Should chefs who use ChatGPT be eliminated from award contention?
And is ChatGPT really this year's hot new tool for chefs?
When Pete Wells published The Year’s Hot Tool for Chefs? ChatGPT, the internet responded as it usually does: with fierce and swift judgement. Comments on the Instagram post (which was cross-pointed by multiple chef accounts) range from just tomato emojis (as if they’re throwing tomatoes) to “BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO” with multiple thumbs down emojis to “naw dog” to “ah yes, I’ve often wondered what food would taste like without that pesky touch of human creativity” to the classic “it’s not too late to delete this.”
Other chefs even weighed in, with Chef Neal Harden of abcv commenting, “What a snooze,” and James Beard Award Winning Chef Sophia Roe commenting, “noooooooooooo.”
When I read the piece, I had to put it down halfway through and go for a walk. I felt a sinking feeling in my stomach that this article would do more harm than good. After all, I’m a writer, which was probably the first creative field that ChatGPT tried to conquer. There is such a thing now as “ChatGPT Voice,” telltale signs that something was written by ChatGPT, and a clear understanding in my profession that using ChatGPT requires less skill than writing from your own head.
Maybe you think that middle-of-the-road chefs are highlighted in that piece by Pete Wells, but that’s not the case. Two chefs highlighted are Chef Grant Achatz of Alinea fame, which has three Michelin stars, and Chef Jenner Tomaska of Esmé, which has one Michelin star.
I found myself staring at the article wondering if either of realized the Pandora’s box they just opened—and if anyone would (or could) do anything to stop it.
Writer’s note: I wrote this from 10:00pm-midnight with a review at 6:00am before a 10 hour day. Are there typos? Surely! But that’s the trade off when I publish a piece within the hours that my copyeditor is asleep and alas, babes, that’s what we’re doing today.
If Pete Wells was nominated for a James Beard Foundation media award for one of his reviews and someone uncovered that review was written with the help of ChatGPT, there would at the very least be uproar and probably a meme carousel by thesussmans. If the entire review was written by ChatGPT from start to finish except a prompt inputted into the chatbot, Wells would probably be eliminated from contention for the award. And rightly so. It’s not his work.
Also, despite media spin, 45% of all text generated from ChatGPT is plagiarism and obviously, in my field, we don’t really like plagiarism.
In other art forms, if you are found to be using AI to create your art, you are definitely seen as stealing from other artists in your field. This is because AI and ChatGPT are derivative and they steal from, well, everything. It might not be definable, but it is clear: ChatGPT and AI can’t function without “internet resources” and “internet resources” are someone else’s intellectual property.
The ethical questions (plagiarism, water usage, sentient chatbots) aside, it is just true that anyone using AI or ChatGPT to write for them isn’t the true (or sole) author of the work.
When a writer tells me they use ChatGPT for their work, I struggle to take their work seriously. I become unclear about what their point of view is versus the machine’s.
But somehow, even with his journalistic ethics, Wells doesn’t question in his most recent piece The Year’s Hot Tool for Chefs? ChatGPT if ChatGPT has that same implication in kitchens or how chefs should disclose it (on some social media platforms, for example, you have to disclose if something is AI). The word “ethics” doesn’t even appear in the article, which is baffling to me.
Wells also doesn’t, ugh, seem to have his finger on the pulse because when I posted a question about how chefs feel about ChatGPT, it was astonishingly clear: most chefs don’t want a damn thing to do with it.
Like Chef Sean Pharr of Mint Mark, Hank’s, and Muskellounge who said, “If you are a chef and need to resort to AI to write a menu, you should throw the towel in and get a job testing fig jams at Sur le Table.” (Honestly, sounds like a dream job, Chef.)
Chef Ben Hunter, one of the cooks at Madison’s This is All Fabulous said "It sorta just puts you in the lacking imagination category by default."
One chef who didn’t want to be named said, “If I worked in a kitchen and a chef wanted me to use ChatGPT, I’d quit.”
My boyfriend Greg Baker and I talked about this at length yesterday. We both share values of sustainability and local food systems as the core of restaurants. He said, “Chefs should be stewards of the earth and reach for sustainability. Using AI usurps water and heats the planet you get your ingredients from and if you're unable to think of things on your own, then hang up your apron.”
