Private chefs dish on what its like to feed NYCs…
It was the $800 Uber Eats supply.
Private chef Andrew Molen had just picked up a call from a common consumer, who’d emerged in a panic from the wine cellar of his tony NYC home, hoping to pop up a specific bottle of Champagne when mates arrived — only to discover none there.
“I called all the liquor stores I could and finally found one in New Jersey that had it,” the chef recalled. “And I got it delivered.”
Molen is more than a diamond-tier Door Dasher — he’s a classically educated chef who swapped restaurant life with the likes of Todd English for non-public cooking, often out in the Hamptons.
Andrew Molen is one in an military of non-public chefs serving in the houses of the elite in NYC and environs — a job that gives a view into a world most people never expertise. Courtesy Andrew Molen
If the title’s acquainted at all, you most likely noticed him on Bravo’s “Summer House.”
“Carl and Lindsay were breaking up in the background,” he laughed about that memorable level in his profession. “You can have a good time doing what you love, watching two people’s relationships go down the tube.”
Cooking for boldfacer shoppers, of course, you’re immersed in the motion but often ignored.
Private chefs to New York’s fanciest households witness whatever occurs behind closed doorways, and must always be discreet to the purpose of silence — at least, normally. Sometimes, they’re witnesses to such unusual goings-on, it’s not possible not to dish.
There’s what Laurie Woolever may call the Reddy Whip Affair. She’d scored a fat-free model of the canned cream at the market for her employer, and was psyched — rich and health-obsessed, they’d be delighted, she knew, as she stashed it in the fridge.
The next day, though, she couldn’t discover it anyplace — at least, until she requested the housekeeper, who’d discovered it, fully emptied, in the bed room waste paper basket. Please keep it in stock, the couple said, via their assistant. “I was buying it every day,” she says, pausing, “And every day, it was emptied.”
The only issue got here a few weeks later, as the couple began noticing they had been gaining weight, despite their exacting diet: may it’s the new kink they’d launched into their night-time routine?
While non-public chefs are sometimes silent about their work, sometimes, there are tales too good not to dish. Anna Petrow – stock.adobe.com
Take one to a lab for testing; they ordered Woolever, in case it was fraudulently labeled.
“I don’t remember which came first: this or the storyline from Seinfeld,” she laughs, of the memorable episode when Kramer & crew wound up fretting over supposedly fat-free frozen yogurt.
Sure enough, the outcomes got here back, exhibiting that there have been hint quantities of fats in each serving; an complete can, then, was calorie-packed. Their pleasure wasn’t well worth the poundage — and they soon packed in that in-private indulgence.
Woolever parlayed experiences like that as a non-public chef into a position as Anthony Bourdain’s right-hand lady (and turned tales like that one into a memoir called “Care and Feeding“).
Not everybody has that type of success — New York and its more well-heeled environs are home to an military of behind-the-scenes abilities cooking in the kitchens of the ultra-wealthy, dicing and slicing while dwelling on a knife-edge.
Author Laurie Woolever recalled a time when her attempt to keep her shoppers on their diet enabled a little an excessive amount of enjoyable in the bed room. David Scott Holloway
And even though full-time gigs like this would possibly offer paydays of $200,000 or more, plus healthcare and advantages, few can climate the extreme schedules and absurd calls for for long.
“Plenty of private chefs dip their toe into that space, but there is so much turnover — you’re always trying to ingratiate yourself,” one chef told The Post — talking on condition of anonymity, which many are certain by, either informally out of a want to keep their jobs, or legally via non-disclosure agreements.
“People walk away because of the way they’re treated,” said another, asking not to be named. “I’d say the quitting to firing is 30:1.”
The price range to feed a household of 4 among the one percenters will sometimes hit $7,000 a week, say veteran kitchen jockeys.
Chefs can often spend hundreds per week just maintaining the fridges and pantries stocked — and there’s no guarantee the food will really get eaten. luca – stock.adobe.com
That’s largely due to the pretty typical need to keep lobster, filet and more at the prepared ought to a whim-prone 10-year-old resolve they don’t need to eat whatever was pre-planned for that evening’s menu.
Many chefs don’t even deal instantly with those who’ll eat their food, either: gigs like this are sometimes what’s identified as “turn on your heel” jobs — as soon as you see or hear the household, you’re anticipated to stop, drop instruments and disappear.
