The Founder's Story
Founder of Montclair Chef · Michelin-Trained Private Chef
From a small French village to cooking for the world's most powerful families. This is how Montclair Chef was born.
I grew up in a small village in the Loire Valley, France: 500 souls, a 3km walk to school, and the cleanest air you've ever breathed.
My earliest memories are of cycling to the bakery and butcher. The bread was so fresh I could smell it before reaching the street. The butcher, Monsieur Dupond, always sliced me a piece of garlic salami as a gift when I walked in. I'd tuck a warm baguette under my arm and walk home, eating the crust along the way. By the time I arrived, there was barely any left.
That's where my love for food began. Not in a Michelin-star kitchen, but on a dirt road, with a warm baguette and the smell of fresh bread in the air.
At 14, I started working at a family-owned restaurant that had been running for 30 years. It was three restaurants in one: a truck drivers' cafe, a tasting menu destination, and a catering operation serving 400 guests on a Saturday night's weddings and celebrations.
I learned to treat every guest the same, whether it was a local CEO, a truck driver at 6am wanting French onion soup after a long night, or a bride on her wedding day.
The owner and his son taught me everything about family cooking, hospitality, and showing up, no matter what.
Before leaving France, I worked in brasseries, cafes, catering companies, even a butcher shop. I wanted to understand food from every angle: how to break down an animal, how to feed 400 people in one night, how to plate a tasting menu, how to make a truck driver smile at 6am.
That foundation shaped everything that came next.
Then came the move to England, and the opportunity of a lifetime. I trained under Michel Roux OBE, the legendary 3-Michelin-star chef who cooked for the Queen and designed the menu for Concorde.
It was here I learned what precision, discipline, and excellence truly meant. Not just cooking, but the art of service at the highest level.
In 2015, I received an email that changed my life.
It was from the PA of Chef Albert Adria, creative director of the legendary 3-Michelin-star El Bulli. He had been hired by Amancio Ortega to find him a private chef.
I was invited to Barcelona, to the kitchen of Restaurant Tickets (1 Michelin star), for a cooking trial. My food would be judged by Albert and his brother Ferran Adria, the pioneers of modern cuisine. I was starstruck. Intimidated.
On day one, Albert looked at me and said: "Chris, relax. I'm just a chef like you."
I got the job.
That job was personal chef to Amancio Ortega, founder of Zara and the world's largest retail fashion group. For nearly a decade, I cooked for Mr. Ortega aboard his 70m superyacht Drizzle.
He taught me what billionaires truly value: simplicity, consistency, and flawless execution. No fuss. No micro herbs. Just real cuisine, perfectly executed, with the best ingredients.
He once told me the true secret behind his success: "Consistency."
That principle now drives every placement at Montclair Chef.
Before Ortega, I served the German multi-billionaire industrialist Professor Reinhold Würth for almost two years aboard the 86m M/Y Vibrant Curiosity, cruising up to 7 weeks, never repeating the same meal twice.
I cooked for a British Lord, traveling with him between a Saint Jean-Cap-Ferrat villa, a private jet with his initials on the tail, and a 60m yacht. From the Maldives to South America, I cooked nearly every day for almost a year. He was strict, demanding, and a wickedly funny man.
I served Middle Eastern royal families with demands as extravagant as neon-lit jet ski rides at midnight during Ramadan, and as simple as chicken wings at 3am.
And I cooked for American tech multi-billionaires, flying to the US for a trial without knowing who I'd meet. When the family rep told me, I couldn't believe it. 48 hours later, I was in the principal's kitchen with his wife, sharing a glass of red wine, discussing organic cuisine. Surreal.
After years serving ultra-high-net-worth families across Europe, I realized something: the best chefs gravitate toward where the wealthy actually live, not where they vacation.
Mallorca is that place. It's a cosmopolitan island with incredible international diversity. Swedish, German, English, and French communities blend seamlessly. It's well-connected, with direct airport access to every major UHNW city (2-3 hours to London, Paris, Madrid, Barcelona; 6 hours to NYC).
The island attracts serious wealth. American entrepreneurs buying second residences. European billionaires establishing primary homes. Celebrities and actors discovering authentic Mediterranean lifestyle without the chaos of Monaco, London, or the Côte d'Azur.
The waters are perfect for superyacht cruising. The weather is exceptional year-round. It's protected from mass tourism, yet fully internationalized. Most importantly: the private chef community here is thriving, and the families hiring them are real.
Not transient. Not pretentious. Serious UHNW households seeking authenticity. This is where I chose to operate Montclair Chef, because this is where the real work happens.
