The private chef experience: hour by hour, at your villa

Almost every first booking comes with the same slightly embarrassed questions: do we talk to the chef, what do we wear, are we supposed to help. Reasonable questions, because "private chef experience" is a phrase people buy before they can picture it. So here is the actual anatomy of the evening, both the version your guests see and the one running backstage, taken from a standard dinner for twelve at an Algarve villa.

16:30, the arrival you barely notice

The team arrives three hours before the first course: chef, kitchen hand, front of house. Cool boxes come in, the villa kitchen gets assessed against the photos you sent at booking, and a quiet occupation begins. Most of the real cooking already happened this morning in our own kitchen: stocks, doughs, slow items, anything a domestic hob would fight. What travels is a mise en place, not raw ambition. You do not need to host anyone at this stage; point at the kitchen, go back to the pool.

17:00 to 18:45, backstage

The kitchen becomes a small brigade station: the dietary matrix from your booking taped where the chef can see it, courses staged in firing order, the oven negotiated with (villa ovens lie about temperature, we bring a thermometer). Front of house dresses the table: linen, glassware, the printed menus with tonight's courses and, when the occasion has a name, the name on them. The printed menu is a small thing that does disproportionate work; guests photograph it before the first course exists.

19:30, guests arrive and the theatre begins

Welcome drinks are poured, canapés start circulating, and the kitchen is now visible in its best light: controlled motion, good smells, a chef who greets the room. This is the answer to the first etiquette question: yes, talk to the chef. The kitchen is part of the evening, questions are welcome, and the best moments of these dinners often happen at the pass. What you wear is the second question: whatever your dinner deserves. It is your home; we have served black tie and we have served swimwear with a good shirt.

20:15 to 22:30, the dinner itself

Guests sit, and the rhythm takes over: courses landing together for the whole table, roughly 35 to 40 minutes apart, paced to conversation rather than to the kitchen's convenience. The chef presents one or two courses in person, what it is, where the fish came from this morning, then disappears again. The third etiquette answer lives here: no, you do not clear plates. Nobody at your table touches a dish all night. Hosts break this rule out of reflex for the first course and are gently outmanoeuvred by front of house thereafter.

For a tasting menu the arc stretches: six or seven smaller courses, more narration, wine paired per course, closer to three hours at the table. For a casual brief the same machinery relaxes into platters and family-style serving. Same team, different registers.

23:00, the disappearing act

Dessert is down, coffee is poured, and the kitchen quietly reverses itself: surfaces cleaned, dishwasher cycles run, rubbish out, your kitchen returned to a state measurably better than we found it. The team says goodnight and is gone before the last glass of wine is finished. The next morning, the only evidence is the menu card on the table.

What it costs, plainly

A dinner like the one above runs €90 to €160 per guest in 2026, all-in: menu design, ingredients, the team, setup and the cleanup that ends the story. Tasting menus run €120 to €180. The full mechanics, including regional ranges and what moves prices, are in our private chef cost guide, and the booking itself starts at the dinner party page with a date, an address and a headcount. The only part of the evening we cannot do for you is the guest list.