There is the ever present issue of finding a willing relative to help out, and if you don't have that luxury, finding a suitable and trustworthy babysitter. Then on the night itself, rushing round to get kids to bed and yourself ready before shooting out in an invariably late taxi to enter a crowded pub, bar or restaurant- we don't know about you, but often by the time we get there we're ready for bed ourselves!
So, we were very excited to hear about a company that brings the night out to you. Chef In My Kitchen is a Cheshire based organisation who come to your house and basically turn it into a swanky restaurant experience for the evening.
Owner and founder Shokri is a highly experienced chef who has worked in fine dining restaurants and hotels, producing top class dishes from French, Italian and Mediterranean to North African cuisines. Having owned two successful restaurants in the North West, Shokri moved to Cheshire to launch his new venture. He has teamed up with carefully selected, equally experienced chefs to ensure that your dining experience is a outstanding and memorable.
Sounds fab, but as they say in the industry, the proof is in the pudding! We were lucky enough to be treated to a 'chef in our kitchen' recently and can safely say it is a truly memorable evening of fine dining and luxury. The chef arrives before your guests and gets to work, not only preparing all of the food from scratch but also preparing your dining table- with beautiful table decorations, professional looking napkin folding, and lovely glassware. Once our guests arrived, we were all treated to a rather punchy cocktail, which got the evening off to a great start, plus our chef personally served us canapes- ranging from salmon & olive blinis to hummus & rocket stuffed parma ham.
It was a truly novel experience to be chatting and laughing with our friends in our own home, with the kids tucked up in bed, whilst someone else did all the hard work and made it look good!
Everyone could hear each other talking, the wine flowed freely, we could choose own music and take the evening at our own pace.
We had a short break and then.. more food! A wonderful coconut panna cotta with a sticky toffee pudding was both naughty but nice, and rounding off the evening cheese and biscuits followed by good, strong coffee.
With that we all retired to the living room, and relaxed on our sofas, whilst our Chef...wait for it... did all the cleaning up and left the kitchen looking cleaner and tidier than when he first arrived.
Personal dining evenings are often considered to be for the elite, hugely expensive and basically out of the league of the average person. However, we can safely say, that whilst this isn't the sort of thing that you would do once a week, it is definitely the sort of thing which we would now do for a special occassion. Just imagine- organising your husband's 40th- an a la carte dining experience for 10 of your closest friends, where you don't have to organise a night out, cook, clean or tidy up!
The key element that we noticed during our evening, was how relaxed it was and how much we actually got to talk properly with all the people we wanted to speak with rather than the snatches of conversation we have at dinner parties where we are trying to 'host' or on nights out in loud, busy restaurants.
