I received a press release recently from a restaurant offering me the chance to "be a master chef for a day". While I'm used to home cooks misusing the word "chef", this release came from a real chef - a well-trained professional with his own restaurant.
The word "chef" is French, and it means chief, or leader. A home cook who tells her domestic helper what to cook for dinner is a chef only in the loosest definition of the word, because she's managing just one person.
The title of chef is one that's earned through experience. A graduate fresh from culinary school is not a chef, nor is a line cook working in a restaurant. There are levels of chef-dom. The one in charge of the entire kitchen operation, which, in hotels, can mean overseeing several outlets, is usually referred to as the executive chef. Depending on the size of the operation, there can be a head chef, chef de cuisine, sous chef and chef de partie (the one in charge of cooks working at specific kitchen stations).
