Having a chef cook in the house you have rented sounds like an extravagance and turns out to be the simplest evening of the holiday. It is also easy to get slightly wrong, almost always because of one piece of information nobody thought to exchange.

This is what we wish every guest knew before the first message. Much of it applies to anyone you hire, not only to us.

What you are actually booking

The phrase covers several different evenings, and the first useful thing is to work out which one you want.

  • A single dinner. One evening, a full meal, the chef arrives in the afternoon and leaves when the washing-up is done. The most common request by a distance.
  • A cooking class that becomes dinner. You make part of the meal, then sit down and eat it. Usually the better choice for a group with children or for a first night, because it fills an afternoon as well as an evening.
  • Several days. A chef for a week, cooking dinners and sometimes lunches. Makes sense for a large group or a villa a long way from restaurants.
  • An event. A birthday, an anniversary, a wedding. A different order of planning, and it starts months earlier.

Cost follows the number of guests, the number of courses and the distance, and is quoted per person rather than as a flat fee almost everywhere. Ask what the quote includes before comparing two of them, because one that excludes the shopping is not cheaper, it is incomplete.

What the kitchen actually needs

Less than people fear. A working hob, an oven that holds its temperature, a sink, a fridge with space in it, and a surface big enough to put food down on. That is the honest minimum.

What causes trouble is not a small kitchen. It is a surprise.

  • A villa advertised with a professional kitchen that turns out to have two gas rings and a microwave.
  • A fridge already filled with a week's shopping, leaving nowhere to put anything.
  • An oven with a broken thermostat, which nobody discovers until something is in it.
  • A single small pan and no large pot, in a house sleeping ten.
  • No hot water in the kitchen tap, which is more common in converted trulli than you would think.

None of these cancel an evening. All of them change how it is planned, and we would much rather know at the beginning than at six o'clock. A photograph of the kitchen is worth more than any written description, so send one. Nobody minds, and everybody who does it gets a better dinner.

Outdoor kitchens and wood ovens

Many masserie have one, and they are a pleasure to cook in. Two practical notes: a wood oven needs two to three hours to come up to temperature and somebody has to light it, so tell us it exists rather than revealing it on the night. And an outdoor hob in August is considerably better than an indoor one, for everybody.

Tell us about the people, not only the number

Twelve guests can mean twelve adults at a long table until one in the morning, or eight adults and four children who need to eat at seven and then disappear into a film. Those are different evenings and they want different food, different timing and a different shape of service.

What genuinely helps, in rough order of usefulness:

  • How many adults and how many children, with rough ages. A four-year-old and a fourteen-year-old are not the same guest.
  • Allergies and intolerances, all of them, including the mild ones and the ones people are slightly embarrassed about. A shellfish allergy changes the shopping, not the menu on the night, but only if we know before we shop.
  • Vegetarians and vegans. Apulian cooking is unusually kind to both, so this is rarely a constraint, but it should be known in advance rather than discovered at the table.
  • Anything anybody actively dislikes. Offal, anchovy, very spicy food, raw fish. Saying so is not rudeness, it is the opposite.
  • Whether this is a celebration, and whether it is a surprise. A birthday changes the shape of the meal and the timing of the sweet course; a proposal changes rather more.
  • What you have already eaten this week. If you have had orecchiette three times, we will do something else.

How the evening runs

Before

We arrive two to three hours before you sit down, with the shopping already done. Most of the preparation happens quietly while you are still by the pool or coming back from the beach, and the kitchen remains yours until the middle of the afternoon.

If you want to watch, or if the children want to help with something, say so. It is usually more fun than either side expects and it costs nothing.

During

Dinner runs long by design. A typical evening is an aperitivo with something to pick at, then a first course, a main, and something sweet, spread across two or three hours, because that is how people eat here and because the food is better when it arrives unhurried.

We serve and clear. Between courses the kitchen is busy and the table is not interrupted, which is the whole point of having someone else do it.

After

We wash up. The kitchen is left as we found it, and this is the part guests are most relieved about, more than any individual dish.

If you want us gone by a particular hour, say so at the start and it will happen without awkwardness. If you want us to stay and talk for a while, that also happens, and often.

The menu is a conversation, not a catalogue

We do not hand out a fixed list of set menus to choose from, and we are slightly suspicious of anyone who does.

Instead we ask what you like, what you have eaten already, whether anybody is tired of pasta, and what the market had that morning. That last point is not a flourish. Two days of bad weather changes what the boats bring in. A hot week brings the tomatoes forward and finishes the artichokes early. Building a menu around what is genuinely good on the day is the difference between a nice dinner and a dinner people still describe a year later.

What this means in practice is that the menu is agreed in outline beforehand and finalised the morning of. If a fixed printed menu weeks in advance matters to you, say so and we will do it, but you will eat slightly worse.

Practical things worth settling early

Where you will eat

Outside is wonderful and needs a plan B. An August thunderstorm arrives in fifteen minutes and leaves in twenty, and a table that cannot be moved indoors quickly becomes everybody's problem. Look at the space in daylight and decide where the second option is.

Also, light. Many villa terraces are beautiful and nearly dark after nine. Candles or a couple of lamps make more difference to an evening than an extra course.

Plates, glasses, and the table itself

Rented houses are frequently equipped for six, whatever the sleeping capacity says. Count the plates, the wine glasses and the chairs before the day rather than at eight in the evening. If something is missing we can usually bring it, with notice.

Wine

We can bring it or you can. Puglia produces very good wine at prices that surprise people, and it is worth drinking local here rather than defaulting to what you know from home. If you tell us the menu, we can tell you what to buy, and any decent enoteca in the nearest town will do the rest.

Access, and finding the house

Some masserie and trulli sit at the end of an unmarked dirt track, and satellite navigation cheerfully sends people to the wrong one. A pinned location, sent by message, saves an hour and a certain amount of swearing. Gate codes too.

Time of day, and the heat

In July and August nothing much should be asked of anyone before seven in the evening. Plan dinner for half past eight or nine and the whole evening works better, including for the children, who will have had a swim and a nap.

Questions to ask anyone before you book

Including us. If the answers are vague, keep looking.

  1. Who is actually cooking, and will that person be there on the night? Agencies sometimes sell an evening and assign a chef later.
  2. Is the shopping included, and who chooses it? The difference between a quote that includes ingredients and one that does not is large.
  3. What happens to the washing-up? A chef who leaves it is leaving you the worst hour of the evening.
  4. What is the cancellation arrangement if the group shrinks? Groups do shrink, usually because of a flight.
  5. Can the menu change if the market disappoints? A yes here is a sign of someone who shops properly.
  6. Are you insured and registered? An awkward question with a one-word answer, and worth asking once.

Somebody who answers all six without hesitating has done this many times. Somebody who avoids the fourth has been burned before, and somebody who avoids the third has told you exactly how the night ends.

How far ahead to ask

One to two weeks is comfortable for a dinner. In July and August, when the whole region is booked, three or four weeks is safer. For a wedding or a large celebration, months rather than weeks, and for anything involving a marquee, more still.

Ask anyway, even late. Sometimes the answer is yes, and when it is no we usually know somebody.

One last thing

The evenings that work best are not the ones with the most elaborate menu. They are the ones where somebody told us, early on, something true about the group: that it is the first holiday since a difficult year, that the grandmother is turning eighty, that the teenagers will eat nothing green under any circumstances.

Tell us who is coming. The food follows from there.