Money Like Water: Inside the Insane World of the Private Chef to Billionaires

François Savin never planned to become a chef. The 39-year-old Frenchman originally wanted to be a pilot, but an old eye injury killed that dream and pushed him into the kitchen instead. Today he’s one of the most sought-after private chefs on the planet, flying between mega-yachts, palaces, and desert compounds, cooking exclusively for oligarchs, Wall Street titans, Middle Eastern royals, and the kind of people who think nothing of dropping €30,000 on a single afternoon of shopping in Saint-Tropez.

From helicopters instead of taxis to mandatory Fiji Water flown in daily (“I used to drive 20 minutes each way to the only shop that stocked it”), from a €4,000 professional Pacojet ice-cream machine bought for exactly one week of homemade gelato to a German-Nigerian billionaire who demanded live lions roaming freely among wedding guests (“the trainers told me: only if you want your guests eaten”), Savin has seen it all.

He spent years in the brutal boot-camp of Michelin-star kitchens: 80-hour weeks, minimum wage, nonstop screaming, secretly photographing recipe notebooks and even the head chef’s private library just to learn the guarded secrets.

“Even in official cookbooks they deliberately change quantities to stay ahead,” he laughs. One legendary moment: he shone a UV lamp on meat to spot microscopic bone fragments; the head chef stared and said, “You annoy me… because I’ll remember you for the rest of my life.”

Then he jumped ship to the private ultra-rich circuit, where the rules flipped completely. “In a restaurant you’re judged on every gram of butter. With these clients there are no limits and nobody ever asks the price.” A single dinner easily hits €5,000–€10,000; white truffles and caviar are ordered without blinking. One family rented an entire palace in Cap d’Antibes and casually told him, “Just buy an ice-cream machine.” Another wanted breakfast served high in the Alps, dinner on the beach in Saint-Tropez, travel between the two meals: private helicopter, naturally.

When he once realized he was missing lettuce for lunch, he walked into the client’s bedroom, grabbed two €100 bills from a stack on the nightstand “in case one wasn’t enough,” and came back with change from €3.80.

After years surrounded by that kind of money, even Savin admits he’s lost all sense of what things actually cost.

He’s watched €130,000 glass dance floors built over swimming pools just for one party’s Instagram moment. He’s cooked ultra-strict “grass-only” organic beef menus… that were washed down with tequila and substances we won’t name here.

He’s seen more money in a single bedroom than most people earn in a lifetime, and more anxiety than anyone should ever carry. “Big money, big problems,” he quotes a Thai friend. The billionaires themselves are usually the calmest people in the room; it’s their orbiting assistants, advisors, and “friends” who are frantic, trying to prove their worth.

Savin calls it his “electron theory”: the nucleus (the boss) is quiet and secure; the electrons spinning around it have to scream to be noticed.Today he splits his year between the quiet winters on the Côte d’Azur and the scorching Gulf summers, cooking for people who have more cash than most of us can imagine… but still can’t buy happiness.

His bottom line after a decade of caviar, private jets, and literal lions at parties: “I just love to cook. That’s all I know how to do. The real paycheck is the look of pleasure in someone’s eyes when they taste your food. Everything else is just noise.”