The trend began in earnest in 2022, when a handful began posting “day in the life” videos chronicling their long days, from their own morning coffee runs to shopping to serving their clients’ dinners. The videos racked up millions of views and boosted the careers of several of the chefs, including Meredith Hayden, who landed a cookbook deal and now runs a popular blog and podcast called Wishbone Kitchen.
And while it seemed that the collective obsession might be just a flash in the All-Clad pan, the often-fickle interest of social media isn’t waning when it comes to this small group of chefs catering to the whims of the rich and famous summering in one of the world’s most exclusive enclaves.
Pamela Wurst Vetrini, a content curator in Alexandria, Va., this summer started a second season of her weekly TikTok series in which she rates the Hamptons chefs in a “Dance Moms”-style pyramid, judging them on the videos they post. Criteria is subjective, but it includes the food they create and whether they show “farmers market hauls” and interiors of their clients’ kitchens — basically, the elements that make Hamptons private chef accounts so riveting.
“There is something about that East Coast/Nancy Meyers/Ina Garten aesthetic that people just cannot get enough of,” Vetrini says. “It’s remote, it’s exclusive. They’re places that not a lot of us are going to ever be able to experience in our life.”
This year, among the dozen or so accounts she is highlighting, she has even identified a few she suspects aren’t real chefs, but fans who appear to be cosplaying the Hamptons private-chef lifestyle they’ve come to know on TikTok.
Jill Donenfeld, co-founder of the Culinistas, an agency that connects clients to private chefs — including in the Hamptons — says the social-media attention has helped bring prestige to personal cheffing, a field that was long seen as “the stepchild” of the culinary industry, which reveres restaurant chef work as its pinnacle. “We really get to see that it’s an interesting career path,” she says. “It’s a rewarding career path. And it is just as difficult and demanding as the restaurant world but in a little bit of a different way.”
That, she says, has led to a noticeable uptick in the supply of chefs applying for jobs — and of clients who have spotted the chefs on social media. This summer, the agency rented a house in the Hamptons where some of the 30 or so chefs working in the area can stay.
Donenfeld, who says she’s in talks with several production companies about a potential TV show but declined to give details, chalks up the phenomenon’s appeal to its blend of fantasy and reality. “Everyone can relate to it because so many of us cook for our own families,” she says. “And yet it’s also aspirational because it’s in this beautiful setting. It’s such a funny mixture.”
Of course, we’ve always loved getting glimpses into the houses of the 1 percent, going back to Jane Austen-era visits to the great homes of the English countryside and continuing with “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,” MTV’s “Cribs” and even the “Real Housewives” franchise. But the Hamptons’ specific aesthetic — with its cedar-shake siding and acres of hydrangeas — makes it particularly alluring.
Alex Baker, who has spent the last three summers as a private chef in the Hamptons with the same family for whom she works year-round, says the magic is in the setting. Like her, many of the Hamptons chefs work in New York City during the rest of the year — some for the same families as in the summer.
In her experience, the content she produces in the city just doesn’t get as much engagement, and a lot of that has to do with the backdrop. Even kitchens in multimillion-dollar city homes don’t impress as much as the airy summer digs do. “City kitchens aren’t as extravagant — there’s not as much space, there’s no garden,” she says. “It’s really easy to make beautiful content here. It’s literally a movie set.”
Just as there’s a specific look to the “set” they’re working in, the food made by many of the chefs has a definite vibe.
Chef Seth Boylan, who is on his second summer in the exclusive community, says his goal is to let the ingredients shine. “It’s just keeping things very simple as it is — finishing things on the grill or marinating something and throwing it on the grill. Everything is nice, light and bright.”
“You don’t really need to be doing complex dishes with a million ingredients,” he says. “A tomato salad can be as simple as seasoning it with salt, olive oil, a little bit of lemon zest, and plating it with some grilled sourdough.”
Baker’s menus are similarly breezy. “I love taking a whole side of salmon and just roasting it and putting it on a platter, and then having a bunch of salads to go with it,” she says. “People aren’t really eating that heavy in the summer. It’s hot, you know?”
She also leans on “lots of lemon and vinegar” and olive oil instead of butter, she says.
This year, she kicked off the summer season on Memorial Day weekend, which included a last-minute party for 30 guests on Sunday night. She couldn’t find anyone to hire to lend her a hand on the holiday weekend, so she pulled the whole thing off herself: “tons of appetizers,” including caviar with creme fraiche and Lay’s potato chips, a giant crudité and cheese platter, a Caesar salad, quinoa with herb vinaigrette, grilled steaks and chicken, and salmon with labneh and a zhoug sauce. Oh, and a birthday cake.
“It was a lot,” she said with a laugh. “But I’ve been doing this for a long time, so it’s kind of second nature at this point.”
Even the chefs’ shopping trips for ingredients are a feast for the eyes — and another aspirational experience. They often shop at local farm stands, or they pick up seafood and luxe cuts of meat at shopping spots including the Round Swamp Farm and Citarella markets. In an era where normie grocery shopping has become financially fraught, a $7 heirloom tomato feels almost as unattainable as the Carrera marble countertops.
You can romanticize your own life
Of course, viewers aren’t necessarily watching so they can re-create the dishes themselves, just as most viewers of traditional food TV aren’t interested in replicating an Iron Chef’s moves. But they might get inspiration for family meals or pick up tips on cooking for a crowd (because many meals the chefs create are for their clients’ parties).
Vetrini says the videos might help home cooks stuck in a rut — even if they don’t have the gleaming-white kitchens and high-end ranges they see on social media. “I love the idea of becoming the main character of your own life and romanticizing the things that we do every day,” she says. “I cook for my family, three meals a day every day, but if I were to pretend that I was a private chef it could be much more enjoyable.”
Tiana Tenet, the other co-founder of the Culinistas agency, says that because of their shorter form and punchier style, the chefs’ TikToks might seem more approachable to a home cook than traditional TV shows. “They’re seeing the chefs go to their garden and make something from it,” she says. “I think they’re starting to help viewers realize that they can take elements of the private chef into their own lives.”
Baker attributes some of the genre’s popularity to a wider interest in cheffing. “Because of shows like ‘The Bear,’ people are so aware of this profession, and the private chef thing is kind of a new twist,” she says.
Hamptons chefs’ content, too, has a more wholesome feel than many other videos people post. For one thing, the cooks are putting in long days and working hard. These aren’t diva influencers swanning into restaurants.
And there’s just not a ton of drama, which might be partly because they exercise discretion about their clients. (This varies; some film freely around the properties where they work, and others only shoot close-in videos and off-site.) As Donenfeld notes, they’re too professional and busy for that. Vetrini recalled that last summer, the closest thing to drama was when a chef accidentally spilled grease on his client’s wooden deck and had to scramble to clean it — hardly the kind of table-turning stuff of most reality shows.
Viewers get a taste of a world of wealth and privilege, but through people who seem a lot more like us regular folk. “You’re not seeing it through the eyes of a millionaire, you’re seeing it through the eyes of a creative who’s working for a millionaire,” Vetrini says. “I think the access point is very good.”
