CHEFIN is a private chef service connecting you with vetted chefs across Chicago and the suburbs. Your chef plans the menu, brings the ingredients, cooks in your kitchen and cleans up before leaving. That can be a Gold Coast apartment, a Lincoln Park greystone, an office in the Loop, or a house on the North Shore. You pick the dining style. We find the chef whose cooking suits your menu, your dietary needs and the occasion, then you and your chef personalize the menu 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 or a personal chef in Chicago is the same call here: tell us the night and we match you. Our chefs in Chicago come out of the city’s restaurant kitchens, so the culinary standard is the part you do not have to worry about. Finding a good chef in Chicago 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 groceries, 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 guest count, ask the concierge. Prices can shift over the December and New Year peaks and for last-minute booking.

What every package includes:

• A vetted private chef, matched to your menu and dietary restrictions
• Menu design and revisions with your chef, customized 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, 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

Chicago has one of the strongest restaurant kitchens-to-private-chefs pipelines in the country, and it shows in the range. Steak and chophouse cooking is the obvious strength, but the city also runs on serious Italian, Mexican, Polish, Greek, Korean and Vietnamese cooking, and our chefs cover more than twenty cuisines between them. Several came out of Chicago fine dining before moving to in-home work, which is why the flavors on the plate hold up against a restaurant.

The Midwest supplies more than corn.
Prime beef and dry-aged steak, Great Lakes whitefish and walleye, Michigan cherries and stone fruit through summer, Wisconsin cheese and butter, and Green City Market produce from May through October. Chefs shop the freshest seasonal produce close to the day rather than working from a fixed list, so the culinary experience reflects what is actually good that week.

The seasons decide how you host.
Summer is short and spent outside: rooftops, decks, back yards, and menus built around the grill. Fall is the strongest produce season. Then comes the long cold stretch from November to March, which is exactly when hosting at home beats a reservation, a coat check and a cab in the sleet. Winter is peak season for a private chef here, and the search data agrees: January is one of the busiest months of the year.

The kitchens vary enormously.
Chicago runs on pre-war apartments with galley kitchens, greystones and two-flats with the kitchen at the back, new towers with islands and a lake view, and suburban houses built for entertaining. A Lincoln Park galley and a Winnetka kitchen are two different evenings to cook. Tell your concierge which one you have.