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In connection with my previous question about the meaning of the line, “This is a lot of cargo for noodle soup” in NYT’s (March 4, 2014) article, “Ramen’s Big Splash,” in its Dining & Wine section, there was a word – 'cheffed-up' to describe a type of ramen.

“Totto Runner:The shadowy, steamy, low-ceilinged, quasi-illicit “Blade Runner” atmosphere is so cool that it’s hard to be clinical about the actual soups. But for traditional ramen that hasn’t been cheffed-up, this is the place.

I know that 'chef' can be used as a verb to mean serve as a chef, but I can’t understand what “chef-up” means. What does it mean? Is it a common English word? Spell-checker keeps demanding correction on “chef-up,” while I’m typing this question.

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    You probably won't find many other instances of this particular example, but it's based on a fairly standard "linguistic productivity" principle. With some base nouns/verbs the [past-tense] - up format has become well-established, and can be used figuratively beyond the original meaning. For example, doctored up, and (particularly since Blair's "dodgy dossier") sexed-up
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Jan 3, 2015 at 14:30

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It's a attempt to shorten the phrase "cooked in some fancy way that a chef might offer in a restaurant, rather than just boiled as a basic dish."

No, it isn't a common term -- I'd call it a neologism, or possibly a term used only by restaurant reviewers. But the "cheffed-up" formulation would probably be understood in this context by most native speakers, by analogy with "prettied up", "tidied up", "polished up" and other common phrases that use "-ed up" to mean "made more so".

Newspaper writers do have a long tradition of writing in a compressed "telegraphic" style, in an attempt to pack as much information as possible into as little space as possible. That does tend to produce phrases which are hard to understand until you have some experience with this style. Don't assume that the New York Times, or any other newspaper, is a good example of formal English.

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    +1@Keshlam - precisely. Written by a food or cultural critic bent on Jazzin-up his otherwise prosaic prose.
    – user98990
    Commented Jan 3, 2015 at 9:29
  • +1, though I wouldn't say this was a matter of being telegraphic as just slangily informal.
    – Jon Hanna
    Commented Jan 3, 2015 at 15:07
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The main meaning is "[past tense of verb] up". So you take "chef", turn it into a verb, make it past tense (cheffed), and add "up" and you get "cheffed up". That means that someone has done chef-style stuff to the ramen.

However, and this is pure speculation, there could be a pun involved.

Eff is a euphemistic way of using the word "fuck", based on the first letter of "fuck" being pronounced "eff". "Effed up" is the same as "fucked up" or "messed up" (as in made bad or not how it ought to be). The phrase "cheffed up" would have "effed up" within it, so maybe the author was voicing disapproval at doing chef-style stuff to the ramen.

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