dining
Nobody publishes their rates
Of every private and personal chef we have listed, exactly one gives any indication of price — and it is a symbol, not a number.
One of seven listed chefs publishes any pricing signal at all, and it is a dollar-sign band rather than a rate. Ask about the billing unit and who pays for food before you ask about the menu.
We have now compiled seven private and personal chefs across the Tri-State, each from their own website. Between them they publish menus, service areas, credentials, cuisines, dietary specialisms, kitchen philosophies and, in one case, a full list of the counties they will drive to.
One publishes anything about price. Chef Red Raymundo’s site carries a
$$$$ band — buried in the structured data rather than stated on the page — and
even that is a symbol, not a rate.
That is not an accusation. It is close to universal practice in this trade, for reasons that are defensible. It is also the single biggest source of friction between a household that wants to hire a chef and a chef who wants to be hired.
Why chefs don’t post numbers
The work genuinely varies. Cooking three days a week for two people who eat simply is a different job from cooking twice a month for a family of six with two allergies and a standing Friday dinner party. Groceries can double a bill and are sometimes billed through, sometimes not. Travel, equipment, whether the kitchen has a second oven — all of it moves the number.
Post a rate and you spend your week explaining why it does not apply. Post nothing and every enquiry starts with a conversation, which is where the chef would rather start anyway.
What it costs the person hiring
You cannot compare. You cannot budget. And you cannot tell, from the outside, whether you are looking at a service you can afford or one that will quote three times what you expected.
The practical result is that people do not enquire — not because the price is wrong, but because they cannot tell whether it might be, and nobody enjoys finding out by email.
Price the job yourself before you ask
You will not get a number off a website, so bring your own structure to the first conversation. Three questions do most of the work:
What is the billing unit? Per event, per cook date, per week, per month? This single answer changes the shape of everything else, and chefs will answer it readily.
Who buys the food, and is it billed through at cost? This is the largest uncontrolled variable in the whole arrangement. A chef who shops for you is providing real value and it is entirely reasonable for it to appear on the invoice — but you want to know which it is before the first bill, not after.
How many portions, and for how many days? “Dinner twice a week” and “meals prepped for five days” are wildly different quantities of food and labour, and people routinely say the first while meaning the second.
A trial is worth more than a quote
Fred Cottineau offers a free in-home trial — two dishes, with the client covering the cost of the ingredients. That is a more useful instrument than any published rate. You find out whether you like the food, whether you like having someone in your kitchen, and how the person works, for the price of the groceries.
If a chef you are considering offers something similar, take it. If they do not, ask for a single paid trial cook date before committing to a standing arrangement. Almost everyone will say yes, and the ones who will not have told you something useful.
What we will and won’t publish
ChefListed records a price indication only where the chef publishes one. We do not estimate, we do not average, and we do not carry ranges collected from booking platforms and presented as though the chef said them.
Which means most profiles here say nothing about money. That is not an omission on our part — it is an accurate reflection of what this market chooses to disclose.
