Private Chef Experiences in Jamaica: What to Expect

How it works

A private chef at a villa is not a restaurant transplanted into your kitchen. It is a cook who shops in the morning, arrives with the ingredients, cooks in your kitchen and serves where you want to eat: the deck, the veranda, the pool. You agree the menus and the number of meals before you arrive, and pay per meal or per day plus groceries. At Bay Vista a welcome dinner can be waiting on the deck when you walk in: an extra, or complimentary with stays of seven nights or more.

A week of eating

Breakfast: ackee and saltfish with fried dumplings and plantain; callaloo with boiled banana; a fruit plate from the garden. Lunch: escovitch fish or brown-stew chicken with rice and peas; a pepper-pot soup; patties from town. Dinner: jerk from the grill, curried goat, oxtail with butter beans, steamed fish with okra, rum cake or gizzada to finish. Ask for Blue Mountain coffee in the morning and sorrel or a rum punch at six.

The dishes to ask for by name

Ackee and saltfish (the national dish). Curried goat. Oxtail. Escovitch fish (fried, then pickled with vinegar, onion and Scotch bonnet). Jerk pork. Festival (sweet fried dumplings). Rice and peas (with coconut milk and kidney beans). Callaloo. Bammy (cassava flatbread). Gizzada (a coconut tart). Sorrel (a hibiscus drink, best at Christmas).

Feeding a celebration

For a birthday or a wedding dinner on the deck, the chef becomes a caterer: a buffet of jerk, curry, rice and peas and salads for fifty, or a plated dinner for ten in the glass dining room. The villa provides the tables and the décor, so the chef only has to do the cooking.

What to tell the chef

Allergies. Children who will eat only pasta. How spicy you really mean. Whether you want to learn (most chefs will happily teach you to make jerk marinade). And what you ate on your last trip that you have thought about since.