Private Chef, Catering or a Cooking Class? How to Choose
Group size decides it more than anything else. Up to about twenty people in a villa, you want a private chef. Eighty or more at a single event, you want catering with a brigade behind it. And if the point of the afternoon is that your group does something together rather than gets fed, you want a cooking class — which is a different product from either.
What each one is actually for
A private chef is dinner in the place you are already staying, for roughly two to twenty people, cooked and served by one person who then disappears. The defining feature is that there is no service window and no other table — the evening runs at your pace. It suits villa holidays, family gatherings and the nights of a wedding weekend that are not the wedding.
Catering is a different discipline, not a bigger version of the same one. Eighty to two hundred people eating within the same half-hour needs a brigade, a service plan and equipment, and the skill involved is as much logistics as cooking. Below about forty guests catering is usually the wrong tool; above it, a single chef is.
A cooking class inverts the whole thing: you cook, I teach, and the meal at the end is the by-product rather than the point. It is the right answer when the group needs an activity — a family with teenagers, a group of friends with a free afternoon, a company doing something other than a meeting.
How to choose in one question
Ask what you want people to be doing. If you want them sitting down and talking to each other, book a chef. If you want them all eating at once at a single occasion, book catering. If you want them doing something with their hands, book a class.
The mistake worth avoiding is booking catering for twenty people in a villa, which costs more than it needs to and puts a service operation into a house that does not want one; and its mirror image, asking one chef to plate for a hundred and twenty, which is how weddings go wrong.
- 2–20 in a villa, several evenings → private chef.
- 80–200 at one event, one seating → wedding or event catering.
- 6–20 who want an afternoon, not a dinner → cooking class.
- A wedding weekend → usually all three, on different days: a class or a welcome dinner on the Friday, catering on the Saturday, a long lunch on the Sunday.
A wedding weekend uses all three
The most common shape of a full weekend, and the one worth planning deliberately rather than by accident: something informal on the Friday when guests are still arriving — a pizza party or a BBQ that lets people mix without a seating plan. The wedding itself on the Saturday, catered properly. Then a slow lunch on the Sunday for whoever is still there, which is often the meal people remember most fondly precisely because nothing is riding on it.
If you are working through a planner, they will usually have views on all three, and I work with planners regularly on exactly this. If you are doing it yourselves, decide the Friday and Sunday early: they are the two that get left until it is too late to do anything interesting with them.
I cook in villas across Tuscany, most weeks of the season.
Two guests or twenty, one dinner or a full week. Tell me the villa, the dates and how many of you there are, and I will tell you honestly what is worth doing.
Ask me about your villaQuestions, answered.
Is a private chef cheaper than catering?
For a small group, substantially — one person cooking for twelve is a fraction of the cost of a catering operation. But they are not interchangeable: catering exists because a hundred people cannot be served by one chef, and the price difference is the brigade and equipment that makes that possible.
How many guests is too many for a private chef?
Around twenty is the honest ceiling for one chef working alone, and past about fourteen I would want a second pair of hands. Beyond that you are no longer booking a private chef, you are booking a small catering job, and it should be quoted as one.
Can we do a cooking class and a private dinner in the same week?
Often the best combination, and a common one. The class is an afternoon your group does together; the dinner is an evening they are looked after. They are different experiences and they do not compete with each other.
What works best for a company or team trip?
A cooking class, almost always. Cooking together does the thing team activities are supposed to do without anyone having to pretend to enjoy it, and it ends in a meal you all made. A served dinner is a nice evening but it is not an activity.
