For Best Chefs America
What are the perks of being a private chef? We asked Hervé Didailler. It turns out, there are many.
The French-born private chef gets to cook without a budget. He gets to make dishes with ingredients from all the top purveyors that even 3 star Michelin restaurants can’t afford to routinely use. He earns a six-figure salary with full benefits. He cooks with all the best equipment. While most chefs are confined to expressing their creativity seasonally with each menu change, Didaller has the opportunity to create whatever he can imagine every day.
The life of a private chef is unique. Everything Didailler sees at work is confidential. He's privy to the private lives of people who are incredibly influential, though they aren’t celebrities or other public figures. Didailler’s typical clientele are the top .01 percent of income earners in the U.S. population. They are CEOs and tycoons. While most waiters gawk when they see a customer order a $5,000 bottle of wine, a private chef for a very wealthy family knows that his clients can afford to drink whatever they choose, whenever they like.
Didailler may be out of the commercial kitchen, but he still logs the same number of hours working as he did cooking at high end restaurants like San Francisco’s La Folie. He spent 20 years working in brick and mortar eateries. He used to own the Savannah bistro, Papillotte, before switching to this very different side of the food industry.
Didailler says gaining all that experience was necessary for him to do private chef work. He has to be able to cook whatever his client wants at a moment’s notice, from a buffet-style dinner party for 100 people to a New Year’s Eve dinner with 27 courses. Flexibility is key.
“These people have eaten at all the greatest restaurants across the world,” Didailler says. “They know what’s the best. They can easily get bored.”
He enjoys the challenge of pleasing clients with such sophisticated palates.
Sometimes his clients have cravings they ask him to satisfy. Most of the time, they trust his judgment. An example of a meal Didailler recently cooked for dinner is pan seared black cod in an Asian style marinade on top of chanterelles and soba noodles with homemade chocolate torte and pistachio ice cream for dessert.
“The most amazing thing about working with these people is that you get to work in beautiful places," says Didailler.
He commutes to Aspen, the Hamptons, and Palm Beach. Some of the estates where he works include quarters for him, but mostly Didailler leads his own life when he’s not traveling. After working about 12 to 15 hours per day, he goes home to his wife and apartment in Manhattan.
Needless to say, these are not the kind of cooking jobs that show up on Craigslist. Didailler uses special agencies in New York City to find this type of full-time work. He stays with each family for multiple years. Because they spend so much time together, it's important to find a good match. Didailler says he's been fortunate to work with great families that appreciate and respect his talents, which makes being a private chef both professionally and personally rewarding.
