Bodrum Peninsula — villas, gardens, terraces & rented venues
A private chef dinner is one household, cooked in the kitchen you are already using, plated as it comes off the stove. Catering is a different job: more people than the kitchen was designed for, equipment that has to be hired, and prep that starts the day before.
At your address, on the day — never produced off site and driven in
About fifty covers at a private address. Above that, somebody else
Per event, with the parts named — not per head
The service
Private Chef Bodrum caters events at the address you have already booked — villa parties, group dinners, corporate offsites, birthdays and boat-day lunches across the Bodrum Peninsula. The food is cooked at your property on the day, by the chef who read your enquiry. Nothing is produced in a kitchen somewhere else and driven to you.
The line
Past about twelve, this stops being one chef in a villa kitchen and becomes a production: hired hands, rented equipment, prep starting the day before. We tell you which side of that line your event sits on before we talk about menus — including the cases where the honest answer is that you need a full catering company and not us.
Scale
01
Not catering at all. It is the service described on the home page.
02
The first band where somebody else is booked for the day.
03
This is where equipment starts arriving and other people get involved.
04
Where the honest answer is somebody else.
Boundaries
The rest of this page is what we do. This part is what we do not.
A ceremony and reception is full catering work. If yours is at a hotel or a beach club, that venue feeds it, and it was probably booked months before anyone thought about the rest of the week. We take the other meals of that week instead, which is most of the food the group actually eats.
We cook where the food is eaten. We are not set up to produce food somewhere else and transport it, and we will not take a job that needs it — we will say so rather than book it. That is a handover, not a brush-off.
There is one chef. Extra hands are hired per date, equipment is rented per date, and both appear on your quote as what they are. If you ever see "our event staff" on this site, it is wrong: everyone else on the night was hired for your date.
The kitchen at the address sets the ceiling, and the ceiling is in the section above.
We cook without meat, without dairy, without gluten, without pork or beef, and without onion or garlic when a guest needs that. It is how the kitchen is run. It is not a certificate, and we will not describe it as halal or kosher certification. For a religious or ceremonial event where certified catering is the requirement — an Indian wedding week, for instance — a specialist caterer cooks the ceremonial food and we cook everything around it: the non-ceremonial meals, the environment they are eaten in, and the dietary planning that has to line up between two kitchens.
No client names, no photographs of events we did not cook, no count of parties catered, no testimonials. Every image on this site is a drawing for the same reason. If it is not ours, it is not on the page.
Venue
More than the occasion does. The same forty people are three different jobs depending on what they are standing on.
| Where | What changes |
|---|---|
| A villa kitchen and its terrace | The common case, and the one with the hardest ceiling. Two ovens and a utility room take a bigger party than a 60 cm domestic cooker and a fridge already full of a week's shopping. We ask for photographs before we quote. |
| A garden, or a hired venue | Space stops being the constraint and power, water and shade start being it. Almost everything gets rented, so the hire list matters more than the menu. |
| A boat day, eaten ashore or at anchor | Least room to work in and the least margin for a late delivery. If the whole event is on the water rather than at a house, the page you want is yacht and charter. |
| A house taken for a week | Not one event but a run of days, some of which matter and most of which are just dinner. Quoted as a set of days rather than as a single booking, because they are priced differently. |
Legend
There is no per-person figure on this page and there will not be one. Catering costs step up in blocks — a second pair of hands, a van of equipment, a service crew — so a headline number would be wrong more often than right. There is no single per-head number on our quote either. What is above is what is on it instead.
Method
In August we will not let food stand in the open, and that decides most of what follows. A chilled buffet loaded into a van in the morning and driven across the peninsula in summer traffic is the weakest version of this job. We do not do it, and the reason is the heat, not the logistics. Food that finishes at the property and goes out as it is cooked is the better answer on the merits, not a compromise forced by not owning a truck.
It also decides which service format works. A grill or fire station holds up best outdoors in heat: it cooks to order, it keeps moving, and it gives people something to stand around. A plated service works well up to the point where plating time outruns the heat in the plates, which is a question of how many hands are on. Canapés suit a standing party and need the most labour per mouthful, so they belong in the bands where somebody has been hired. A buffet is the format we are least willing to run in August heat; if you want one it needs shade, the right holding equipment and a short, disciplined window rather than an open table all evening.
