Silicon Valley private chefs dish on catering to the tech class

There was Jean-Georges and Daniel in New York; The French Laundry in Napa, California; and stints at Noma in Copenhagen, Denmark, and Central in Lima, Peru.But none of those jobs have made the chef as happy as the job he has now, cooking lunch and dinner five days a week in the home kitchen of a wealthy Silicon Valley couple.Barone, who left the high-stress world of fine dining a decade ago, started out cooking for the couple twice a week to give their full-time chef some time off. The travel can be burdensome and not always to gorgeous getaways like Hawaii.While Barone works for "great people," some clients can take advantage of having a paid employee at the house and expect them to babysit their kids, run errands, or act as a chauffeur, Silicon Valley private chefs told Insider. One job listing in San Francisco offered $8,000 to $12,000 a month with a requirement that the chef is "able to deliver tasty, creative meals free from dairy, wheat, gluten, sugar, and salt."Another listing for the Silicon Valley suburb of Atherton had a salary range of $104,000 to $170,000, depending on experience, and a long list of requirements, including "spatial awareness" and the "ability to distinguish, with a degree of accuracy, the differences or similarities in intensity and quality of flavors or aromas."From the NDAs to the high-flying perks and special diets, some of Silicon Valley's private chefs share their experiences.Max Porterkhamsy is a former executive chef of the Mayo Family Winery Reserve Room in Kenwood, California, and he previously worked at the prestigious Le Bernardin restaurant in New York. Instead of renting houses, clients can schedule services from a curated list of high-end chefs.The company is built on a core tenet of the private-chef world, which is that people who hire private chefs often have more money than they have time."What they can't afford is an evening of disappointment," said Porterkhamsy, who still occasionally cooks for private clients.Preventing disappointment is a big part of the job.