For our series “Server Diaries,” TODAY asks anonymous servers, bartenders and other hospitality workers to record their innermost thoughts while on the job.
Here, we follow a private chef based in New York City through four workdays.
This transcript has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Day 1: Private Cheffing Is More Than Just Cooking for Rich People
3:52 p.m. Currently prepping and ensuring everything is going well for a Fire Island gig I have coming up this week, and thinking of other stuff while I’m doing that.
I don’t know if I’m allowed to say exactly what, but there is a new gay bar in Hell’s Kitchen that has been under construction for a while, and I have been in negotiations with the owners to potentially come in as the consultant to launch their food and beverage program, so I’m working on that on the side. I guess this is still private chef-related, but like, also not what people think about when they think about private cheffing. A lot of people just think I go into people’s houses and cook food, and that’s it. When people ask me what my job is like, it’s really hard for me to be like, “Oh, this is what I do.” Because, like, I do so much f–-ing s—.
There’s a lot more that goes into it besides just making beautiful food and cooking on oligarchs’ yachts.
I think when people think “private chef,” they assume that we’re all going to these big mansions and cooking for really rich people, doing the most beautiful plating and blah, blah, blah. I think what a private chef is in 2026 goes so much further beyond that. I know private chefs who used to do this and then moved into social media and became influencers, and I know private chefs like me who are helping launch pop-ups or building menus for bars and restaurants. I was on a food reality TV competition a few years ago. I would love for the rest of the world to know it’s not so linear.
Our job description is nuanced and convoluted, and there’s a lot more that goes into it besides just making beautiful food and cooking on oligarchs’ yachts.
Day 2: Cooking for Bachelorette Parties Is More Fun Than You Think
12 p.m. Whoa! I got to the gig on Fire Island right on time. Thanks, ferry gods.
I’m here to prepare four courses: 12 dishes for 22. It’s a bachelorette party and I’m serving Mediterranean bites with international flair, labneh with mango pico de gallo, crispy chickpea salad with feta and fresh herbs, stuff like that. And everything I need is here! Normally, there’s like a grocery item or something pertinent or crucial that I need that either doesn’t end up making it into the bags for delivery or for pickup or they just forget. It’s usually something that’s super unusual or rare like saffron or sun-dried tomatoes, but every single thing is here — even the Aperol to macerate the plums, peaches, apples and cherries for dessert. It’s not just for spritzes, you know.
No one is throwing up while another is holding her hair; no one is on the phone outside fighting with her boyfriend; no one is at the table crying.
4:30 p.m. It’s been a pretty normal, pretty easy day. Generally, my bachelorette parties are a lot of fun. I used to work solely as a bartender, and I have PTSD from them coming into whatever bar I was working at and becoming a mess. At dinner, no one is throwing up while another is holding her hair; no one is on the phone outside fighting with her boyfriend; no one is at the table crying. I mean, no one usually is crying.
4:38 p.m. I’m currently on break right now, and I’m gonna go grab myself a drinky drink before we get back and finish dinner and everything for them. On the menu: seared steak with a warm herb shallot anchovy dressing and crusty baguettes, roasted salmon with lemon, dill, capers and onions and more. Macerated fruit for dessert, as I mentioned before.
4:44 p.m. I’m very lucky to be able to do what I do. I just get to hang out with cool people in cool places and cook cool food.
Day 3: I Hardly Ever Have Time to Myself
1 p.m. It’s Friday afternoon right now. I got back from Fire Island last night, and honestly, I was so tired that I just passed the f— out and went to bed. I’ll say, post-event, that everything went great. We had a good time. I really liked the people that I worked for. I think sometimes, especially after “The Bear” or “Top Chef” or “MasterChef” or whatever, people think that every time somebody is cooking, there needs to be this big f—ing disaster. The parallel is, like, to Thanksgiving, right? Where the turkey might not be done, or the stuffing’s burnt or Jamie Lee Curtis drives a car through your wall. Everyone thinks that there always needs to be chaos and I really don’t like working that way. I try my very best to not have that happen. Point being, the event went great last night and no one committed any felonies. And nothing was burnt.
I think sometimes, especially after The Bear’ or ‘Top Chef’ or ‘MasterChef’ or whatever, people think that every time somebody is cooking, there needs to be this big f—ing disaster.
1:10 p.m. Because I started this business, and I spent two decades of my life working in food and beverage, always working nights and weekends and holidays, I missed all of my family gatherings or friends’ events, so I try really hard these days to build my schedule so that I don’t have to work on Saturdays and Sundays, unless I’m getting paid for it, and then I’ll say yes. I missed 20 years of s— to cook for other peoples’ s—. You know what I mean? All that happens on the weekends: all the big birthdays, all the big vacations, the weddings, the people having kids (even though I don’t really love kid events, it’s whatever). Anyway, my point being, Fridays for me are kind of like my administrative day where I don’t take on any weekly clients and I try not to take on any Fire Island or Hamptons clients either. So today, I am simply ordering groceries and putting in grocery orders for my weekly clients that I see every week — one on Sunday, two on Monday, two on Tuesday, one on Wednesday — so I’m building six different orders. I think I’m kind of lucky this week.
