A chef is a cook, especially a professional cook in a restaurant or hotel; the most senior one is the head chef. It does not mean a boss: the person in charge of you at work is your boss, and the head of a department is a manager.
chef: will you get the meaning right?
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a head/pastry/sushi + chef; work as + a chef; a chef at + a restaurant/hotel; boss, manager (not chef)
- My brother works as a chef in a small Italian restaurant near the station.
- The head chef came out of the kitchen to ask how we liked the fish soup.
- During our holiday in Thailand, we took a cooking class with a local chef.
What changed
First versionI need to ask my chef if I can leave early on Friday.
RevisionI need to ask my boss if I can leave early on Friday.
In several languages a word like chef means “boss”, which leads to my chef for the person in charge. But in English chef means a cook, so the sentence sounds as if you work in a kitchen and are asking a cook for permission to leave. In conversation, the person in charge is your boss; in more formal speech, your manager.
Cook also means someone who prepares food, but it covers anyone who cooks, including at home: My dad is a great cook. Chef is a profession. And don't confuse cook with cooker: in British English a cooker is the appliance you cook on.
Your turn
My grandmother isn't a professional, but she's a wonderful ___: her pies are the best in the family.
Show the answer
cook — The grandmother isn't a professional; she just cooks very well, so the answer is cook. A chef is a professional cook in a restaurant or hotel, which contradicts the start of the sentence.
Write about a dish a chef cooked for you in a café, a restaurant or on a trip. Say where it was and what made the dish memorable.
In a small café in Tbilisi, the chef baked khachapuri right in front of us, and it was the best cheese bread I've ever tried.
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