Perfect chopped chives are a status symbol for chefs. Can I learn to master ‘green confetti’?

Perfect chopped chives are a status symbol for chefs. Can I learn to master ‘green confetti’? My goal: a perfect 10 from Rate My Chives, the ‘number one authority on chives worldwide’. Why is this so hard? Get our weekend culture and lifestyle email Chopping chives, I notice my weak wrists for the first time. My knife is connected to my hand which is connected to my wrist, which is flopping about like an overcooked piece of asparagus. “You’ve got to keep them more sturdy,” says chef Trisha Greentree. “Lock in that line.” We’re in the kitchen of Sydney restaurant Fratelli Paradiso, where Greentree is executive chef. Lunch service is about to start but she stays by my side, scrutinising my posture (“squeeze those glutes”), my wrists and my knife skills. I gently grasp the green spindly stalks in my left hand, keeping them bunched together with my pinky and thumb, while my remaining fingers rest on top. I attempt to slice the chives into immaculate, exacting circles. Because a pile of immaculate, exacting circles is how one scores a 10 out of 10 on Rate My Chives , the Instagram account that rates sliced chives like a competitive sport – and Greentree has committed to showing me how the pros do it. Rate My Chives has more than 93,000 followers including top-end chefs such as Grant Achatz of Alinea in Chicago, Australian-born Matt Abé, formerly of Restaurant Gordon Ramsay, and Australia’s Mark Best (in return, Rate My Chives follows only five accounts, including two chefs and Taylor Swift). Almost every day, chefs and home cooks submit photos of their chives to the “number one authority on chives worldwide”; and almost every day, its anonymous founder rates them. The Rate My Chives founder, a UK-based chef, started the account in 2022 after noticing poorly cut chives on a dish while dining out. They are a herby harbinger of a bad meal, a green canary down the mine. “If the chefs don’t care about the little things like how to chop chives, then the rest of the food’s goi...