Saturday, January 7, 2006

First Rule For Personal Chefs:

Zip Those Lips

By Ian Harvey [www.pitbullmedia.ca]

For $50,000 a year and up, Toronto’s wealthy families can bring in their own full-time personal chef.

Such personal service – preparing meals, planning menus, stocking the fridge and cupboards in the city and at offshore and country homes and, sometimes, private airplanes – rises to well over $130,000 for a top level “name” chef.

“There’s just so much more money around today,” said Charles MacPherson of Charles MacPherson and Associates, who has offices in Toronto and New York and advises clients on domestic management.   “We’ve just placed a chef in New York with a base of $130,000 plus a health plan and room and board. The whole package is worth about $200,000 a year. He had a smile on his face.”

MacPherson says it’s not just behind the stone walls and iron gates of the Bridle Path and Post Road, but farther south in Rosedale, Lawrence Park and Forest Hill, too.

For that though, they step into a very different world, one where they are not royalty within their own kitchen, where they must check their egos at the door and knuckle down to the whims and whimsy of their new bosses.

Still, many chefs switch from the hustle and bustle-back-stabbing world of restaurants and hotel kitchens as a chance to get off the merry-go round of brutally long hours, says Norman Wolfson of Lecours Wolfson, a Canadian recruiter of hospitality executives, managers and chefs. “Some were chefs in our clients’ favourite restaurants,” said Mr. Wolfson, “Those with small egos and sincere work and service ethics do best with the ability to respond each and every request with a “yes m’am.” Also, the more experienced get organics, macrobiotics, vegetarian, vegan, Atkins et cetera.”

But it’s also a world where discretion is tantamount; those who talk about what happens in the home end up blackballed from further domestic service.

“We have chefs who, from over-hearing dinner chit chat, have known about corporate takeovers before they happen,” said Mr. Wolfson. “Or, shall we say, witnessed personal indiscretions and messy marriage breakdowns. It’s an unwritten rule to keep your lips sealed and never speak poorly of a past employers – no matter how challenging.”