A reputation for serving good food is essential to any restaurant, whether it prides itself on hamburgers and French fries or exotic foreign cuisine. Chefs, cooks, and other kitchen workers are largely responsible for the reputation a restaurant acquires. Some restaurants offer a varied menu featuring meals that are time consuming and difficult to prepare, requiring a highly skilled cook or chef. Chefs and cooks are responsible for preparing meals that are tasty and attractively presented.
Chefs are the most highly skilled, trained, and experienced kitchen workers.
Although the terms chef and cook are still sometimes used interchangeably, cooks generally have more limited skills. Many chefs have earned fame for both themselves and the restaurants, hotels, and institutions where they work because of their skill in artfully preparing the traditional favorites and in creating new dishes and improving familiar ones. Institutional chefs and cooks work in the kitchens of schools, industrial cafeterias, hospitals, and other institutions. For each meal, they prepare a small selection of entrees, vegetables, and desserts, but in large quantities. Restaurant chefs and cooks generally prepare a wider selection of dishes for each meal, cooking most individual servings to order.