For one anonymous cook, perfection comes under the edge of a knife.

On Oct. 7, Reddit user u/F1exican, now known as “Chivelord,” began a journey that made him the crown jewel of the r/KitchenConfidential subreddit. His mission? Chopping a cup of chives every day until Reddit “says they’re perfect.”

On that first day in early autumn, Chivelord’s goal of cutting chives into exceptionally thin, uniform, circular, unbruised pieces failed. Commenters pointed out portions of that image with “towers,” or chives that were cut too long, as well as “trains,” or chive segments that weren’t cut all the way through.

“You’re gonna be cutting chives until you die or Reddit ceases to exist,” one user wrote that first day. Since then, he’s garnered many loyal commenters, and some of his posts have hit r/all, meaning they’re some of the most popular on the entirety of the website.

Many chefs consider stellar chive-cutting skills an indicator of their knife mastery and culinary prowess, with chef Will Murray calling it a “proper point of pride for most chefs” while sharing his own technique on YouTube — one learned from chef Thomas Keller.

The Instagram account, RateMyChives, where an anonymous British chef judges others’ herb-slicing acumen, boasts more than 85,000 followers, including chefs Stefano Secchi, Calvin Eng, Adrienne Cheatham, Grant Achatz, Kia Damon and many, many more.

Chivelord works in the banquet industry but has no formal culinary training. He says he chose this herbaceous quest because chives are the hardest to learn due to their small size, fragile structure and high standards in the industry.

“It started as a joke, me and a co-worker were talking about the ‘rate my chives’ Instagram page,” Chivelord, who asked to remain anonymous, tells TODAY.com. “I made the joke that I was going to start posting chives every day and here I am.”

On Day 8, commenters said he was using the wrong cutting board; on day 16, they begged him to sharpen his knife; and on day 22 they compared him to Sisyphus, rolling chives up a hill.

Then came Day 31, or as his fans called it, “Chivegate.”

Faced with no time that day to cut chives, he reposted a previous day’s chives, something his eagle-eyed fans caught almost immediately. It was actually just Day 23 again, a scandal that “broke” some commenters who followed the faceless cook day after day.

The next day, he apologized profusely, cut two cups of chives as penance and arranged more chives into the shape of a cat as instructed by his fans.

“It was a mistake that I made in poor judgement trying to ‘protect’ people in a way,” Chivelord says. “I didn’t want to let anyone down by not posting chives that day.”

He says Day 31 was the first day he was too busy to cut chives, but he had previously missed a day because all the stores he went to were chiveless. In the following months, though, he has taken days off, but he posts to let people know.

“People genuinely have gotten worried when I posted really late,” he says. “I have gotten DMs from people asking if I’m all right.”

Then Day 70 on Dec. 21: perfection.

“NO TOWERS,” one frequent commenter wrote.

“Good work chef. This redditor says it’s perfect,” said another, and many others agreed.

“What do I do now?” Chivelord asked his fans, and one replied, “You enjoy your holidays with a well deserved rest, then come back strong with onions.”

“I love the community, it’s been super great and fun to have everyone here,” Chivelord says, adding that the thousands of comments and hundreds of thousands of upvotes held him accountable. “I wouldn’t do it everyday if people weren’t ‘relying’ on me.”

But What Does RateMyChives Think?

RateMyChives says he’s been aware of Reddit’s Chivelord for quite some time, as a “fair few” followers sent him posts.

“I kept an eye out for a possible submission to the RateMyChives Instagram,” RateMyChives, who also asked to remain anonymous, tells TODAY.com. “Strangely, that never materialised during the months he was active on Reddit.”

Reddit has deemed Chivelord’s 70th day (technically Day 69 because of Chivegate) a perfect one, but what does RateMyChives think?

“I understand he’s recently declared his quest for ‘perfect chives’ complete, and if that’s the standard he’s happy stopping at, then good for him,” RateMyChives says, adding that he finds the chives in Chivelord’s last post to be “very very uneven and crushed.”

“That said, if that’s perfection, I’m clearly grading on a different scale — because for me it barely scrapes a 6.2/10,” he continues. “But hey, confidence counts for something.”

Meanwhile, Chivelord says he feels his skills have grown considerably.

“I am way more confident and better with my knife skills when it comes to cutting literally anything, not just chives,” he says. “I have also learned a lot from the constant input from thousands and thousands of people.”

But now that the world’s preeminent internet chive judge has weighed in, will Chivelord go back to the cutting board?