What a private chefactuallycosts.Private chef cost in Calgary
What a private chef dinner with me costs, what the price covers, and what's charged on top. It's the same information as the questions on my private chef page, in one place.
The short answer
My private chef dinners start at $100 per guest for a four-course tasting menu, and the price scales with the menu and the number of guests.
For that, I choose all the ingredients by hand, cook in your kitchen, serve the meal at your table and clean up afterwards, so the kitchen looks as if nobody had cooked in it. You get the evening; the dishes are my problem.
What moves the price
The menu. Four courses is the starting point, and a menu can have as many courses as you want. You can choose from a wide range of dishes, or leave it to me and be surprised.
The number of guests. The per-guest price scales with the headcount.
Anything beyond the food. Wine pairings, music, service staff and rentals are each a separate line in the proposal.
Travel. Banff and Canmore start at the same $100 per guest, with travel quoted as its own line rather than built into the per-guest price. Canmore is about an hour from Calgary and Banff about an hour and a half, and the travel line reflects the difference. Further afield, travel and accommodation are paid and separate day rates apply.
Every one of those lines is in the proposal before you commit, so there are no surprises on the night.
Private chef or personal chef?
People search for both, and for an in-home chef or a private party chef, and usually they mean the same evening: someone who shops, cooks and serves dinner in your own kitchen, then leaves it clean. That's what I do, whichever name you arrived with.
The older distinction in the trade is that a personal chef cooks a week of meals in advance, and a private chef cooks the night itself. If it's the first one you're after, say so when you get in touch and I'll tell you straight whether I'm the right fit.
Compared with going out
A private chef dinner is the restaurant experience at your own table. Nobody has to drive, and nobody misses the conversation because they're plating. It works for a dinner party, a birthday, a wedding shower, a corporate dinner or friends who simply want to sit down together.
Five things to ask any private chef before you book
- Is the price per guest or a flat fee, and is there a minimum?
- Does it cover the shopping, the serving and the clean-up, or only the cooking?
- What's charged separately: wine, extra staff, rentals, travel?
- How do you handle allergies and dietary needs?
- What do you need from my kitchen?
You should get a straight answer to all five before you pay anything. Most of mine are on the private chef page, in the questions at the bottom, and anything that isn't, ask me.
Getting an actual number
Send me the date, the number of guests and roughly what you have in mind. You'll get a proposal with every line written out, and you can decide from there.
