11 Notable Celebrity Chef Mentors And Their Now-Famous Proteges

The chef mentor/protege relationship is crucial to working one’s way up in the culinary industry, and receiving the opportunity to apprentice for a Michelin-starred chef is basically the rising chef’s equivalent to an acceptance letter to Yale. In honor of this week’s Food Network Star winner Justin Warner, who was crowned with the help of his mentor Alton Brown, we decided to rustle up some famous student/teacher partnerships of yesteryear, and what we learned was that that mentor/protege circles are very incestuous and that rivalries between mentors and proteges break out just as frequently. If Marco Pierre White and Gordon Ramsay aren’t the Obi-Wan and Anakin Skywalker of the culinary world, we don’t know who is.

And, so, without further ado, here are 11 notable celebrity chef mentors and their now-famous proteges. Get your resumes ready, kids.

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