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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   17561 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026

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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.

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