The British chef behind the Instagram account RateMyChives — in which he judges the quality of chefs’ and home cooks’ piles of minced herbs — recalls the moment several years ago when he realized the significance of a nicely chopped chive. It came, inauspiciously, during a drunken conversation with a date.
“We’d been out for dinner, and it was a bit crap,” he said. From the first dish, he knew the meal would be a disappointment “because the chives were badly chopped.”
He explained to his date that if a chef couldn’t be bothered with the little things, they probably weren’t paying attention to the big ones. Later, he checked online to find someone who rated chefs’ chives, and when he didn’t find one, he took the handle RateMyChives — and promptly forgot about it.
Months later, he remembered the account and began posting there, and when he had hit a whopping 50 followers, he figured he had peaked. Nearly three years later, the account has amassed nearly 85,000 followers and a cult reputation in the competitive world of chefs. (His followers include famous names such as Alinea chef and co-owner Grant Achatz and cookbook author and TikTok star Meredith Hayden).
The man behind the account spoke on the condition of anonymity because he doesn’t want the personal attacks or questioning of his own credentials that might come from users rankled by a low score. (Though the vibe of RateMyChives is largely positive — and more than a little silly — he has heard from “a few nutters” who seem to be taking it a little too seriously.)
Chives — and the pursuit of perfection in their chopping — are having a bit of a moment. On Reddit, there’s another experiment underway with the humble alliums. A user named F1exican has been posting a daily picture of a pile of chives that he has minced, asking people to find flaws in the chopped herbs. He says in his posts that he will keep at it until his pile is perfect and no one can identify a mistake. Thursday was Day 45, and people are becoming increasingly invested in his quest. (r/KitchenConfidential, where he posts, reached 2.5 million visits in a week.)
There, gleeful commenters rush to point out bits that aren’t uniformly sized or misshapen segments. They post goofy memes and find the shapes of various objects in the chives, like some kind of herbal Rorschach test. “See you tomorrow, chef,” has always been the conclusion. The person behind the account, who has come to refer to himself as “Chivelord,” did not respond to a message from a Washington Post reporter seeking an interview.
The chive critiques are part of a larger trend online in which people rate and review things like sticks, the walking styles of random New York pedestrians and dogs. (The last of which never score less than a 10 out of 10, naturally) Everyone, it seems, really is a critic, and nothing is too insignificant to come under scrutiny.
Kenji Hurlburt, an instructor at the Culinary Institute of America who teaches fundamental French culinary techniques — chief among them, knife skills — finds something Sisyphean yet noble about the pursuit. “I think there’s a real beauty in trying to get perfection out of something that’s grown out of nature that’s just naturally kind of imperfect,” said Hurlburt, who used to peruse RateMyChives on Instagram before he dropped the platform a while back. “Especially when you’re cutting a very large volume to the exacting opinion of the public forum of the internet — you know, you’re not going to win that battle.”
The chef behind RateMyChives thinks the appeal of such a niche subject is in the public sport of it. “Chefs are competitive,” he said. “They want to be better than the person next to them. So this is basically allowing people to have someone judge them, and then either boast about it, or be humbled, or even humble someone else, or boast about someone else sometimes.”
The herb really does offer a kitchen crucible — chives are particularly difficult to cut perfectly, Hurlburt said. Like most organic things, he notes, they’re irregular: They have slightly different sizes and circumferences and they wilt at different rates, so you might have some that are more rigid and others that are floppier. “No kitchen in the universe will allow you to chop it one strand at a time, so you have to bundle them in bunches,” he said. “And that’s where the real challenge lies, is trying to get the right consistency, the right motion of cutting with this, you know, product that’s sometimes very fibrous and sometimes very paper-like.”
The RateMyChives chef notes that over the years, he’s been struck by the varying skills on display. “I’ve seen some chives from like, probably two and three Michelin star restaurants, which are just bad,” he said. “And then I’ve seen some really good chives from, like, a pizza place.” One of the pleasures of running the account, he said, has been seeing some chefs improve their skills over time, submitting multiple photos.
For anyone chasing chopping excellence themselves, Hurlburt recommends a very sharp knife and a cutting surface that has a little bit of “give,” such as wood. He says that many beginner chefs make the mistake of using the very tip of the knife as the “pivot point” they rest on the board while cutting. Instead, he recommends using a spot on the knife 1.5 to 2 inches down, which he says means that your hands stay closer to the board (and the chives), giving them more control.
In the end, though, a chive might just be a chive — any way you slice it.
“I think this page is fun because there’s no politics behind it,” said the RateMyChives creator. “There’s no hidden agenda. There’s no, like, sponsorship, marketing, anything like that. Literally, it is what it is.”
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