Private chef to the rescue!

Over the Easter weekend my wife, toddler and I were  travelling  to Bordeaux. We were to fly back on Monday afternoon, and our friends Mark and Sherry and their twin girls were coming in from Scotland to stay the night with us before flying back to the US. Just before we left, my boss’s boss (who had hired me into my current role, moving my family and I from the US to London) asked me if she and her family could come over as well, as it would be her last chance to see Mark and Sherry. Having the boss over meant the culinary pressure was well and truly on!

My wife and I love to cook but were overwhelmed about the prospect of cooking for 11 when we would have just gotten back into town that afternoon. We decided to seize the opportunity to “life hack” and we turned to SimpleeHost which a friend had recommended - the site is the Airbnb of the private chef world in London. I browsed a list of private chefs and searched by cuisine type and our budget. Three-course menus start at £18/head, so we found plenty of options for our very moderate budget. Chef Daniel had great customer reviews and his menus sounded very nice so I booked him to come to our rescue! He works part-time at the too-cool-for-me-now-that-I-have-a-kid White Rabbit in Dalston so I was looking forward to trying his food without having to actually go to Dalston. The booking process took less than 5 minutes, his menus were all listed online so we just had to select our favourite.

On the day of the dinner he arrived an hour before our guests were due in order to prepare everything. He was very down  to earth, and was happy to answer my (extensive) questions about his cooking. He had baked some lovely sourdough bread for us to nibble on and then we had a seabass ceviche to start. The seabass was peppered with herbs and was brilliantly fresh and tangy. For our main we had a beautifully roasted rump of lamb with creamy "garlicy" potato dauphinoise  (perfect for Easter) and to finish we had a lovely hot chocolate cake with raspberry cream.

Our guests were quite impressed and I think converted to the whole private-chef concept! And  the best thing? Daniel did all of the washing up! 

Written by Jeff Nelson. Jeff works in HR Technology for Aviva plc and lives in Belsize Park with his wife Elisabeth, and son Beckett. They moved to London from New York in July 2012. 

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