August 22, 2026
5 minutes
5 minutes
Reading
Yes, you can. Families do it, and sometimes it produces a placement that lasts a decade. But understand what you are really doing: you are hiring an elite specialist from one profession into a different one, and the transition is where these hires succeed or fail. I have watched it from both sides, first during 19 years as a private chef to billionaires, and now at Montclair Chef, where we speak with restaurant-trained chefs every week.
It usually starts with a meal. You eat somewhere exceptional, the same dish is perfect every time you return, and the thought arrives: what if this person cooked for us at home? The instinct is sound, because a great restaurant kitchen is proof of real ability. The chef you are watching has survived the most demanding training system in food.
The positives are real, and they are exactly why most of the chefs we place have Michelin training in their background. A chef from a serious kitchen brings discipline you cannot teach: prep properly, clean as you go, taste everything. They bring consistency, because the restaurant that served you the same perfect dish forty times runs on repetition under pressure. They bring technique, supplier knowledge, and standards for produce that most home cooks have never seen.
There is also a quieter advantage. A working restaurant chef is often an untapped candidate. They are not on job boards, no other family is courting them, and many of them are privately dreaming about exactly this move: better hours, one family instead of two hundred covers, a life. A chef who wants the private life you are offering arrives motivated in a way money cannot buy.
Now the honest part. Private service is a different profession, not a smaller version of the same one, and if you hire straight from a restaurant you should be ready for four things.
The rhythms are opposite. A restaurant chef cooks one menu at maximum intensity for strangers. A private chef cooks breakfast, a children's lunch, and a quiet family dinner, every day, for the same people, and reads the mood of the house while doing it. That adjustment takes months, not days.
Not mistakes of skill, mistakes of context. The dish will be too elaborate for a Tuesday. The kitchen will be run like a service kitchen in a home that wanted calm. Dinner will be plated like a tasting menu when the family wanted platters in the middle of the table. None of this means the chef is wrong for you. It means they are translating.
There is no brigade, no sous chef, no porter. Shopping, inventory, budgets, household software, working alongside housekeepers and security, speaking with the principal directly: nobody taught them this in a restaurant, so for a while, you are the teacher. If you do not have the time or the staff to onboard them properly, the hire will struggle no matter how talented they are.
Discretion inside a home, NDAs, travel with the family, cooking in an unfamiliar villa kitchen with whatever is there: these are learned behaviours. The best restaurant chefs learn them fast. But they do have to learn them.
Do it properly. Brief the chef on how your household actually eats, not the idealised version. Run a paid trial over two or three days, in your own kitchen, before any commitment. Our complete 24-step private chef trial guide covers exactly how to structure it, including how to set the day rate. And give the placement a genuine transition period, because you are not testing whether they can cook. You already know they can. You are testing whether they can live the job.
This is, honestly, why Montclair Chef exists. We do not place chefs out of restaurants into their first private role. We place full-time private chefs who are already private chefs: most of them Michelin-trained in their past, all of them proven inside UHNW households since. The restaurant gave them their standards. Private service taught them discretion, family cooking, travel, and the rhythm of a home. When a chef like that walks into your kitchen, there is nothing left to translate.
So yes, hire from your favourite restaurant if the right person appears and you have the patience to shape the role together. It can work beautifully. And if you would rather skip the translation years, that is the search we run every week: a confidential consultation, a curated shortlist of personally vetted chefs within 14 days, and paid trial days in your home before any commitment.
Chris Demaillet is the Founder of Montclair Chef, a private chef placement agency specialising exclusively in full-time placements for UHNW families globally. Trained in a Michelin-starred restaurant. Private chef to billionaires for 19 years. Based in Palma de Mallorca.
Can you hire a chef from your favourite restaurant or a Michelin-starred kitchen as your private chef? Yes, here is what it really takes to make it work.
After 15 years running the world's largest private chef communities, here is how we reach the best chefs.
Resume gaps, Michelin claims that don't hold up, three families in two years, social media leaks. Five red flags that disqualify a private chef candidate.
Our expertise lies in understanding the unique needs of UHNW households and lifestyles. If you are ready to explore how a dedicated culinary professional can elevate your experience, we invite you to contact us for a confidential consultation.
© 2026 Montclair Chef. Confidential private chef placement for UHNW families across the US, UK, and Europe.