Fiction foodie help

Tigercub

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Nov 23, 2008
Messages
133
Reaction score
97
Location
State of panic
My two main characters in my urban fantasy series are both professional chefs. They've been chefs on and off, and best friends on and off, for centuries. The problem is that I'm not a professional chef. I can cook. I love food. I've even taken a cooking class or two. But I'm not anywhere up to the level of my two MCs.

I'd appreciate some help from any foodies or chefs here in getting me up to speed in the shortest time possible. Basically, I need to be able to present these characters as chefs without it looking like I don't know what I'm talking about.

Btw, they tend to argue a lot about food and cooking, in a semi-friendly way, though. They also argue a lot about magic (this is a fantasy, after all). They're best of enemies who can be at each other's throats when they're not defending each other from the forces of evil.

TIA.
 

Teleute

Skeptic
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Dec 13, 2008
Messages
142
Reaction score
23
Tiger, what sort of thing do they cook? Chefs don't specialize in just food, do they? (I actually don't know.) I'd give them different specializations...

This is just me, but what I'd start with is one chef that's a "traditionalist" that does, like, Le Grand French Masters cooking, and the other I'd make a "modernist" that did Asian/soul food fusion or something. That way it's easy to distinguish their cooking styles without having to be an expert on expensive wines and truffles. Plus, readers won't know the difference between expensive red wine #1 and expensive red wine #2, but they will be able to intuit the difference between Shaoxing wine and French white. It might be an easier way to infuse humor, too.