Philosophy as a Chef

I have been thinking over time what creates the difference between a cook and a chef. Then, I extrapolated it out to the difference between a chef and a chef, because I think most of the 'chefs' I have known really just regurgitate everything they learned in cooking school, books, and from other chefs they have worked with. When you try to open up a dialogue about food, I have found many focus on the use of the most expensive ingredients or the best this and that, but tend to shy away from any real philosophical stance.

This is just something I do not understand. Even from my first days in the kitchen I can remember marveling at how things work together or repel each other. Over time I created a palette of flavors and textures that work together and in general, when making a menu, I would pull menu items together by pulling related culinary threads into a dish. Most of the time I never even did a test run to make sure the item would work, because I knew it would. Does this mean I'm exceptionally talented? No, it means I paid attention to what I was taught and experimented with the food I was given to prepare. My god, I have eaten some horrible food to which I was the guinea pig, but I learned. Many times very slowly, with the distinct exception to the speed in which I discovered that soy sauce and fresh tomatoes simply do not get along.

Now I start wondering if my own conception of flavors/food/ingredients is also limited to what I know and that I need to keep pushing it further in order to grow the possibilities. And I guess I have to say from a purely philosophical view that would have to be the case. The best thing about the kitchen is that you never stop learning as long as you are paying attention. You also never stop failing. I screw things up all the time and apply my best fix, but in my head I know I blew it. There's another point. Learning how to recover from your mistakes is also another path to creation. It's also a tipping point. I think about how many times I have wasted a day trying to fix something that wasn't right and of the times I made the wiser decision to toss something and move on to the next attempt.

I think I need to flesh these ideas out a little bit more before this makes sense to any of us.