Executive Chef Salary in New York 2026,
$70,670 Median | BLS Data by City

The published New York figure is $70,670 a year, or $33.98 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025, with a band from $46,260 at the 10th percentile to $120,370 at the 90th and quartiles at $55,070 and $93,240. That is 13.1% above the national median of $62,470. The row is SOC 35-1011, Chefs and Head Cooks, which is broader than the executive chef title and includes institutional head cooks.

Albany-Schenectady-Troy at $84,430, then Kingston $74,710, Buffalo-Cheektowaga $74,290, Kiryas Joel-Poughkeepsie-Newburgh $72,340 and New York-Newark-Jersey City $71,780. The city is last. That is a genuine feature of the published data, not a rounding artefact, and it reflects a capital-region mix weighted toward salaried institutional and contract catering posts against a downstate mix weighted toward a very large base of independent restaurant kitchens.

No professional licence exists. What is required is food safety supervision: in New York City the Health Code requires a person holding a Food Protection Certificate from the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene to supervise whenever the establishment operates, obtained through a Health Department course and examination. Outside the city, county health departments administer permits and supervisor training under the State Sanitary Code. American Culinary Federation certifications such as CEC are voluntary and have no legal standing in New York.

It is a New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene credential earned by completing the department's food protection course and passing its examination. The Health Code requires a certificate holder to be supervising food operations whenever the establishment is open, which in practice means an executive chef or a designated manager on every shift. It attaches to the person rather than the business, it is the one credential a New York City kitchen leader genuinely must hold, and it is not a culinary qualification.

That depends entirely on what the job is for. The published median in New York-Newark-Jersey City is $71,780 against $84,430 in Albany-Schenectady-Troy, and a city resident pays an extra 3.078% to 3.876% in income tax on top of a state rate reaching 10.9%. What the city offers instead is the density and prestige of its restaurant sector — the route to the $120,370 ninetieth percentile through multi-outlet and hotel programmes, and the reputational value of particular kitchens. Those are real, but they are not what the median measures.

Because SOC 35-1011 counts head cooks as well as chefs, and the two populations are distributed differently across the state. Albany-Schenectady-Troy has a food service economy weighted toward state government, healthcare, higher education and contract catering — settings that employ salaried head cooks with defined hours and benefits, and that pay on institutional scales. New York City's food service economy is dominated by independent restaurants, which employ vastly more people on this row but concentrate them in small operations where the chef's earnings are constrained by the establishment's margin. The result is a higher city headcount and a lower city median, which is exactly what the 1.40 location quotient and the $71,780 metro figure show together.

That it runs through scale, not through cuisine. The distance from the $70,670 median to the $120,370 ninetieth percentile is not covered by better cooking; it is covered by taking responsibility for more kitchens, larger budgets and more staff. Hotels, contract caterers, multi-outlet restaurant groups and institutional food service are where the upper band sits, and all four are management jobs with a culinary foundation. A chef who wants the top of this band and also wants to be on the pass every service is choosing between two things the data treats as different careers.

Moderately, and the caveat is worth stating plainly. SOC 35-1011 pools executive chefs with head cooks, and head cooks outnumber them. That biases the median downward relative to a true executive chef figure — which is why the honest reading of the $93,240 seventy-fifth percentile is that it is closer to a typical named executive chef post than the $70,670 median is. The metro rows carry the same caveat, and it is part of why the Albany-Schenectady-Troy figure is high: an institutional head cook there is well paid relative to an independent restaurant chef in Brooklyn, and both are on this row.