1:30 p.m. Normally, my process is not to negate what my weekly customers want, so I start with my first slot of the week, which is my one on Sunday. I will send them a menu, and then based on what their menu is, I’ll copy and paste that menu and send it to the next person. I think some people will look at that and be like, “Oh, you’re being lazy,” or, “You’re not really private cheffing.” But I think for me, what this does is it allows me to expedite the grocery shopping. As long as I’m constantly giving new ideas, we’re not gonna have that much overlap, and there’s gonna be a lot of diversity when it comes to the food that they’re eating. So that’s how I look at it.
1:42 p.m. This week, the popular dishes are a shaved Brussels sprout salad with pickled golden raisins and Parmesan cheese and a whole bunch of toasted almonds, sunflower and pumpkin seeds. It’s very much like La Pecora Bianca’s shaved Brussels salad, but I just do it the way that I want to do it. Then I have a penne alla vodka with grilled chicken because obviously that’s delicious. I think the great thing about pasta, from a meal-prep perspective, is you can make the pasta, you can toss it in the sauce, and then as long as you save a little bit of the pasta water, maybe like a cup to two cups of it, it’ll last in your fridge a really long time, and you can use the pasta water to kind of like loosen up the sauce and bring it back to life. So it’s not like meal-prepping like a salad or rice where you have to eat it in the first two days or it gets a little bit weird.
3:03 p.m. I’ve scheduled a whole bunch of calls, and these are calls for my Fire Island gigs, for my Hamptons gigs, for the gigs that take a little bit longer. I try to stack all of my calls while intertwining my grocery orders, so still a full day without a single moment of cooking.
3:30 p.m. While some days are perfect, some days are just the same they always are. On weekends, or I guess specifically on Saturday and Sunday mornings, I work for a food delivery service where I make predecided menu food and then dispatch it to the service’s customers. So, I got all my groceries delivered and put away, and I got all my marinades started for the weekend.
3:52 p.m. I’m still in negotiations, I guess, for the gay bar in Hell’s Kitchen. I’m going there tomorrow to talk to the partners about potentially running their food and beverage programs.
Day 4: The Type of Work That Gives Me a Purpose
1 p.m. I feel like my weekends are kind of just set in stone. I don’t really do anything too differently. I just cook my delivery orders and send them out. It’s kind of like the weekly clients I see when I go into their apartment and cook them food for the week. The delivery service is kind of a recurring thing for me. It’s becoming a little bit of a pain in my ass because the volume of orders is extremely inconsistent. Sometimes I’ll get $200 worth of orders in a day, and that’s fine, but then there’s some weeks when I’m doing like $1,500 of orders a day, so it’s very inconsistent. It got so bad last year, the head butcher of Whole Foods gave me his personal cell so I could text him how much beef I needed. I want to leave and I want to quit, but I haven’t yet because it’s still income, and I’ve kind of finagled and maneuvered a way into being sure that I’m profiting off of it. But it does take up my entire Saturday, and that’s disappointing.
Gigs like this allow me to do that — knowing the impact I can have on new parents so they don’t have to think about meals.
1:25 p.m. On Sundays, I try to give myself some time for admin, to set up my entire week. It’s a good time for me to just sit down and trudge through the 8 million emails I get every single week. These are generally where people are finding me and where I get my business from, so let me tell you about the gigs that I have in my email box currently. One is for a gay couple. They’re doing their wedding on Fire Island in the Pines, and they’re looking for somebody to host their after wedding ceremony. It is in the off-season, which honestly is like my favorite time to go to the Pines, or really Fire Island in general, because there’s no one there. We love that. The second one is for a gig on the Ocean Beach side of Fire Island, and this one is for a teenager’s birthday party. The dad is a lawyer. I Googled him online, and he was extremely easy to find. This is going to be for either a build-your-own-taco or burger-and-fries bar. It doesn’t really matter which one. They’re both going to be about the same amount of work.
3:38 p.m. I got another email from a lady in Germany who said she has friends that live on the Upper West Side that are having a baby, and she wants to gift them six weeks of a private chef cooking in and cleaning through them for the week. It would be pretty similar to what I’m normally doing, but this one is fun. It gives me a purpose. I get excited about the work I do. I generally want to flaunt and flex my skills, and gigs like this allow me to do that — knowing the impact I can have on new parents so they don’t have to think about meals.
Also, this will hopefully, in turn, get me business. Ha, business owner brain.
