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Culinary Arts & Cooking vocabulary · Kitchen Brigade & Roles

Chef

Meaning in culinary arts & cooking, with examples

/ʃef/nounCore term

In culinary arts & cooking, chef means: A trained professional cook, especially one who leads a kitchen or a section of it. In the kitchen, staff also use it as a form of address for their seniors.

In Turkish: şef, aşçı

How it is used

Used as a job title (head chef, sous chef, pastry chef) and as a form of address: cooks answer instructions with "Yes, chef" and call for attention with "Chef!". Outside work, people say chef for almost any professional cook.

Example sentences

  1. Chef wants all the sauces tasted before service.

  2. She trained in Lyon and now works as a chef in a hotel in Bodrum.

  3. "Six covers on table four, chef." "Yes, chef!"

Common collocations

  • head chef
  • trained chef
  • work as a chef
  • "Yes, chef"
  • chef's whites
  • head chefThe person in charge of a kitchen, responsible for the menu, the team, food quality, ordering and costs. Also called chef de cuisine.
  • sous chefThe second in command in a kitchen, who helps the head chef, supervises the cooks and runs the kitchen when the head chef is away.
  • line cookA cook who works at one station on the line, the row of cooking equipment where orders are cooked during service.
  • brigade systemThe traditional way of organising a professional kitchen into a clear chain of command and sections, developed by the French chef Auguste Escoffier in the late 19th century.

More terms: Kitchen Brigade & Roles

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