It starts with whatever the Ferry Building market had that morning. CHEFIN is a private chef service connecting you with vetted chefs across San Francisco and the Bay Area, and the menu gets built from there — in a Noe Valley Victorian, a Mission flat, a place down the Peninsula, or a SoMa office. Your chef plans the menu, sources premium ingredients, cooks on-site and cleans up before leaving. A tasting menu, a dinner party in a narrow city kitchen, or a night in for people who eat out constantly and want one that beats it. You pick the dining style. We match you with the chef whose cooking suits your menu, your dietary needs and the occasion, then you and your chef shape it together. A concierge stays with it from the first message to the last plate cleared.

Cocktail and canapé packages start from $65 a head, three-course fine dining from $195, tax included. A private chef for one evening or a personal chef on a regular basis: either way, it starts with the same call. Finding a good chef in San Francisco is the easy part. What sits behind them is the rest of it.

You pay per person, and the rate depends on the dining style and how many are coming. Cocktail and canapé packages start from $65 a head, family-style share plates at $165, three-course plated fine dining at $195, and five-course at $245. All inclusive of tax, with nothing added at checkout. There is no call-out fee, no ingredient surcharge and no cleaning charge either. The number you are quoted covers the chef, the premium ingredients, the cooking, the service, and the kitchen left the way they found it.

Each package page shows its current rate. For an exact figure on your date and number of guests, ask the concierge. Prices can shift over the holidays and for last-minute booking.

What every package includes:

• A vetted private chef, matched to your menu and dietary needs
• Menu planning and revisions with your chef, tailored to your preferences
• Premium ingredients, sourced and shopped for by your chef
• Cooking on site in your kitchen, arriving ahead of service
• Full kitchen and dining area cleanup
• Concierge support from booking through to the evening
• All taxes: the displayed rate is the final rate
• Public liability coverage, background checks on every chef, and payment held in trust until after your event

What sits outside the per-person price:

• Wait staff and bar staff: available as an add-on
• Drinks, tableware, glassware and cutlery: can be arranged as add-ons

San Francisco is where Californian cooking was defined, and its chefs still work that way: produce first, technique second, nothing on the plate that does not need to be there. Beyond that our chefs cover more than twenty cuisines — the city’s Cantonese, Vietnamese, Indian, Mexican and Japanese cooking is not a side note, it is the mainstream — and several came out of Bay Area restaurant kitchens.

The produce is the best in the country and everyone knows it.

Ferry Plaza and the Alemany market, Dungeness crab from November, Half Moon Bay seafood, Point Reyes cheese, Marin oysters, and Central Valley stone fruit through summer. Our chefs buy from the suppliers and growers they have chosen themselves, shopping close to the day rather than working from a fixed list.
Wine pairings come from an hour north.

Napa Cabernet, Sonoma Pinot and Chardonnay, Russian River and Anderson Valley. A San Francisco chef pairing locally has more range to work with than a chef almost anywhere else.
The kitchens are small and the views are not.

San Francisco runs on Victorians with narrow galley kitchens, Edwardian flats, new-build condos with an island and a bridge view, and Peninsula homes built for entertaining. A Noe Valley galley and an Atherton kitchen are two different evenings to cook. Tell your concierge which one you have.