Instagram and TikTok reels and videos on rich celebrities’ diet are wildly popular, and Harper’s Bazaar even went so far as to have a YouTube series called Food Diaries, in which Hollywood celebrities divulged what they eat in a day — the one with Gwyneth Paltrow has 3.3 million views. So everyone also wants to know what the rich eat, and private chefs are maybe the only people who can truly understand the rich and the way they eat, and how they dine.
Necessity is the mother of invention
Private chefs have the singular task of feeding some of the wealthiest people on the planet, and the best way to do that is to remain versatile and inventive in always finding new recipes and menus based on our clients’ preferences, diets, and moods. 
A billionaire’s kitchen is exactly how we, the less financially fortunate, envision it. Food is cooked on specially selected, oiled cooking utensils formulated from stainless steel, cast iron, glass, or ceramic, — no Teflon or aluminium pots and pans are not allowed to enter the kitchen. Chefs have detailed instructions via exhaustive lists, whether it’s the cleaning product for fruit and vegetables, or how many eggs they want for breakfast. Meals are not ‘made’, they are ‘crafted’. They also have to be calorie-counted, good for you, organic and look beautiful, like a premium restaurant.
Everything — from pastas to noodles and sauces to dips and much more — is prepared in the house from the finest quality and superior ingredients. (Although that doesn’t happen too often in a metropolis like Dubai, where the city is a luxury lover’s wet dream)Some of these are imported products and ingredients that rely on urban monsters like Spinneys, Waitrose, and Prime Gourmet, or private suppliers for that. It’s not uncommon for an ultra high net worth (UHNWI) household to spend 20,000 to 30,000 euros (Dh83,226 to Dh124,839) a month on food for a family of five. “The chicken, for example, would be about Dh250 per kilo,” explained premier private chef Luca Napoleone, who has cooked for royals, famous UHNWI, VVIPs, actors, and footballers.
Source the good stuff ” Alexandre Chebila Alexandre Chebila is a private executive chef specialising in UHNW and VVIP dining from around the world When buying meat, Chebila says he always ensures the cow has been grass-fed, h as received the right amount of stress needed for it to be tasty to eat and, if possible, is in the prime of its life. His personal preference is Argentine meat from suppliers such as Las Pampas in Dubai, rather than the majority of meat available in Dubai, which typically comes from Australia or West New Zealand. “The beef that they have here in Argentina is wonderful,” he explains. “You have to have your suppliers. ”
The rich and fabulous lives of …
Scrutinizing the diets of the rich exposes an intriguing paradox. Private chefs, however, all agree that they are accustomed to ViP clients who don‘t know what they want to eat an hour from now let alone today! “They are uncertain what they will eat,” says Andrew Crellin, an Abu Dhabi-based private chef at Royal Maison, a domestic staff provider that supplies wealthy clients in the UAE. “Sometimes they don’t know it’s the ferry to America tomorrow or Australia the day after.” Napoleone, also, explains how they can change their minds about a meal that may have cost between Dh2,000 and Dh3,000 to prepare. “Maybe they just open a restaurant instead, ” he adds. /Chebila says he’s had clients change the entire menu an hour or two before dinner. “We may have settled on an Indian menu of curry, butter chicken, biryani and food from Kerala, but an hour or two before dinner, the client will come and say, ‘I want Italian or Mexican. ’ So, you have to always be ready for such requests. ″None of the food is wasted however, they say, because it’ll be given to staff.
Some are very introvert, while others want guest five days a week, but when it comes to a party, they would like to go over the edge and spread the most excellent variety; dozens of dishes. They will hire chefs from overseas, for example from one of the famous restaurants in Japan,” says Napoleone. “They fly the chef to Dubai and give him one day to… to cook all the food. And the chef flies back home that same day. ”
The question of fast-food
We have more burning questions: for example, has a bite of junk food ever passed through their expensive lips?
Clients, as they are trying to keep their kids to eat healthy and desist sugar, we know that kids will indulge in fast-food from time to time, especially if they have friends over, according to Crellin. Then they’ll just get a ten grand McDonald’s order,” he laughs.
A private chef anticipates their client’s desires before they express them. Napoleone, for example, remembers if a patron usually orders a certain dish on a certain day — such as lasagna on Saturday — and does like to have it out every Saturday “whether they order it or not,” because it takes so long to prepare.
They accompany their elite clientele on their frequent trips abroad to some of the most desirable holiday resorts in Turkey, Greece, France, Italy and Spain. One family once holidayed in their palace in Pakistan, Napoleone recalls, with ingredients flown in from the UAE. And another time, his clients loved the food at a wellness clinic in Switzerland so much, they sent him there for 10 days, to research the food, so that he could make it at home. And once in a while if they are fans of a certain dish at a Dubai restaurant, they ask him to visit and report back. “They make and pay the restaurant just to let me go and eat the food so I can make it at home,” says Napoleone.
He attempts to rationalize why the ultra-rich and wealthy love such lavish dining. “Once my client, who is very…very rich, told me that he has all of the world’can offer him already. You get use to it after two to three weeks.” And what do you do once you get used to the best? h/t But the one and only you will not get used to is food, because no matter how much you eat at camp today, you will still be hungry in the morning tomorrow. ”
THE DAILY LIFE OF A BUTLER
Last year, Kristine Jabunan was employed as a personal butler to Errol Musk and his business partners in Dubai. “They were very good to work with,” says Jabunan, by Royal Maison. Actually that guy is very funny and he loves making jokes. They were also extremely generous. ”
Her work is tailored to what her clients need - she basically runs the housekeeping staff, does the wardrobe organising (clothes are organised by the brand and material), handles the laundry, is a personal assistant of sorts, packs their luggage for their trips overseas, cooks their dinner, and books their flights.
“Customers are strict with them always on time,” she says. “We follow a schedule and I get everything ready.‛ ” And, they don’t go into stores as we do. “For example, if they want to go to this shop that they call Rolex shop, I would have to book it before I take them there. Or, I would buy it online because many do not have time to go to stores. Once I ordered a European makeup brand for a client as it was unavailable in Dubai. ”
Once you get to know them properly you realize that they’re just normal people, she continues. “One time, I looked after this client who was very ill. She had just come back after studying abroad and she was crying; she wanted to see her mother who is in another country and I set up a video call. It made me recognise that they also are us. ”
