Questions to Ask a Chef
For food writers, culinary students and diners who want a real conversation rather than a tour of the menu. Twenty questions on technique and the years it takes, what a service actually involves, sourcing and waste, how kitchens have changed, and what they would tell someone starting out.
The questions
Open any question for the note
What was the first thing you learned to cook properly?
Why ask it
The answer is nearly always something plain, an omelette, a roast chicken, a stock, and it usually comes with whoever was standing next to them at the time. It starts the conversation somewhere they hold an actual memory rather than a prepared answer.
What do you eat when you get home at midnight?
Why ask it
Expect something cheap and fast: toast, instant noodles, cold pasta from the walk-in. It punctures the assumption that cooking professionally and eating well are the same activity, and it opens up what the hours are really like.
Which dish are you proudest of, and which one actually pays the bills?
Why ask it
Splitting pride from profit lets them be honest about the menu. The one that pays is usually mentioned with a shrug, and knowing which is which explains how a restaurant survives better than any question about philosophy.
Is there something you cook at home that you would never put on a menu?
Why ask it
You tend to hear about food they grew up with, or something too plain, too regional or too cheap to charge for. It shows the gap between what a chef likes to eat and what a menu can carry, which is wider than most diners assume.
What is the most overrated ingredient right now?
Why ask it
Chefs have specific and often funny opinions here, and it gets at trends without asking about trends. Listen for whether the objection is to the ingredient itself or to what the market has done with it.
Which technique took you the longest to get right?
Why ask it
The answer is usually unglamorous, pastry, a sauce that stops splitting, breaking down a fish cleanly, and it arrives with the number of years attached. It is the most direct way to hear how kitchen skill is actually acquired: slowly, by repetition.
What do people get wrong about kitchens if they have only seen them on television?
Why ask it
You will hear about the parts that get edited out: the hours before doors, ordering, cleaning, paperwork. Chefs are also quick to say the shouting is far less common than it was, and that correction tells you what has changed in the trade.
What is the hardest part of a service that a diner never notices?
Why ask it
Answers are usually structural: timing four tables that ordered minutes apart, working a section down a person, the fact that everybody wants to eat at eight. It reframes service as a logistics problem rather than a cooking one.
Do you remember the worst thing you have ever sent out?
Why ask it
Most chefs enjoy this one if you ask it lightly. What they choose as their worst moment shows what they count as a real failure: something raw, something with the wrong allergen in it, or something that simply looked careless.
Who taught you the most, and were they good to work for?
Why ask it
The second half is where the conversation opens up. Plenty of chefs learned most from someone they would never work for again, and giving them permission to say so produces a far more honest account of how kitchens are run.
What happens to the trimmings?
Why ask it
You get something practical: bones into stock, trim into staff food, herb stalks into oil, or an admission that a fair amount goes in the bin. It is a better route into waste than asking about sustainability, which invites a prepared statement.
Where does your fish or your veg actually come from, and how long is that chain?
Why ask it
Asking for the chain gets you the real picture: a market at four in the morning, one wholesaler for everything, a day boat that decides the specials. Vague talk of local and seasonal usually means the same delivery as everyone else, which is not a scandal but is worth knowing.
How do you cook the same dish four hundred times and still care about the four hundredth?
Why ask it
Some talk about pride in repetition; others admit that by that point caring is a discipline rather than a feeling. Both answers tell you something real about how consistency is actually produced night after night.
What happens in the kitchen when a plate comes back?
Why ask it
The mechanics beat any statement about standards: whether it gets tasted, who is told, whether it is written down, whether the section is pulled up in front of everyone. It is the clearest view you will get of how that kitchen handles mistakes.
Has the way kitchens are run changed since you started?
Why ask it
Anyone with a decade or more behind them has watched the culture move on hours, shouting, drinking and who gets hired. Their account is first hand and often ambivalent, which makes it far more useful than a general claim about the industry.
How is your body holding up?
Why ask it
Backs, knees, burns, hearing and sleep all come up, usually with a laugh. Asked with genuine interest rather than sympathy it produces one of the most candid answers of the conversation, and it explains why many chefs eventually leave the stove.
What would you tell someone starting their first kitchen job that nobody told you?
Why ask it
The advice tends to be blunt and usable: turn up early, buy your own knives, learn to clean fast, pick a kitchen for who runs it rather than for its reviews. What they wish they had been told is always more specific than what they would say in a speech.
Do you still enjoy eating out, or has the job ruined it?
Why ask it
Some cannot stop auditing the seasoning; others say it is the only time anyone feeds them. Either way you learn how much of their identity the job is currently occupying, which is a hard thing to ask about directly.
Is there a dish you have never got right?
Why ask it
There is nearly always one, and naming it is a real offer of candour. What they pick shows where their standards sit highest, because it is the thing they still refuse to call finished.
What would you cook if nobody had to pay for it?
Why ask it
Taking the money out frees the answer from the menu, and it usually produces the best story of the conversation: an animal they cannot source, a technique nobody would wait for, a dish that only works for two people. It is a good place to finish.
Talking to a working chef
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
When to ask
Never during service, and not right before it
From an hour before doors until the last table has ordered, a chef has no attention to give you. The usable windows are mid afternoon between lunch and dinner, or after close when the section is clean and they have a drink in hand.
Ask for a length of time and stick to it
Twenty minutes, honoured exactly, gets you invited back. Chefs work to the clock all day and notice immediately when someone treats their time as elastic.
Go on their quiet day
Monday and Tuesday are usually the calmest days in a restaurant week, and a chef on a Tuesday afternoon is a different person from a chef on a Friday.
Getting past the stock answers
- 1Ask about a specific dish rather than about food in general. Concrete questions get concrete answers.
- 2Follow any principle with "can you give me an example from this week". Philosophy is rehearsed; last Thursday is not.
- 3Ask what something costs or how long it takes. Numbers snap the conversation out of promotional mode.
- 4Let a pause sit after an answer about a mistake or a former boss. The second sentence is usually the interesting one.
- 5If they say local, seasonal or sustainable, ask who the supplier is and how often the delivery comes. Not to catch them out, just because the detail is the story.
- 6Ask what you should have asked. Chefs often want to talk about the part of the job nobody enquires about, usually the ordering, the rota or the money.
If you want to work in a kitchen
- Ask what the rota really looks like, including split shifts and how many weekends off a month.
- Ask what happened to the last two people who did the job you are asking about.
- Ask to do a day in the kitchen rather than a conversation about it. What you learn from a shift washing and prepping is worth more than any answer.
- Ask which section they would start you on and what you would be expected to know by month three.
- Ask about staff food and breaks. It sounds small and it tells you how the kitchen treats people.
If you are writing it up
- Ask before recording, and expect a no if they are in the middle of the pass.
- Read supplier names, dish names and any numbers back to them before you publish. They get misprinted constantly.
- Check whether they want colleagues named. Kitchen staff often have views about the previous employer they do not want in print.
- Do not turn a passing complaint about a supplier or a landlord into the headline. It ends the relationship and the next chef will have heard about it.
Things that land badly
- Television references to shouting chefs, especially as an opener.
- Asking them to simplify their signature dish so you can make it at home in twenty minutes.
- Asking what the best restaurant in town is. They have to work with those people.
- Treating the conversation as a free consultation for a restaurant you are thinking of opening.
- Asking whether they think a rival's food is any good. If they want to say it, they will.