Dear Vi,

What can you tell me about the chef's toque? Where does it come from? Why don't waiters have some kind of specials hat?

J. Bankhead, Santa Fe, NM

Dear J,

Constantinople is said to be the origin of the chef's white hat. The story runs that after the fall of Constantinople, which was known for its culinary achievements, the imperial chefs took refuge in the monasteries. At first the cooks adopted the black hat of the Greek Church. But after a time they felt their habits should be different from those of true monks and so obtained permission to wear the same habit in white. The chef's hat has British chefs wore the Scotch cap, stiff with starch; Spaniards wore a beret of white wool; and Germans bedecked themselves with a tasseled "bonnet de police" or pointed Napoleonic hat. It is the French toque, made of a band of linen which adapts itself to the contour of the head and from which emerges a mound of the same fabric, pleated on the edge that evolved into the toque as we know it. The mallable nature of the fabric lends itself to a multitude of transformations more or less gracious, more or less eccentric. There is a legend that the chef's hat should have one hundred pleats to represent the one hundred different ways a good cook should be able to prepare an egg. This is earned the chef the nickname "egg-head." Today a chef's hat can be many things, even a reversed baseball cap.

I don't know why waiters don't have a special headdress. It probably has something to do with manners.