Interestingly, "chief" is the same word as "chef" just imported from the Normans. French had a consonant shift, while English did not, and then imported the word again with the new pronunciation and spelling.
That vowel shift is not from French, but rather part of the English Great Vowel Shift [1]. The original loanword from Medieval Norman French to Middle English was /tʃeːf/ (spelled "chef"), compared to the re-borrowed /ʃɛf/.