Where’s the Chef?
| Fine Dining’s Hidden Illusion Besim Hatinoglu Nov 2 READ IN APP I have recently come across a post on my Instagram feed. The person I follow shared a reply from a top sushi venue in New York responding to a booking inquiry, saying they cannot guarantee chef’s presence on a specific day. Instead they suggest: “one of our amazing sushi chefs will take great care of your party”. Referring to this reply, he criticises a common issue in the fine-dining and sushi world (particularly in the States), where restaurants are awarded Michelin stars or enjoy immense success even when the head chef is absent. He argues that it is unethical for a restaurant to serve guests when the chef is absent. American diners, in his view, have too much money but not enough discernment, which allows this system to persist. He now avoids any restaurant whose chef is not present, insisting that either the restaurant should close or refund diners if the chef is away.I think what is happening at that sushi restaurant in New York is not an isolated case; it is part of a global malaise. We first wrote about this back in the mid-2010s, when a new breed of “traveller chefs” emerged: constantly in transit, hopping from one pop-up to another, never in their own kitchens. The food world celebrated their omnipresence (or rather, their glamorous absence) while diners quietly paid the price.Is it fair to the paying customer? Absolutely not. Yet the defenders of the status quokeep repeating that “these systems are good for the industry”. What they really mean is: they are good for the restaurant. In what sense? It is good for their business; good for their branding; and good for the myth-making. But at whose expense? The diner, of course. The paying guest becomes an accessory to the chef’s personal brand, not the beneficiary of their craft. This is what restaurant assessment systems like The World’s 50 Best Restaurants have perfected: the mass production of celebrity chefs who then ride the wave of fame, detached from their kitchens and the soul of their own cooking.Someone then commented on my Instagram post that the main function of such chefs is to create dishes that can easily be executed by others. He argued that it was the paying customers’ sense of entitlement that made them complain about the chef’s absence. But this is a self-defeating logic: you build a brand on the illusion of presence, then call it entitlement when diners notice the absence. What hides beneath is a deeply unhealthy cycle. You create a celebrity chef who becomes the very reason people visit your restaurant, only for them to discover that their reason for visiting is not there. And the only thing keeping the place alive is the need to maintain that myth through PR and networking.A chef’s presence in the restaurant is more than symbolic too. It is the final checkpoint of integrity. Every component that leaves the kitchen passes, directly or indirectly, through the filter of their judgment. The dish is not merely prepared; it is approved. If it falls short, it is made again. That moment of scrutiny (the pause, the look, the quiet nod or rejection, changes on the plate etc) is where a chef’s reputation truly resides. Everything else is marketing.And let’s be clear: in the context of sushi, the absence of the master is not just disappointing; it is a betrayal. Sushi is a direct transmission from the hands of the itamae to the guest. Remove the master from that equation, and what is left is a simulation: a performance without presence, a meal without meaning. Gastronomy Unbound is free today. But if you enjoyed this post, you can tell Gastronomy Unbound that their writing is valuable by pledging a future subscription. You won’t be charged unless they enable payments.Pledge your support LikeCommentRestack © 2025 Reinhold Brown 62 Hoyt Street, South Salem NY 10590 Unsubscribe |
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