Why do chefs wear white?
Having donned a chef jacket before, I would have thought a darker color would have been the obvious choice to traditionally represent the top half of the uniform that universally states “This person cooks.” Regardless of the owner’s culinary skill, food items tend to land themselves a spot (no pun intended) on any bit of clothing they can –— double points if it’s on a crisp white chef coat. And yet, though counterintuitive, white has been the traditional choice for over 400 years — way before the advent of Tide stain remover. The white chef coat owes its origin to the gastronomic grand-daddy Marie-Antoine Carême, who in the middle of the 1800’s took it upon himself to redesign the chef uniform. As a way of denoting kitchen cleanliness, he selected the color white for the jacket. Although today I count on the health department to convey such information, I still expect to see chefs walking around in pristine white jackets. Subconsciously, it gives me a feeling of wellbeing — despite its
