@Anonycat
I tend to use it that way as well, certainly in a formal sense. However, informally between friends or just in certain cultures, many people aren’t really accustomed to this distinction, and it might even come off as snobby and lame.
For example, here in the hood I’m not sure how many people would make the distinction. (I live in one of the closet things Sioux City, Iowa’s got to a real ghetto; we have screaming, drunk, and homeless people walking around here all the time half the people are always broke and bumming cigarettes and change, or trying to score a dub sack on the regular. It ain’t like Chicago or North-side Omaha levels, though, so at least there’s that. :P ) Amongst most of those socioeconomically disadvantaged and stuck in a cycle of poverty, I find it more lenient on who they use superlative words like “chef” on. To the someone like my friend Ron, who grew up on hotdogs and boxed mac n cheese at home, a chef is someone who at least has a job in cooking, even if it’s a fry cook or someone working at a local diner who can make a wide variety of great food, whether or not to the standards of a fancy cook who went to school for it. There are many reasons why people don’t go to college or succeed in that regard, not all of them related to actual skill and knowledge set, nor work ethic. I certainly have a lot of respect for looking at it either way, and context matters a lot.