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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   17661 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026

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For the upper classes cooking becomes either a hobby, or a means of status competition, IE "look at this fancy meal I put on", "why yes we did just have the kitchen remodeled, again".

That's a PMC thing, especially with the male partner doing the cooking.

The upper classes have personal chefs.

I feel like there's a lot of sloppy equivocation going on in this thread at both ends of the spectrum. Between people in the upper 90th percentile of income and multi-billionaires at the high end, and between "working class" (janitors, waitresses, delivery drivers, et al) and people who don't work at all at the low end.

Define 'upper class'. The US has plenty of full time housekeepers but only literal billionaires have personal chefs.

only literal billionaires have personal chefs

Why though?

I would imagine to hire a good chef that could otherwise have his own restaurant, you'd have to offer a good 6 digit salary; maybe somewhere between 200 000$ and 800 000$ depending on experience and details such as whether it's a live-in, exclusive or flexible position. Is that unattainable for mere multihectomillionaires?

An executive chef earns near six figures or lower six figures, $80-$120k ish. But executive chefs don't personally cook, they oversee line cooks who do the cooking and do the training, menu, and quality control side of managing a kitchen. Doubling that to account for executive chef level responsibility and line cook level work is probably generous but in the right order of magnitude. Private chefs exist, you can hire one for your next party, but the business model assumes an occasional extravagance for entertaining, not one regular client.

I suspect that the merely wealthy either like cooking(possibly as a status symbol) or go to restaurants, or have their housekeepers do enough low level cooking to not worry about it.

You do raise an interesting point that they probably go to restaurants; after all, having a access to all chefs in a city would offer more variety than a single chef would. But the situation I would imagine one would consider a private chef is for those who have a large mansion away from a large city's restaurants.

Not in the UK they don't, unless we're talking about the real super-rich older people with 10s or 100s of millions.

How are you dividing the PMC from the upper classes? Most of the upper class are PMC these days. Or do you mean it in the American sense where it's only big capitalists like Warren Buffet?

Have to work for a good living vs do not have to work for a living.

Many Americans who don't work due to just having money have a full time housekeeper who does some cooking, but a personal chef would be for billionaires only. Maybe the lower cost of labor in Russia changes things over there.

Okay, that works. FWIW none of the people I know in the UK who fall into the latter category have chefs or full-time staff, though they often have cleaners a couple of times a week.

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