The Tastemaker

"Good food for good mood" is indeed a truth. If you had a bad day and after returning home if you eat food prepared by your mom and you feel like all stress has gone. You may not discover that but the food we eat tells more about us. A cook is a person who prepare or makes food, whereas a chef is a professional cook. 

Have you visited a restaurant or a small cafe? And you like taste there, it's because of the chef they appointed. One of my interaction with chef aspirant told me that they have many difficulties which are unknown. People don't find it hard. 

It takes lots of effort to prepare a dish, as one has to check upon all possible ingredients if not all then substitute for it, the proportion in which ingredients are added if slightly changed it affects the taste. Once done with preparation it focuses on presentation, they call it garnishing! The dish served tells lot about a place where you eat. 

Chef, being incharge of the kitchen has to prepare many different dishes for different people, without compromising the taste. The life of chef alike other professions is of hardships and if one wants to be the best chef he should have passion for cooking and always ready for hardships as their duty timing are hectic it'll go to 10-13 hours max. Being a chef is itself a challenge as many of them are male. And even today in very small amount people judge if a male is interested in cooking. If we see the no of male chef is in highest and they're mind-blowing and amazing chefs, just look at chefs like Gordon Ramsay, Sanjeev Kapoor, Vikas Khanna, Thomas Keller and many others.  For female this profession would be challenging due to the timings, work pressure or dominance of seniors. Still there are women like  Daniela Soto Innes who is world's best female chef of 2019 which proved that women too are there. 

The motto of chef is serving best and hygienic food to their customers and making them satisfy with the taste. For a chef it's important to prepare the dish with all his passion and shall cook food with all love and positive mind as our moms cook for us. A chef has to think first by heart to imagine and prepare a recipe in mind and makes a perfect plan of work to execute it. A recipe has no soul, but  chef is a person who must bring soul to the recipe! For a chef 'food must come and made by heart' to reach heart's of their eaters; American chef Thomas Keller says, "When you acknowledge, as you must, that there is no such thing as perfect food, only the idea of it, then the real purpose of striving toward perfection becomes clear: to make people happy, that is what cooking is all about". 

Behind success of  restos and cafes chef contributes the highest! According to Mario Batali,"Although the skills aren't hard to learn, finding the happiness and finding the satisfaction and finding fulfillment in continuously serving somebody else something good to eat, is what makes a really good restaurant". One of my acquaintance chef has shared his experience that there are also customers who after liking food  personally comes to greet and thank chef. I guess that would be the most satisfactory compliment a chef can get seeing his food is liked and appreciated by his customers. 

Delicious and magnificent food is a key of becoming a best chef!!!