I consider "chef" to mean "head of the kitchen." But we do throw the term around too liberally. If you run the kitchen at a Denny's and just open bags and boxes, should you be called the Chef? I dunno...technically you're still head of the kitchen. Ideally you should have some culinary credentials and be an expert in all relevant skills to deserve the title.
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"Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit." - Aristotle |