dinner, I don't need anything. That just means that I can roll in around 12, make a few things and leave at four or five. So like I'll do chicken stock. I'll roast some bones and make a brown stock or a jus. I'll make vinaigrettes. I'll make my mayonnaise. I'll make staples that I keep in the fridge because that's the thing. Like in private work, you have to know your client. Every client has staples that they want in the fridge to snack on. My client loves egg salad and salmon rillette. Salmon rillette was a staple from La Bernardin and my client absolutely loves it. So I make salmon rillette and egg salad like probably three times a week, just a small amount and keep it, keep it rotating. But you got to know your client and you got to know what those staples are and you have to stay ahead of that stuff. Speaker 2 (9:53) Well, and I think that's part of like when you're a. CDC when you're an exec, Sue, when you work for a chef, like part of your job is knowing your chef, right? Like I said, I have an offsite tonight. I give them a menu. I give them