Thinking about booking a private chef in London? Read on for guide to some of the available services
Booking a private chef in London can be a minefield with a wide variety in the price and quality of the chefs available. There's a wide range of quality and it there's no real upper limit to what you could spend if you so chose to.
In this post, we'll quickly go over some of the available services and what you can expect from them.
When hiring a chef for the perfect at home celebration, AirBNB booking or in a private household or residence, you want to make sure you are hiring a professional with a wealth of experience.
Other factors that are of critical importance are the ease of booking, ability to communicate directly with the chef, the quality of the food & the sourcing of the ingredients from their local area.
Using a small private chef agency means you can book a totally bespoke experience, and you are free to make suggestions & prepare a detailed brief for us, which we will discuss in our initial booking enquiry consultation.
As a small company run by former colleagues and with minimal overheads, we're able to be more flexible & responsive to our customers than larger companies & booking platforms. We're also able to ensure our chefs are able to earn a fair wage (something famously difficult for chefs to get even in this day and age).
At Yuzu Private Dining, we pride ourselves on providing a bespoke service to discerning clients, only providing chefs with a Michelin Star professional background & who have completed a DBS check.
We're experienced in creating bespoke initimate weddings, canape parties & dinner party celebrations, as well as multi-day private chef bookings, whether that's over Christmas for an at home celebration, AirBNB booking or in a private household or residence, you want to make sure you are hiring a professional with a wealth of experience.
2. Yhangry
Yhangry is a relatively new startup, having been founded in 2019 by 2 former finance professionals in London & having been featured on Dragon's Den.
It's essentially a large booking platform with many chefs who are setup their own profiles & do their own menus while the platform take a large commission from the chefs. As such, the quality can vary drastically, and you can never be too sure that you'll be hiring a chef with an extensive professional background.
3. Take a Chef
Take a Chef is a large company, founded in Madrid in 2012. It works in a similar way to Yhangry, as a self-managed marketplace to book a chef, taking a significant commission from the chefs available budget for materials & to earn a living.
4. La Belle assiette
Once a popular private chef booking platform, it seems in 2024 that La Belle Assiette has no gone bankrupt. Their website states they are no longer taking bookings.
5. DineIndulge
Dineindulge is a British company founded in Bristol by former chefs & caterers from the industry. They are available to book far & wide, accepting bookings in multiple countries and in all regions of the UK.
They typically outsource their work to "self-employed" chefs with minimal background checks & professional vetting. These chefs aren't given the opportunity to create their own menus so there's limited scope for receiving a bespoke service as per the client's requirements or requests.
The menus don't seem to change very often, so once you've had it once there really doesn't seem to be much reason to use them a second time. They've now branched out into meal prep services as well as these fixed menu offerings, so might be good for this if that's something you'd be looking for.
Conclusion
There's many ways to book a private chef in London in 2024. With many chefs having left the restaurant trade post COVID & the hospitality industry in dire straights, many talented chefs are now available to take on this kind of work & draw on their extensive previous experience in professional settings to cook directly for customers in their homes, private households & for holiday lets.
Whatever choice you decide to make, you won't regret hiring a chef to cook in your home if you make an informed decision.
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