Yep, I concur with you. Not that my memory is as flawless as Archie’s, of course, but I can’t remember Wolfe being touted as a better cook than Fritz. Maybe on certain dishes, like saucisse minuit, scrambled eggs, and corned beef hash (the secret’s in the chitlins!), but I don’t think his abilities surpass Fritz’s overall.
Of course, Fritz is supposed to be a wonderful chef but not superlative. Wolfe once makes some flattering comments to a chef, possibly in Too Many Cooks in which case the chef is Jerome Berin), that he knows the difference between capable cooks, very good chefs like Fritz, and outstanding chefs such as Berin and the others who make up Les Quinze Maitres. (I’m always a little disappointed to read Fritz described as wanting in any way. He’s a charming character.) My point is, Wolfe doesn’t describe himself as being better than Fritz.
As far as reading the books chronologically: I think it’s a good idea, though not mandatory. There are some small, barely detectable character arcs, such as Archie’s changing sensibilities and his relationship with various women. Plus it’s fun to see the gang living through the war period and then the ‘Man in the Gray Flannel Suit’ era and eventually the swinging '60s and Watergate. Despite not, um, aging.
The thing is, continuity wasn’t Stout’s strong suit, so he didn’t bother with it much, which is why the books can mostly be read in any order you wish. His attention to character-background details was, shall we say, lacking (Are Archie’s parents alive or dead? Is Saul married or single? Is Wolfe a native-born US citizen or was he born in Montenegro? What’s the Brownstone’s address?) and the series’ timeline is flat-out impossible assuming Wolfe and Archie stay the same age. One of the few times Stout made a nod to continuity by re-using a character from an early book, he ended up creating a real mess, timelinewise.
Very minor spoilers for Too Many Cooks and A Right to Die:
For example, a small character who appears in TMC as a college-age kid (in 1938) returns in ARTD, published nearly thirty years later, now the middle-aged father of a college-graduate son. But while he’s aged appropriately, Archie and Wolfe are basically the same ages as they were in TMC. (Archie’s described as being a ‘young man’ throughout the series and is usually considered early- to mid-30s at most.) If they’d ignored the earlier appearance this wouldn’t be so bad, but Archie, Wolfe and the father all refer to the events from TMC, including the fact that he was just a kid at the time. The only explanation is that there’s some kinda stasis bubble around the Brownstone that affects only its inhabitants and frequent visitors (like Saul, Orrie, Fred, Cramer, etc.).
But these are just some of the quirks in this decades-long book series. Such trivial goofs really don’t matter in the long run and certainly don’t affect most people’s enjoyment of the corpus. The Wolfe series is as idiosyncratic as its star detective – and we wouldn’t have it any other way. 
