Who would you invite to a dinner party? VIVA would choose a private chef

 

Ever played that game about who would be at your fantasy dinner party? Well, the one person normally missing from the Marilyn Monroe’s and Elvises is the actual chef.

 

Imagine if you had the best guest list ever but spent half the night sautéing away and missed the bants? Well now you can have your four-course meal and eat it as there’s a new service in town where you can hire a private chef and you don’t have to be Maria Carey to foot the bill.

 

La Belle Assiette will come to your hone, bring all the food and china (even wine pairings suggestions), take over your kitchen and cook up a storm while you play hostess with the mostess from just £39 per person and with 400 chefs to choose from nationwide.

 

They have brilliant chefs, ours was the lovely Sam, who will do all the hard work and in our experience nothing was too much trouble, from gluten intolerant requests to just fussy-eaters.

 

You choose your menu, surrender your kitchen and just enjoy the night as we did with the five-course option. Cooking, serving, china and even washing up are all part of the excellent service.

 

And the standard is high as our wonderful chef had spent the day prepping, marinating sources and basically doing all those ‘cheffy bits’ that us workaday cooks either don’t have the skill, time or wit to do.

 

It’s a perfect treat for special occasions, our evening was to celebrate VIVA Christie’s birthday, but this could be divine for popping the question, celebrating a work triumph or just catching-up.

 

We started with some wonderful canapes, my faves being smoked mussels with caviar (yes this isn’t takeaway fodder, this is skilled cuisine) and a chilled gazpacho.

 

 

Our entrée was a beautifully tender seared tuna salad, cooked to perfection by the fabulous Sam, whilst there was a choice of mains as the table had been torn between rack of lamb and beef in a rich cherry sauce. Both were delicious, melt in the mouth good, but for me the lamb just nudged ahead, cooked tagine style with couscous.

 

 

Pudding was a trio of desserts including mango and lime mousse, lemon tartlet with raspberry, chargrilled pineapple with black pepper with matcha frozen yoghurt that were as pretty as a picture and tasted even better.

 

Finally, stuffed and deliciously content it was cheese and biscuits to wrap up a fabulous evening.

 

VIVA can’t recommend this enough, especially our chef Molly, so check them out on labelleassiette.co.uk, you won’t be disappointed.