I think you managed to miss the point: the async chef is doing other stuff necessary to fulfill a single order when he can, i.e., while the potatoes are boiling. The sync chef has to wait for the potatoes to boil, only when those are done can he start to fry the beef.

The sync chef doesn't occupy the frying pan when he's boiling potatoes, so in some sense he only really does as much as he can. Having hundreds of sync chefs would likely be more efficient in terms of order volume, _but not order latency._