The lobster shacks are still closed for the season in the Hamptons, and the privet hedges are still nestled in their winter burlap. But calendars are filling up fast for private chefs catering to the millionaires and billionaires who descend in summer.
Licia Householder, a private chef based in Sag Harbor, has started reaching out to Hamptons clients who may be craving her corn blinis with crème fraîche and caviar, mini tuna tartare tacos, striped bass with corn purée, or plum and almond galette. She has to let them know she is already booked for nearly every weekend from Memorial Day to Labor Day.
“Winter has been so rough, everyone is clamoring to be out here,” said Ms. Householder, who will be cooking for dinner parties, birthday bashes and meals over long weekends for clients headed to the South Fork of Long Island.
The rich are getting even richer in America, and in the Hamptons, where home prices have hit record highs, the wealthy want workers who can trim the hedges, clean the pools and tidy the guesthouses.
And outsourcing much or all of the cooking has become a staple in the area, where privacy is paramount, traffic is terrible and for those who do dare to venture out, tables at even midrange restaurants are booked solid.
“When the season rolls around out east, it turns into an ultracompetitive environment where everyone wants the same thing at the same time,” said Jacob Frisch, co-founder of FF Global, an advisory firm that manages the luxury lifestyle demands of ultrahigh-net-worth individuals and their families.
“It’s like the hunger games for private chefs,” he said.
Liz Lange, a fashion designer known for her maternity wear line, is a regular summer client of Ms. Householder and was shocked when the chef called earlier this month to alert her that she had better book fast.
“I am already late,” said Ms. Lange, who owns the Grey Gardens home in East Hampton made famous by the 1970s documentary. “That is how crazy and competitive it is.”
She said she first met Ms. Householder three years ago after her full-time chef announced he didn’t bake. Ms. Lange turned to Ms. Householder to whip up desserts and drop them off on weekends and has since hired her for many Friday and Saturday meals over the summer. Ms. Lange likes “big rustic buffets” rather than stuffy, formal meals and wants to be involved in the planning.
“The restaurant scene is such a nightmare, and it gets so loud,” Ms. Lange said. “If I was trying to do the cooking myself, the food would not be good.”
Staffing agencies and chefs alike say the demand to secure a cook this year seems to have started particularly early. Tiana Tenet said she began to book chefs in December for summer jobs in the Hamptons through the Culinistas, the company she co-founded that is akin to a matchmaking service for clients and chefs.
Rates vary, depending on the chef and the type of work. Some chefs can earn $50,000 for the season, Ms. Tenet said. Some with their own business charge around $175 an hour or more, plus the price of groceries.
Ali Poole and her family rent a home in Amagansett down the street from her in-laws’ house each summer. Ms. Poole, who lives on the Upper East Side with her husband and toddler, said hiring a chef for meal prep and occasional dinner parties was less costly than eating out or buying prepared food at gourmet groceries.
“In the Hamptons, the food isn’t very great at the restaurants, and it’s extremely overpriced,” she said.
For some, keeping up appearances is also important, and having a private chef serve elaborate meals adds a sheen of glamour.
“The Hamptons, it’s all smoke and mirrors,” said Vincent Minuto, who runs the staffing agency Hamptons Domestics and in his own catering career once worked for Gloria Vanderbilt and for Rockefeller descendants. “Yes, there are rich people there, but there are also a lot of people who want to impress. And who wants to go shopping anymore?”
Working in the Hamptons appeals to Tejas Ke’alohi Jhaveri, who last summer was a live-in chef for a wealthy family who had just finished a $100 million dollar remodeling job, he said. The family put Mr. Jhaveri in charge of stocking the home’s four kitchens: a “show” kitchen, a chef’s kitchen, a kitchen in the staff quarters and an outdoor kitchen.
The job came with lodging — an entire wing of the house — and a Mercedes G-Wagon S.U.V. so he could drive to gourmet markets and farm stands early in the morning to prepare for the day’s meals.
“You get no budget and free rein,” Mr. Jhaveri said. “The abundance of high-quality ingredients there — it makes your job almost too easy.”
But sometimes the work can be exhausting. One summer while working as a live-out chef, he left home at 6:30 a.m. and clocked a 22-hour day.
“Lunch, caviar, champagne, dessert, affogato hour, then dinner for 20, and by the time dinner wrapped up and everyone was drunk and happy and all the thank-yous, and then they have to figure out the tip and then traffic time, and you look at your watch and are like, holy,” Mr. Jhaveri said.
Housing for chefs who aren’t local and aren’t offered a room can be complicated because summer rents are sky-high. Some staffing agencies offer shared housing. The work itself can be stressful, with clients making last-minute changes to menus and late additions of extra dinner guests, both of which can require exasperating trips to grocery stores on traffic-clogged roadways.
And clients sometimes blur the lines of job descriptions, for instance, relying on chefs for babysitting when a child wanders into a kitchen and wants to help out.
Some kitchens are poorly equipped, especially in mansions where homeowners rarely cook themselves and in summer rentals outfitted with the basics. Juliana White, who runs a chef business from East Hampton called Plate in Progress, totes with her a blue toolbox packed with must-have utensils, including sharpened knives, a microplane grater, an offset spatula and a device that looks like a pair of tweezers used to pluck needlelike bones from fish.
“The first day is like walking into an office you’ve never been in: Do they have pots and pans? How many ovens do they have?” said Ms. White, who does private chef work at least six days a week in the summer. “I’ve gone into kitchens where they don’t have a sponge.”
Some clients make elaborate requests. Merry Masson, who runs a luxury charcuterie board and grazing table business, had Hungarian clients one summer who wanted her to fly in special kinds of kielbasa.
“Every day there was a different sausage arriving,” said Ms. Masson, whose arrangements can cost tens of thousands of dollars.
Working for wealthy clients requires a particular temperament. And working in someone’s home is personal, so trust is key, said Shaquay Peacock, a private chef who like many of her peers has scored new clients after recommendations from prior ones.
Dana Minuta, a chef who works in the Hamptons and other wealthy enclaves, said chefs must be friendly without being nosy. Nondisclosure agreements are common.
“When you’re in a kitchen in a billionaire’s home, you have to know how to be quiet and how to behave,” said Ms. Minuta, the author of “The Billionaire Kitchen: Secrets from the World’s Most Exclusive Tables.”
Kitchens must be spotless, and the operation must be meticulous. Ms. Minuta said she washes her hands every time a client walks into the kitchen, to emphasize that she is vigilant about hygiene.
Chefs also need to worry about their own stamina. This time of year, many chefs are not only preparing their menus but also their bodies to brace for the long hours on their feet.
“Right now, a lot of us are working their cores or glutes,” Ms. Minuta said. “It’s like training for a marathon.”
She and other Hamptons-based chefs sometimes take exercise classes together in the off-season, a part of the camaraderie that has formed among cooks.
Elena Apostolides, an East Hamptons-based chef, started organizing summer drinks and debriefings for her peers so they could trade menu ideas, wage information and even job leads.
“The fact that someone chose me specifically to cook for them, it is a lot of pressure,” Ms. Apostolides said. “Having an outlet is really, really, really important.”
Dionne Searcey is a Times reporter who writes about wealth and power in New York and beyond.
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