Luxist

Celebrity chefs may make a fortune but chefs across the country make more modest salaries and those salaries got a little smaller in 2008. StarChefs.com, the online magazine for culinary insiders, recently conducted its fourth annual Salary Survey and found that after four years of increases culinary industry salaries dropped. Executive chef salaries went from $77,611 to $74,869, a drop of 3.5 percent. Chef/owners saw an even bigger decline, a change of 9.7 percent, from $94,288 to $85,179. But even they aren't suffering as much as the pastry chefs. The masters of sugar and chocolate saw their salaries slide nearly 13 percent from an average of $53,017 to $46,228 below the US median household income of $50,740. 01/06/09