Home-Cooked Cuisine

Steve Marzolf

	Chef Mark Tafoya

He's putting in hours at the office, but his galley kitchen uptown has become the set of an intricate ballet performed by personal chef Mark Tafoya.

Braised beef bubbles into a plume of Moroccan spices, and steam sizzles from a deglazed pork pan.

Tafoya has been at work for about an hour and a half, and he's entering what he refers to as "prime time," which means all real estate has evaporated from the oven, stovetop, counter and cutting boards.

Once the smoke clears, a $100 trip to Whole Foods has been transformed into a week of fresh food, all available at the touch of a microwave button.

Hectic lives, nutrition concerns and a growing number of entrepreneurial cooks have created a boom in the personal chef business.

According to a study by the American Personal and Private Chef Association, the 72,000 Americans employing personal chefs will grow to nearly 300,000 over the next five years.

How It Works

"The food-service industry is changing," says Candy Wallace, executive director of the APPCA. "For decades, culinary schools only existed like factories to churn out restaurant line cooks. We can set up a program for individual clients that would provide Monday-through-Friday meal support for busy professionals who don't want to eat out of jars, cans and boxes."

A weekly visit from a personal chef stocks the fridge with enough fare for single professionals or busy families to dine on until the next appointment, without the hassles and benefit costs of a live-in private chef.

Payment schemes vary, from charging by the serving, compiling packages of meals for families or just tallying hourly rates with the cost of groceries.

Tafoya's single clients pay $300 to $400 for a week's worth of meals. A family of five can cash in on the economy of scale inherent in cook time and grocery costs, and eat for $500 to $600 per week.

Cooking at a Clip

Tafoya's day starts with an animated trip to the market at 11 a.m. He bills clients half his hourly rate for shopping, and not a penny's wasted as he shoots his cart through open spaces, grabbing granola or a bunch of carrots as he rolls by.

Attacking the store with a list of items tailored to the shelves' layout, he's exacting about the details, from the quality of ingredients to how they're packed in the insulated bag slung over his shoulder.

"Is your flank steak butterflied or pounded?" he asks the meat clerk before having a pork loin cut to his specifications.

"Some of the checkers know me and pack things the way I want. They're like, 'It's the weirdo chef!'" Tafoya quips.

	Multitasking Meals

The cooking itself, carefully choreographed to keep burners free and progress moving, takes two or three hours and ends with seven dishes cooling in microwave-safe containers.

Once the food's temperature has dropped enough to keep condensation from forming ice crystals in the freezer, Tafoya slaps on lids with labels detailing the contents, preparation date, number of servings and reheating instructions.

"What most personal chefs do is prepare dishes so they'll be at their optimal peak when you reheat it," Tafoya says.

"A chicken breast will be a little pink in the center, and we'll take it off the heat and cool it as quickly as possible. When [the clients] take it out, defrost it and heat it up in the oven, it'll reach that moment of perfection as if it had just been cooked," he explains.

After Tafoya scrubs the kitchen and tosses a bulging trash bag, no marks of his fragrant culinary journey exist beyond a fridge full of dinners and the upcoming week's menu left on the table.

Convenience Food

Beth Dominguez, who had employed chefs while vacationing before signing up for the service at home, resisted at first when her banker husband suggested it as a way to free up her time amid raising three children.

"At first I took it as kind of a cut, like, 'Oh, he doesn't like my cooking,'" she says. "But I saw I was in a culinary rut. I was doing the same things over and over again, and I didn't have time to find new recipes and do the shopping and all those steps."

While Dominguez had trepidations about letting a stranger into her kitchen, the lengthy initial consultation set her at ease.

Going through four pages of meats, herbs, spices and every other imaginable ingredient, the entire family created a playbook for what would -- and wouldn't -- touch down on the dinner table.

Still, the sight of her kitchen converted into a professional line posed a shock.

"It was covered," she says. "He was just so busy in there, completing a week's worth of food in a few hours. I'm used to that now, but at first, I [thought], 'Oh, my God. I think I'm just going to find something else to do right now.'"

Now five months into the service, Dominguez has found she's not only eating healthier food tailored to her tastes, but she's saving as much as $100 a week that had been devoured by takeout orders -- not to mention her kids can eat their favorite dish whenever they want: steamed artichokes, of all things.

Hard-Boiled Advice

Because anyone with a set of chef's knives can purport to be a professional, a good match requires some careful consideration.

Wallace says certification of safe food handling is imperative, whether it's through the National Restaurant Association's ServSafe program or another course mandated by your local government. Every personal chef should be able to provide documentation for this.

	Five-Star Food at Home

Any professional coming into your home should also carry insurance, whether it's purchased by the chef or falls under the umbrella of a professional organization. APPCA members, for example, carry $2 million in general liability coverage.

"That's peace of mind for the client and the chef," Wallace says. "You don't want to walk into the client's house carrying a food case and knock over that family-favorite Ming vase."

Beyond physical and financial security, much of choosing a chef falls to personal needs and chemistry.

Bryan Davis, a personal chef and high-end caterer working in and around Washington, D.C., says communication is the key ingredient to the whole process, from choosing a chef to tweaking the service over the years.

"When I first started out," Davis says, "I was very adamant that after each cook date my clients send me an email about the meals. Now ... they don't pick menus anymore; they just get what I decide to make them. It took a lot of communication in the beginning, but now I know how each different client likes to eat. That's what they pay me for."

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