La Belle Assiette is an online booking service for private chefs. It invites people to “rediscover the pleasure of entertaining at home” by leaving the cooking and cleaning to professionals while freeing up time focus on having a good time at home with their guests.
Kemey and I recently took La Belle Assiette up on an offer to review a new chef and host a dinner party in our home. We had a lovely time and an excellent meal.
Kicking off our festive season fun, we had another couple come round on a Saturday night two weeks before Christmas. About two hours before our guests arrived, our Belle Assiette chef came by and set up shop in our kitchen. The chef, Francesca Mule from Sicily, took to our tiny moderately well equipped kitchen in no time. Aside from the tantalising aromas coming from her cooking, we could barely tell she was there.
Francesca’s menu was gorgeous. Our evening commenced with bruschetta and aperitivi while catching up in our living area while Francesca plated our starter courses at the dining room table. Once sat at the table, her dish – aubergine rolls stuffed with mortadella and scamorza with tomato sauce – pleased all our palates immensely Francesca’s main course – paccheri with pistachio pesto, cherry tomato and crispy speck – was a blockbuster. That pistachio pesto tasted so rich. Wow. It was one of the best dishes of the year for me – and made right there in my own home, in my kitchen!
Kemey had vegetarian versions of all the dishes and was equally glowing in her comments about the meal.
Dessert was a simple and scrumptious cream of mascarpone and buffalo ricotta cheese, fresh fruit and Savoiardi biscuits.
Kemey and I both love having folks over and entertaining at home. Neither of us gets too excited about cleaning up afterward. There was nothing to clean except our wine glasses still in hand when Francesca said goodbye. We even placed some leftover sauce in the fridge for us.
Photography courtesy of La Belle Assiette
All La Belle Assiette partner chefs and caterers are hand selected and then
validated to ensure quality to our customers. Their experiences range from graduating from the best culinary schools, training at top Michelin starred restaurants, owning their own catering businesses to competing on MasterChef. Our chef for the night, Francesca Mule, is a brilliant choice of chef for a flavourful Italian inspired dinner at home. I would love to have her over to cook for me again. Though I would be open to trying the cuisine of different chefs as well.
Prices for booking a chef via La Belle Assiette start at £39/person. Find out more at labelleassiette.co.uk.
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