James Beard Award winning and Michelin Green Star recipient Chef Rob Rubba of Oyster Oyster also had a similar point-of-view that he shared on his Instagram stories.
Other quotes I got (on the record) were too colorful to print, with tons of swearing and lots of anger. If what the New York Times wanted was publicity, they got it. This piece certainly hit a nerve.
It hit a nerve because it equates a few chefs’ usage of ChatGPT to a larger trend that doesn’t exist.
88% of people who answered my poll, the vast majority of them restaurant workers, said that they don’t want ChatGPT used in restaurants.
In Wells’ most recent piece, Chef Grant Achatz outlines how at Michelin-starred Next, he created fake chefs with fake backgrounds and asked ChatGPT to spit out dishes they might make. He says that he is trying to do as little as possible on his own, with ChatGPT doing most of the work aside from cooking. Any food writer who said this publicly about their own work would be slaughtered by chefs for lack of integrity. And chefs would be right to do that. Because the critiques are not ours. They are a chatbot’s.
Imagine if in my next review, I put a disclaimer at the bottom where I pretended to be a farm girl from rural Iowa and asked ChatGPT to write that review for me. Obviously, you would understand that while the biography of the made up farm girl that I put into ChatGPT might be my creative work, the piece ChatGPT writes is not (you might also think this is a bit silly as an exercise and I am sure chefs would roast me for it).
While maybe the kitchen at Next is run by Achatz and the chatbot is controlled by Achatz, the design of his menu is not his creative work. It is ChatGPT’s creative work.
The menu is a massive part of what a restuarant is. It’s not just cookery, but a chef’s vision. Sending the menu over to be created by a chatbot means losing the title of chef.
To me, I think a chef can use ChatGPT the same way other people can—with reckless, planet-destroying abandon. It’s free to use. It’s not illegal. People use it all the time for lesser things than restaurant menus, whether I agree with them or not.
But… I just feel like if a menu or dish is made from ChatGPT we have to acknowledge it’s not the chef’s recipe.
And in this ethical and artistic conundrum, I think that Chefs using AI for their menu design should be eliminated from award contention.
I’m not alone here. Out of over 200 hospitality workers who answered a question about if ChatGPT should eliminate you from contention for awards, 94% said yes.
Now, maybe if you’re Pete Wells or one of the Michelin-starred chefs reading this, you might wonder if those chefs are at the “same level” as you. The answer is 1) yes and then 2) who cares? But—every single Michelin-starred chef or chef with a James Beard Award who filled out the poll said it should eliminate you from contention.
One past James Beard Judge who wanted to remain anonymous said, “I think we would have an ethics question around a menu made by ChatGPT.”
When I asked if they thought the restaurant might be found in violation of the code of ethics for using it for their menu, this judge said, “I would hope so.”
The James Beard Award code of ethics includes a clause about antiethical practices that includes Misrepresentation of material facts, including fabrication, plagiarism, or false claims of ownership which would likely eliminate a chef from contention who covertly used ChatGPT to create a menu, but the James Beard Awards have still yet to answer the question of how they might deal with ChatGPT or AI making a full menu directly.
As these are often chef awards or restaurant awards, how would reviewers deal with the fact that the “chef” or person driving the vision is a chatbot? For me, the answer is clear: eliminate anyone who used ChatGPT or AI to write their menu from contention.
It is factually not your creative vision and the best chef award deserves to be awarded to someone who is taking on a bold creative vision from concept to execution.
For the Michelin Guide, one of the criteria is the personality of the chef in the cuisine, which means that even Esmé’s usage of generative imaging seems contrary to. And because Achatz made up multiple personalities for the meal at Next, it seems his concept is contrary to that, as well (though you could argue that this type of innovative dining is his personality as a chef, but I strongly disagree).
The Michelin guide also does not currently have standards set out for ChatGPT, but I personally feel like any reviewer eating at Next during the ChatGPT menu-run should consider the personality of the chef as not present. While Achatz is known for his creativity and pushing the boundaries, this is one step beyond that. He’s not reimagining a dish from another chef—he’s literally just using a chatbot to make a menu.