Woolever’s gigs had been an exception, she said, as she went on to work for other high-net-worthers who needed to interact with her instantly.
Take one, a household-name actress who employed her to cook meals healthy enough to help her slim down for her headline-making marriage ceremony. She walked down the aisle match and pleased – then got here back from honeymoon to fire her, saying she needed to cut prices.
She did offer Laurie a parting reward, though. “She told me, ‘You’re quite overweight, so I’d like to get you started on Herbalife,’ ” Woolever recalled of the “scammy diet.”
At least Woolever was left in the lurch in New York City, where jobs are simpler to get.
Patty Nusser told The Post of a time when she got here down with horrible altitude illness in the Rockies, where she’d been flown from White Plains on her consumer’s non-public jet to cook.
Unable to work, the consumer’s resolution was to in some way drive herself hours to the closest airport and discover a business flight home.
“I felt like I was going to die,” she recalled, “But they could barely look at me. They were pissed because they wanted their private chef there.”
Andrew Molen has been equally stiffed, he said, by high-end Hamptons shoppers who refuse to settle for the rising value of food as actuality. At the height of post-COVID inflation, a couple employed him for a banquet — or somewhat, the spouse booked his providers.
When chef Patty Nusser was unable to carry out her duties while touring with a consumer, they ditched her and let her discover her own method back to New York. Alison Sheehy
Her husband then called Molen to instruct him to add lobster, seafood and shrimp, top-dollar further aplenty. But when he despatched an bill after the event to replicate that new price range, she refused to pay more.
“I did not approve this,” she sniffed. “You didn’t clear it with me.” Molen determined to take the loss so as not to generate unhealthy phrase of mouth from that rich pair.
“Now, I take deposits,” he says.
The East End is a treasure trove of tales — another chef, certain by an NDA settlement, talked about the time at the end of trip season when a rich local man sidled into his favourite restaurant, assistant in tow, and posed the award-nominated chef-owner a simple query: “Will you come work for me full-time at my house?”
Grocery store inflation has even hit the tony Hamptons, Andrew Molen said — recalling a time when a consumer refused to pay for pricey ingredients. Courtesy Andrew Molen
“I said, ‘So you want me to fire my entire staff, close my restaurant and come work for you?’ ” the flabbergasted foodie recalled. “And he said, ‘Yes, I do.’” The pair ultimately struck a deal: that the chef would work as a full-time staffer in low season, and practice another person to roster the summer season months while his restaurant was busy.
It lasted for three years, during which the chef was dumbstruck at how carelessly the couple and their youngsters handled any commitments. Like the time he spent days sourcing market-fresh fish for a sushi unfold for the teenager daughter’s birthday lunch with mates — and hours creating the rolls.
Two and a half hours after lunchtime, the mother and those teenagers appeared, raving about the lunch they’d just completed at a local sushi joint.
“They just forgot — it was thoughtlessness, not a flex,” he shrugs. “We got paid for the day, but it was heartbreaking to waste all that fish.”
Another East End chef recalled a time when he went to great expense to make a birthday sushi lunch — only to have the consumer neglect they’d requested him to make it. rilueda – stock.adobe.com
After that low season gig ended, the pandemic struck — and some other rich regulars invited him to come live in and cook for them at one of their houses, this time in Northern California; they lived with another household on a compound, with two {couples} and 5 youngsters whole.
The waste there was so unhealthy, the chef says, that he shelled out for an further fridge from his own pocket.
“It was just for the housekeepers,” he said, explaining that he’d stash undesirable uncooked ingredients – suppose expensive halibut steaks — in there as soon as it was clear the [clients] weren’t .
Whatever the workers noticed in that secret fridge, they knew it was a free-for-all to take home. When the chef was ready to reopen his East End restaurant, he politely concluded that California cooking had turned.
“Those housekeepers miss us, I’ll tell you that,” he laughed.
The two households there have been also faddishly Left Coast in their food wants, firing requests at him for low-alkaline meals, maybe, or a low-carb fodmap-style diet.
He readily admits that he didn’t always adhere to those exacting requirements.
“Those demands, on top of the need for restaurant-quality food? It makes for liars. You have to fib about what you’re serving — it won’t matter.”
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