How to play Impostor with famous chefs

What a round of famous chefs looks like

In each round every player is dealt a different cook and writes a clue: the country, the best-known restaurant, the speciality, or the TV show they appear on. The impostor gets no name and has to improvise something believable.

Then the clues are read out, debated and voted on. The group wins by ejecting the impostor; he wins by surviving to the end. With chefs, the detail that usually gives him away is nationality or type of cooking.

• Best with 4 to 12 players
• Rounds last 3 to 6 minutes
• Great for groups that cook or eat out often
• Runs in the browser, nothing to download
• Mixes well with the Spanish food and world cities categories

How the Famous Chefs category works

The game deals fifteen real names from its database: Ramsay, Muñoz, Acurio, Matsuhisa, Bocuse, de Santis, Carpentier, Olvera, Bastianich, Flay, Adrià, Child, Plevisani, Oliver and Lepes. Most clues talk about country, style and television.

The impostor reads the rest and hunts for a gap. The usual slips are assigning the wrong nationality, or attaching a dish or restaurant to a chef who never ran it.

1. Choose Famous Chefs when you create the room
2. Give a verifiable clue: country, restaurant or speciality
3. Read the other clues and flag the incompatibilities
4. Ask the suspect what cuisine he represents
5. Vote as a bloc and the ejected player reveals their chef

The fifteen real chefs in the database

These are the names the game hands out. Placing the country and the flagship restaurant is enough to catch the impostor on the first pass.

If the table does not recognise one of them, the debate settles by elimination: two clues about the same national cuisine cannot belong to two different chefs.

Strategies for an impostor who hardly cooks

You do not need to be a good cook. The impostor wins by sounding like someone who watches the odd cooking programme, not by naming the exact restaurant.

• Anchor the clue to something safe: European, on television, Michelin stars.
• Avoid naming specific dishes; describe the general style instead.
• Use common technique words: grill, oven, frying, sauces.
• Never repeat a clue word for word. Rephrase it.
• If unsure, throw a question back: does that chef work in Asia?
• Exploit the blur between fusion cooking and traditional cooking.

How to catch the impostor when you follow the chefs

The advantage is not knowing everything, it is asking precisely. One closed question forces the suspect to commit to a fact.

1. Ask for the country: British, Spanish, Peruvian, Japanese or American
2. Compare restaurants: two clues about the same place cannot be two different chefs
3. Look for the impossible: only Adrià is tied to molecular cooking
4. Watch who writes last, the impostor tends to copy the style of the others
5. Group the accusations before voting so the round is not handed over

Common mistakes that ruin the round

• Naming the chef straight away: it kills the fun and makes the next round trivial
• Voting on likability instead of evidence
• Spending half an hour arguing about how many Michelin stars someone has
• Mixing this category up with the Spanish food category
• Going above 12 players: the chat becomes unreadable

Recommended settings for a chefs game

With a mixed table, keep clues to country and speciality. If everyone cooks a lot, requiring the restaurant and the style makes the round much tighter.

Variants for groups who already know all the names

Once your regulars recognise all fifteen chefs, raise the difficulty:

• Style only: clues describe the cooking, never the country
• Double round: one chef and one typical dish in the same round
• Two impostors with different fake clues
• No country names allowed: only restaurants and techniques
• The ejected player becomes the impostor in the next round

Frequently asked questions

Game guides