After 25 years as a chef servicing Michelin-star kitchens, superyachts, private jets, royal families, and billionaire households, I knew what was missing in the industry.
Most agencies don't understand what UHNW families truly need. They don't ask the right questions. They don't know what it's like to be the chef in that kitchen. I do. I know that some days they want a high-end tasting menu, but most days they want simple, perfectly executed dishes: childhood favourites, flavours from their travels, that pasta from Capri with local lemon, olive oil, and bottarga. The best private chefs don't just cook. They anticipate. They remember. They deliver before being asked.
That's what I look for in every chef we place. In 2020, I first published The Yacht Chef Guide under my pen name, Tim Dellea, and relaunched it in 2026 under my own name, alongside The Private Chef Guide, distilling these standards into the frameworks that now guide every Montclair Chef placement.
And I built Montclair Chef: a chef-founded luxury placement agency based in Mallorca, in the heart of UHNW Mediterranean escapes, placing elite, personally vetted private chefs for UHNW families, estates, and family offices worldwide.
Nineteen years inside billionaire households taught me lessons no culinary school teaches. These four shape every placement Montclair Chef makes.
The chef with the loudest CV is not the one who keeps the job. Discretion, attitude, and the ability to read a room win over technique every time. I have watched brilliant cooks fail in weeks because they could not adapt to a family's rhythm, and quieter chefs stay for a decade because they could. That is what I screen for first.
One family I served wanted the same tomato salad for lunch every day: the right tomatoes, a specific olive oil, rosemary, fleur de sel, cracked pepper. Then every Friday, a five-course tasting menu to keep their chef sharp. Billionaires value consistency and perfect simplicity far more than fireworks. The chef who understands that keeps the job.
The households that keep chefs longest are not the ones paying the most. They are the ones who send their chef to Italy for a week of pasta training, give them a cookbook budget, or simply say "surprise us tonight." Recognition keeps a great chef engaged for years. We coach our client households on exactly this.
Over 25 years I spent tens of thousands of hours in kitchens. That is where instinct comes from: knowing a cucumber's freshness by its shade of green, reading caramel by its bubbles, testing a steak by the press of a finger. When I interview a chef, I am testing for those instincts, because they are the difference between good and trusted.
Private chefs trust me because I am one of them. I have held a knife for 25 years, and I have lived the job they live: the pressure, the travel, the discretion, the loneliness of a galley at sea.
I built the largest online communities of private chefs and yacht chefs, and I still run them today. Other agencies may post their roles there, but the chefs know who built the room. When I call a chef about a household, they pick up, because the call comes from a peer, not a recruiter.
That trust is what lets Montclair Chef reach working chefs who never answer job ads, and it is why the best candidates say yes to us first.
We prioritise Michelin-trained chefs because a Michelin kitchen is an academy. It is where a chef learns discipline, process, and the habits that never leave: prep properly, clean as you go, taste everything. I lived it under Michel Roux OBE at The Waterside Inn, and it shaped every year of my career that followed.
Most of the chefs we place are Michelin-trained. Not all, and deliberately so: some exceptional private chefs built their skills entirely inside private service, and what matters in your home is judgment and consistency, not a plaque. But the training is the strongest single signal we know, so it is where our search starts.
My network was not bought or scraped. It was built shoulder to shoulder, over 25 years, in kitchens and galleys around the world. The commis I trained beside are now head chefs. The yacht chefs I shared crossings with now run billionaire households.
When a family needs a chef, I rarely start with a search. I start with a call to someone I have cooked with, or someone they vouch for personally. A warm introduction from a former kitchen-mate beats any job listing, because it carries something a CV cannot: someone's word.
Montclair Chef only places full-time private chefs because that is what our chefs want, and what UHNW households need. The chefs in our network are experienced professionals, often with families of their own, who want one household, real stability, and the chance to build something over years, not weeks.
A freelancer serving several clients is a different kind of chef, with divided attention and a calendar that will eventually conflict with yours. A full-time private chef learns your family: the allergies, the travel rhythm, the dish your children ask for after school. That depth is the entire point of having one.
If you are ready to find yours, start with a confidential consultation, or read more about Montclair Chef.
Chris Demaillet, Founder & Michelin-trained chef
We are not a generalist recruitment agency. We are a boutique chef agency—built for those who demand the very best.
Our sole focus is sourcing and placing world-class chefs across private residences, superyachts, estates, family offices, and luxury events. We understand the industry from the inside because we’ve lived it.
Every chef personally vetted · Up to 6-month replacement guarantee · Complete discretion
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