Chef
From Girl Genius
| The Chef | |
 | |
| Name | Good question! |
| Age | considerable |
| Occupation | camp cook and actor |
| Residence | Itinerant |
| First Appearance | Cooking something up |
| Death | {{{death}}} |
| Parents | |
| Relatives | |
| Children | |
| Marital Status | |
In the Girl Genius context, "the Chef", otherwise unqualified, refers specifically to the guy who does the cooking for Master Payne's Circus of Adventure. Curiously, like Balthazar's dad, he's never named, although he plays a fairly important role in the Circus and the events surrounding it. First seen here, as Agatha and Krosp are bringing the formerly lost Balthazar back to camp.
Like many of the Circus people, he's a minor Spark, and uses his kitchen as his laboratory. His most notable invention is the Calming Pie. The first time we see this remarkable preparation used (on Lars), it doesn't work very well, although that might be because Lars is sufficiently rattled that nothing is going to calm him except having Agatha nearby wielding a death ray. The Chef thinks it may be because all the calm has leaked out of the pie (which probably tells you a lot about the way he thinks); nevertheless, he evidently continues to tinker with the formula, and at later juncture it works much better. Consequently, he feels much the same triumph that any good chef feels on creating a culinary masterpiece. This is a sobering thought.
Much of his pie making, however, isn't for therapeutic — much less gastronomic — purposes, but rather for ballistic use in the Heterodyne shows. Experience has shown that "none of the Heterodyne plays really suffer if Punch and Judy start throwing pies." The Chef views this as "another success for my unified pie theory," but more practically, he makes sure there are lots of pies to be thrown. LOTS of pies.
Like most of the cohort, he acts in the plays as well, frequently playing a comedic version of Baron Klaus Wulfenbach. That this actor plays this character is a pretty good sign that the Heterodyne plays don't treat Klaus as a particularly ... heroic ... figure.
