Property services
Private Chefs
A single dinner, a week, or the whole summer.
14 cooks on the network Lake Como
The shopping is the job. A chef arriving at a house above Laglio or on the Tremezzina shore is not five minutes from anything: there is a small alimentari, possibly a good butcher in the next village, and then a drive to Como or a market morning at Menaggio or Argegno. Fish from the lake, perch, shad and the salted missoltini, comes from a handful of people who supply the same restaurants every week and will not be found by a stranger on a Thursday. The chefs who work here well have spent years building that supply line, and part of what an owner is buying is the fact that somebody will bring a crate to a jetty because of who is asking. A chef flown in for a week is usually a very good cook doing a much worse job, through no fault of their own.
Then the kitchen. Villa kitchens on this lake are domestic and were often laid out when the family who built the house had staff and a separate service wing, which means the room where the food is made is not the room, or the floor, where anybody eats. A single oven, no blast chiller, no cold storage worth the name, one sink, and a terrace up a flight of stairs and along a loggia. Cooking for twelve out of that is a logistics problem before it is a culinary one, and it defeats plenty of accomplished restaurant chefs, whose whole training assumes a pass, a brigade and equipment. The cooks who thrive here plan menus around what can be finished in a domestic oven and carried without collapsing, and they arrive with the two or three things they know the house will not have.
Last, the shape of the engagement, which varies more than owners expect. At one end is a cook who comes at eleven, does lunch and a dinner to leave in the fridge, and goes home. At the other is a chef who effectively runs the household's food for a season: breakfasts at four different times, children fed early, a picnic on the boat, the staff meal, and a dinner for sixteen on Saturday with hired glass and two pairs of extra hands. Both are legitimate and they are different appointments. The one constant is availability. The chefs who are any good are booked for July and August by the spring, and asking in the third week of August for a single dinner on Saturday is the hardest request in this entire directory.
01What they actually do
Shopping and sourcing
The market morning, the butcher two villages along, the fish from the lake, and the supplier who will deliver to a jetty because they know the chef.
Cooking in a domestic kitchen
Menus built around one oven, no cold storage and a terrace on another floor, with whatever equipment the house lacks brought in.
Feeding a house, not a table
Staggered breakfasts, children early, a picnic for the boat, the staff meal, and dinner for whoever has actually turned up.
The dinner that is an occasion
Extra hands, hired glass and linen, service on the terrace, and a plan for what happens if the weather turns at seven.
02How we choose
We eat their food, in houses, under the conditions the job is actually done in. A tasting in a professional kitchen tells you nothing about whether somebody can send fourteen plates up a staircase. We also ask the housekeeper what the kitchen looked like at midnight, because a chef who cooks beautifully and leaves the household to clean up behind them is not a chef we can send to a family.
Nobody pays to be on this list and we take no commission on an engagement. Chefs are placed here purely on the food and on how they behave in somebody's house, and we would rather tell an owner that the person they want is fully booked than substitute someone we are not confident in.
We take a cook off the list for unreliability more than for anything culinary: a cancelled booking in August, an arrival two hours late with no call, ingredients invoiced that did not appear on the table. We also remove anyone who has become a small business with staff we have never met, because at that point the owner is not getting the person we recommended.
Private Chefs: questions
How much does a private chef on Lake Como cost?
Chefs here price by the day or by the engagement, with food and any hired equipment or extra staff billed separately at cost. We do not publish rates.
What moves the figure is the number of covers, how many services a day, whether the chef is shopping as well as cooking, and whether they need to bring anyone with them. For a season, the arrangement is usually a weekly rate with days off agreed in advance. Settle the food budget separately and in writing, because that is where most disagreements start.
How far ahead should I book a chef for August?
By early spring for a full week or a season, and as far ahead as you can manage for a single dinner, which is the harder request.
The chefs with the strongest reputations take their season bookings first, and a single evening in mid-August is difficult to fill because it does not fit around anybody else's week. If your dates are fixed, ask early; if they are flexible, the shoulder months are a different world entirely.
Does the chef do the shopping?
Usually yes, and it is a substantial part of the day here, because the good suppliers are spread around the lake rather than gathered in one place.
Agree how the food is paid for before the first day: a float held by the chef, an account at the shops, or receipts reimbursed. Also agree who has the car. A chef without transport on this lake is far less useful than the same chef with a vehicle and an hour in the morning.
Can a chef work in a small villa kitchen?
Most can, provided they see it first. The chefs who work regularly on the lake plan the menu around the equipment in the house rather than the other way round.
Send photographs of the kitchen, including the oven, the fridge and the route from the kitchen to where you eat. If the house has no cold storage or the terrace is two floors up, say so. That information changes the menu, and it is much better raised in June than discovered at seven in the evening.
By village
Other people worth knowing
Before you instruct anyone
For people who work on the lake
Are you the bestat what you do here?
The list we introduce from is short and grows slowly: by working with somebody, seeing how a job goes, and only then adding them. If that is the standard you hold yourself to, tell us who you are. We read every one. We check work before we introduce anybody, and no money passes in either direction.
Put yourself forward