These chefs keep the world’s most powerful entertained with culinary delights

Exclusive club
Whether Queen, Biden or Macron: These chefs work for the most powerful in the world – and know their secret cravings

It’s not always easy to please the world’s most powerful. (icon picture)

© FG Trade / Getty Images

They work in secret in the service of their country. Your skills can make the difference between war and peace. These are the chefs who keep monarchs and presidents happy with culinary delights.

Winston Churchill is said to have said that the world would be very different if he and Stalin had spent more time at the dinner table. He must have had confidence in his cook’s skills. Few make it into the kitchens of heads of state. It’s a small stage job of secrecy and credit always goes to someone else. In the exclusive “Chefs des Chefs” club, however, the only thing that counts is the chefs themselves. For a long time, the club operated in secret, and discretion was the top priority. In the meantime, the strict tie knot of elitism has been loosened somewhat. Again and again, the chefs provide an insight into their everyday work – sometimes they also chat about the sewing box like now at the annual meeting in Madrid.

The club was founded by Gilles Bragard. That was in 1977. It started on a small scale with the then-chef of Jimmy Carter and his French counterpart, and Bragard. Although the latter is actually not a chef, but a producer of chef’s jackets. Since then the club has grown continuously. As always, the admission criteria are strict. Only those who fill the stomachs of a head of state become a member. Chefs are favored by monarchs and presidents, and, if necessary, by the prime minister.

“It’s the most exclusive culinary association in the world,” Bragard said in an interview with The Telegraph. It is primarily middle-aged white men who belong to the exclusive club, the “men’s club” as Elmarie Pretorius calls it. She cooks for the South African leader and is one of two women at the club, along with Cristeta Comerford, who cooks at the White House. They also include chefs from Luxembourg, Ecuador, Iceland and India. Mark Flanagan, the Queen’s chef, is there, as is Ulrich Kerz from Germany. The list goes on.

The chefs of the heads of state meet to gossip

About Chanty Chen, for example. A man born into a life of want. As the son of Cambodian refugees, he grew up in social housing with brothers, parents, aunts and uncles. They slept on the floor. He told the Telegraph that he was already working in the kitchen at the age of nine. Chen still cooks, but now for Canada’s most important man, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. As a queer BIPOC person (editor’s note: black, indigenous and people of color), he always has a special eye for the diversity of a group to which he belongs. “Because of what I’ve experienced and because of most of the kitchens I’ve worked in,” he says. “But it didn’t make any difference here. Everyone accepted me very much.”

This year, the chefs of the chef in Spain indulge in culinary delights, visit restaurants and test products, but above all they gossip. About the fact that the Queen likes foie gras, but Prince Charles doesn’t. You pat yourself on the back for the fact that ex-US President Barack Obama once wrote a letter to praise the food that was served to him in Italy. The president’s chef, Massimo Sprega, had served him ragù bianco with pecorino and fennel. And it is told from life. From that of Joseph Korson, for example, who once fled Israel to Hollywood to try acting to overcome the trauma of his military service. Who returned to the Holy City, opened a café and gave up after watching rockets fall on Bethlehem from his balcony. Who restarted in England until the financial crisis drove him back to Jerusalem and there into the arms of Bibi, as Korson calls Benjamin Netanyahu. The Israeli prime minister at the time was once a regular at Korson’s tea room and offered him a job.

From then on he made his tea for Prince William, among others, but with Israeli flavors. He accepted the position without knowing what he was getting himself into. “It was a crazy experience,” says Korson. After all, he had a front row seat when history was made. Bibi is now in the opposition and Korson is unemployed. He describes the club as a “true brotherhood,” a union of people who understand what it means to serve and are no strangers to humility. “In our industry, the boss has the ego, not us,” he says. “You do your work in the service of the country.”

Source: TheTelegraph, Club bosses of the boss

topo

source site