Behind The Galley Door: The Unsung Challenges And Triumphs Of Yacht Chefs

That sounds pretty great, right? But it’s not always roses to be a yacht chef, and the crew often forgets to appreciate them over time.

As well as the awesome stuff…

• Being a yacht chef also means being alone in the galley with a mountain of dishes late at night, listening to the crew laugh and chat while watching a movie below.
• Being a yacht chef is PRESSURE, with guests expecting brilliance three times a day, even when a delivery didn’t arrive, one of the fridges is broken, or the chef feels hellish seasick.
• Being a yacht chef means constantly improvising, running ashore just after dawn to get to the market, bartering with stallholders in different languages, and hoping the boss won’t notice that it’s not his favourite fish on the plate.
• Being a yacht chef is coming down the stairs having cooked seven different platters of crew food, only to be met with an ungrateful whinge of ‘Why can’t we just have burgers?’ Or ‘Fish, again?’
•  Being a yacht chef is asking the unhappy crew, ‘OK if you don’t like it, can you guys write a list of what crew meals you want? And being met with, ‘Um, I don’t know, burgers? You’re the chef. Just not so many greens.’ As Gordon Ramsey once pointed out from his short stint on yachts, crew are freaking spoilt for choice. (You are, you know it.)
• Being a yacht chef means cooking a crew meal when guests aren’t on, only to find that the crew decided to stay at the bar and eat out tonight—without telling the chef, who could have also had the afternoon off and joined them if they’d known.
• Being a yacht chef means that no one else can fill in if they are sick. This is their show alone, and the show must go on.

Yacht crew are incredibly lucky to be catered for — and by someone whose talent is such that they have been hired to cook for some of the wealthiest people on earth. An elite private chef cooks your food, and you’ll kick yourself one day when you no longer have this luxury.

Appreciate your chefs, people. You won’t have one forever, and while it’s undeniably an excellent job, it’s more complicated than it looks.