He is creating a world here through the stories he gives to ChatGPT, but he’s not creating a menu. The chatbot is doing that—and that distinction matters.
More than awards, though, I worry about the future of food. Writing that uses ChatGPT is clearly created with ChatGPT. You can see its unique voice over the writer’s, even if the writer fed ChatGPT a lot of their work. So, too, for art, where AI spits out similar images over and over. When ChatGPT and AI are used in creative pursuits, we can tell.
In fact, you can ask ChatGPT, “Did you write this?” And ChatGPT will tell you if it did, claiming a sense of self. The chatbot doesn’t say, “I made that recipe, with the help of Chef Grant Achatz.” It would say, “I made that recipe.” Which, creepy factor aside, it’s telling that ChatGPT operates this way. It’s because even the creators of ChatGPT know that you are not creating by using this tool—they just want you to think that you are.
If chefs start to use ChatGPT liberally, I worry that they, too, will lose their individual craft to a chatbot.
If we lose the personality in cookery, we lose the last thing keeping the industry alive in a world that seems hellbent on tearing it down.
I’ve eaten at both Next and Esmé in the past two months under pseudonyms.
Both restaurants gave me memorable hospitality experiences that were decidedly human. Both of the NA menus in these restaurants are stunning. Stunning, babe.
My hospitality at both was tender, including receiving a purse hook from Esmé because I always talk about how I need one, and never get one. At Next, I read a book, and a member of my service team paused to say, “I heard you like eat quickly. Would you like us to slow down?” Aside from realizing someone in the restaurant knew who I was, this was a human moment. I said yes. They let me linger. I got to go back in time to Achatz’s early days. Alinea is a restaurant I’ve struggled with and the meal at Next helped me understand Achatz in a way I hadn’t before.
While Achatz had a chatbot create a caviar ice cream for the Wells Piece, I always revel in eating Tomaska’s signature ice cream caviar course, which I equate to ants on a log (affectionately).
I just know that Tomaska’s ice cream would be better than the chatbot’s, because Tomaska spent so many hours trying to get it right, and unlike the robot, he can taste what it needs.
We all know those people who are just using a flavor thesaurus like gospel instead of playing around with their concept on their own—you can tell in the food.
ChatGPT is one step down from this kind of thinking, because it doesn’t have the memory of creme fraiche and caviar to build off.
But also, if I told you that I was making creme fraiche and caviar ice cream for a course at a Michelin-starred restaurant, you might say, “Oh that’s never been done before,” sarcastically. It has. That’s the whole thing about ChatGPT. It’s just regurgitating what’s been done before. Nothing new will come of it.
The delight of these chefs has always been and will always be that they taste things in a way other chefs don’t and hire chefs who have similar creative visions. This is true of all great chefs. Both of these chefs are wildly creative, with art at the center of their restaurants in their own unique ways. Sometimes, I struggle with this. Sometimes, for both of them, art comes before cookery. But their visions, love them or hate them, are clear as a sniper’s. For that, I respect them. You can spot an Achatz dish from a mile away and need only to look at the plating of an Esmé dish to know whose kitchen it comes out of.
Seeing Esmé use AI for plating sort of broke my heart, because they have some of the most stunning plates of food I’ve ever seen. Once, eating a dessert in the shape of a sunflower, I started to cry. Another time, the simple plating of a watermelon cut in half and filled in on one side with tomato gel was a perfect study of color and transparency. The signature clay they use for their main course came from the brain of a human looking to delight you. The treats they hide over your head (sorry for the spoiler) are full of whimsy. You feel that when you eat it. I just don’t think a chatbot can ever plate as well as that team does on their own.
We’re overworked, grossly underpaid, disrespected, have no work-life balance, and, consequently, fractured personal relationships & no support network. Creativity is the *only* good thing about this job; take that away, you’ll soon have no decent chefs left.
Also, ChatGPT once told people to eat rocks. Just my opinion, but chefs who use ChatGPT to make important decisions or design dishes should take the rock-eating advice