I thought this puzzle was great! Is there an opposite of sour grapes? Sweet grapes? Maybe the fact that I solved it quickly colors my opinion.
Seeing all the professions and thinking about their possessives, I loved that we didn't have to pull phrases out of thin air. The second word was right there, in a nearby clue. In fact, all of the associated words were in exactly the same order as the theme entries, so there was none of the usual trial and error to figure out which way to arrange them. Another touch of elegance!
Once I had CHEF'S, I again assumed that we'd have to just figure out the rest, and nothing with 4 letters came immediately to mind. But knowing that I'm not up on current things, I turned to google and auto-complete's first suggestion was CHEF'S KISS (which I have heard of but did not know was particularly popular with the young-uns these days.) When I then saw kiss as the first word of the last clue - mwah! Perfection! Nothing to just think up, like the others it was right there.
Someone suggested chef's rule as another possibility. Never heard that as a phrase, but as noted above that doesn't mean much. Google says it is a thing, so it seems worth considering as an alternate answer. But looking at the search results and number of hits, it seems clear which is the more common phrase.
If you want help with a meta, feel free to PM me. The more specific you are about what you have and what you want, the more likely I can help without spoiling.
(And if I help you win a mug, I’ll be especially delighted.)