There are some absolutely incredible chefs in this world. I’m lucky have eaten at several of their restaurants. I don’t have to look further than my backyard since Portland is a hotbed for creative chefs who take advantage of the incredible array of fruits, vegetables, fish and meats.

These die-hard creative culinary artists have spent most of their life sweating in the heat of a professional kitchen. They work 15 hour days without a break, spend their days off catching up on much needed sleep, and toil away next to a searing hot cook top for most of the day. They’ve worked their way up through the kitchen from dishwasher, to prep cook, to sous-chef, to chef. They’ve definitely earned the title.

But I haven’t done all that. Granted I did spend 3 months in a three star Michelin Paris restaurant as an intern, but that’s where I draw the line. I like having a personal life and the freedom to create my own schedule. As I look forward, I really don’t see myself going back to that life.

So what really separates a chef from just a cook? Some say it’s education – graduating from a top culinary academy. Some say it’s experience – how long you’ve spent slaving away in notable kitchens. But can someone who’s never spent much time wedged in the back of some un-air-conditioned kitchen really call himself or herself a chef? Furthermore, have I earned the title of a chef?

While this question rolled around in the back of my head, I did some Internet research. Turns out the difference between chef and cook are not black and while. Instead, there’s a lot of gray area.

According to Wikipedia, a chef is a person who “cooks professionally. The English use of the word chef has become a term that is sometimes used to mean any professional cook, regardless of rank.” Okay, that sounds pretty good to me. But if you were to stand me next to the likes of Vitaly Paley, Anthony Bourdain, Thomas Keller, or Grant Achatz, my skills would certainly pale by comparison. In fact, if I were to meet any of these culinary greats face to face, I doubt I’d call myself a chef.

The website Chef Career Help describes a chef as the person running the cooking operation – staff, food orders, menu planning, pricing, food requirements, and equipment purchase. I certainly do all those things, but on a much smaller scale. I don’t run a whole brigade of cooks. I don’t whip everyone into shape when orders start pouring in as diners sit down at their tables.

And then I found a post on a chef’s discussion board that I thought was particularly interesting. “A chef is someone who can master food, one who controls it, knows why things happen, how to troubleshoot. A chef is not stuck to a recipe, a chef can create recipes based on a working knowledge of ingredients and technique. A chef always asks why and finds answers that is added to an unlimited repertoire. A chef has passion and cooks from the head and the heart. A chef cooks because of a desire to and not just out of necessity. All chefs are cooks but not all cooks are chefs.”

I thought this was a pretty accurate answer to the difference between a chef and a cook. For now, I’ll still keep the title chef, but I’ll be looking for other ways to describe what I do. That way when I meet Anthony Bourdain in person, I’ll have the perfect answer!

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