Time and effort spent mastering the culinary arts has paid off. You gain the following benefits:
Increase your Constitution or Wisdom score by 1, to a maximum of 20.
You gain proficiency with cook’s utensils if you don’t already have it.
As part of a short rest, you can cook special food, provided you have ingredients and cook's utensils on hand. You can prepare enough of this food for a number of creatures equal to 4 + your proficiency bonus. At the end of the short rest, any creature who eats the food and spends one or more Hit Dice to regain hit points regains an extra 1d8 hit points.
With one hour of work or when you finish a long rest, you can cook a number of treats equal to your proficiency bonus. These special treats last 8 hours after being made. A creature can use a bonus action to eat one of those treats to gain temporary hit points equal to your proficiency bonus.
Chef: Now We’re Cookin’
Review by Sam West, Twitter:@CrierKobold
Chef takes the bard’s song of rest mechanic and staples it to a Goodberry-like feature. While I don’t think it's particularly powerful, Chef is a great take on the character fantasy many players have wanted tools to play. It's not good enough to justify without the Wisdom score bump, and if you’re ever getting from an odd to an even Wisdom or Constitution score and you majorly care about this modifier this feat is perfectly fine. If you don’t care about these scores, though, I do still think it can find a home on your sheet if you love the idea of being the personal chef preparing hearty meals on the road over a campfire. You have to really love the image, though, as mechanically, this is pretty much going to feel like a worse version of Inspiring Leader.
Bonus hit point healing on short rest is almost a non-factor. Song of rest may just be the worst feature bards get, as it isn’t really something you use, works alongside the lackluster hit dice healing system, and will vary wildly in applicability table to table.
Bonus temporary hit points are fine and all, but they are heavily gated by their numbers. What makes Goodberry a great option to have is its ability to be administered to creatures to get them back to the world of the living; Chef treats can’t do that. There isn’t really much incentive to wait after making them to eat them. They will feel like just bonus temporary hit points given out each long rest. Inspiring Leader gives out more temporary hit points to more players more frequently.
Still, while both these bonuses are at their best mediocre, they do offer up some strategic advantage. Alongside Xanathar’s Guide to Everything’s tool rules, you can become a pseudo-healing character by improving the party’s rests with food. It fulfills a fantasy, but not much else. If you’re doing that and turning your spellcasting modifier up a point, it absolutely can find a home on your sheet. If not, you’ll likely be better off getting these tool proficiencies elsewhere, and getting a bit more out of it than this feat offers. Artificer Initiate gives them out, as does a bunch of multi-class options. Even the Skilled feat is probably better than this if you predominately just care about getting the tool proficiencies to fit your character’s fantasy.
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