A Villa Week With a Private Chef
A villa week with a private chef is not a chef living in your house for seven days. It is a handful of cooked evenings arranged around what you actually want to do, each one a market shop in the morning, a few hours of prep in the afternoon, dinner served at your table, and a kitchen left cleaner than it was found.
What a cooked day actually looks like
A day I am cooking starts at a market rather than at the villa. I buy what is genuinely good that morning — which is why I resist writing the menu in full more than a couple of days ahead — and arrive at the property in the early afternoon with the shopping and my own knives. Prep runs quietly for two or three hours while you are at the pool or out, and the first thing to appear is the aperitivo, somewhere around seven, outside if the light is worth it. Dinner follows at your pace rather than the kitchen's: there is no service window to hit and no next table waiting, which is the real luxury of eating this way and the thing restaurant dinners cannot give you. Afterwards the kitchen gets put back the way it was, and you do not touch a pan. On days I am not cooking I am not there at all.
What the villa kitchen needs to have
Less than you would think, but worth checking before you assume. I need working heat — four gas burners or a decent induction hob — an oven that holds its temperature, and fridge space that is not already full of everybody's wine. Beyond that I bring knives and the specifics.
The two things that genuinely cause trouble are a fridge too small for a week's shopping for twelve people, and an outdoor kitchen with no shade and no running water, which looks wonderful in the listing photographs and cooks badly in August. Send me a photo of the kitchen when you enquire and I will tell you straight away whether it changes anything.
- Heat: four burners, gas or induction. A single domestic hob is workable for six people, not for fourteen.
- An oven that holds temperature. Villa ovens are frequently older than the villa.
- Fridge space: the most common genuine constraint, and the easiest to fix by asking the owner for a second fridge.
- Water and shade if the kitchen is outdoors. Both matter more than the view does.
The rhythm most families settle into
Almost nobody wants dinner cooked every night, and I would talk you out of it if you did. The pattern that works, over and over: the arrival dinner, because everyone is tired and it rescues the first evening; one big night in the middle of the week, usually the one with a birthday or the whole extended family in it; and one or two easy evenings — a pizza night, a long lunch that runs into the afternoon.
The nights in between you should go out. Tuscany is full of places worth eating at, and a week of even very good home cooking flattens out. I will happily tell you where to go on the nights I am not cooking; knowing the difference between the restaurants worth the drive and the ones with the best parking is part of what you are hiring.
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.
Does the chef stay at the villa all week?
No. I arrive on the days I am cooking, in the early afternoon, and leave once the kitchen is clean. On the days you have not booked I am not there. Live-in arrangements exist but they are rarely what people actually want once they think about it.
Do we need to do any shopping ourselves?
None for the meals I cook — I shop that morning and bring everything. You will want your own breakfast things and whatever you drink, and I am happy to pick those up on the way if you send me a list.
What if our villa kitchen is small or badly equipped?
It is usually fine, and it is always better to find out early. Send me a photo when you enquire. The two real constraints are fridge space and usable heat; almost everything else I can work around or bring.
Can you cook breakfast and lunch as well as dinner?
Yes, though most people find they want fewer meals cooked than they first imagine. A long lunch that runs into the afternoon is often better value than a breakfast nobody sits down for, and it leaves the evening free to go out.