The rest is the physical reality of the peninsula. Some villa drives will not take a full-size vehicle, and where yours will not, the last two hundred metres get carried by hand — planned rather than discovered on the afternoon. The shopping that takes an hour in May takes considerably longer in August, and what is on the market stalls the day before your event shapes part of the menu, because that is where the produce is coming from. We have been cooking private dinners on this peninsula since 2021; the background is on the about page.
Procedure
01
Date, the area or the address, how many people, and what you had pictured. Two lines is enough to start.
02
Photographs of the kitchen and the outside space, or an address we can look at. Where a vehicle can stop, what the oven and fridge are, where thirty people would sit, whether there is power outside.
03
Which band your event is, what it needs, what you will have to hire, and what it costs. Or a no, with the reason.
04
A working headcount a few days out. We arrive early, set up, cook, serve and clear the kitchen down. The person who read your first email is the one standing at the grill.
Do the permission question early — it is the one that ends plans. Ask the owner or the site management what your agreement says about visitor numbers, access, parking, deliveries and outdoor music late in the evening. They are the only ones who can tell you. We build the food timings backwards from whatever the answer is, so dinner does not land at the moment the sound has to go off.
Moving by two or three in the final week is normal and planned for. Moving by ten is a different event with different staffing, so it needs to be said as soon as it is known.
On price
The chef's day, any hired hands, and ingredients for your headcount. Rented equipment is billed to you directly by the hire company and is not marked up by us. Send the date, the address and the headcount and you get one real number with the parts named — or a straight no, including the reason.
Send the briefEnquiry
It goes straight to privatechefbodrum@gmail.com. You will get a straight answer about whether it works, including when the answer is no.
Notes
Around twelve, and the number moves with the kitchen. Up to about twelve, one chef cooks in the kitchen you are already using and plates go out as they are finished. Past that a second pair of hands is hired, the menu shifts to courses that finish in batches, and equipment starts being rented. Past roughly fifty at a private address it is a full catering company's job rather than ours, and we will say so.
In the kitchen, at the property, on the day — with hired hands and rented holding equipment, and only if the kitchen and the outside space can take it. There is no off-site production kitchen behind this and there will be no claim of one. That limit is deliberate: it keeps food out of a van in August heat, and it is why very large jobs get handed to a company set up for them.
Per event, built from what the event needs: the chef's day, any hired hands, and ingredients for your headcount. Rented equipment is billed to you directly by the hire company and is not marked up by us. Catering costs do not scale smoothly — staff and kit step up in blocks — so a headline per-head figure is wrong more often than it is right. Send the brief and you get one real number with the parts named.
Tables, chairs, linen, glassware, crockery beyond what the villa owns, lighting, heaters, and a marquee if you want cover. All of it rents locally and is billed by the hire company, not by us. And yes — you get a written list with quantities, because quantity is the part people get wrong. Forty guests standing get through more glasses than forty guests seated. Order for standing.
No. You buy the alcohol yourself, at your own cost, with no markup from us — it works out cheaper and it keeps our quote about food. A bar and someone to pour go on the hire and staffing list, arranged separately. We will plan the food timings around when that bar opens, which matters more to how the evening goes than the menu does.
Ask the owner or the site management before you book anything, including us. The questions are whether the agreement caps visitors as well as overnight guests, and whether access, parking or delivery vehicles are restricted at any hour. Only they can answer them. It is a five-minute question that occasionally ends a plan, and it is far better answered now than on the afternoon a hire van is turned away at the gate with your tables in it.
Yes. The meals for whoever is in the house, quoted as a set of days rather than as one event. Some nights a chef, some nights not. Tell us which of those days matter and which are just dinner, because they are priced differently. The wedding day itself is not ours and we do not bid for it.
Weeks for August. There is one chef and high summer fills early, so August Saturdays go first. Outside high season a week or two is usually enough. Numbers drifting by two or three in the final week is normal and planned for. A jump of ten changes the staffing and the equipment, so tell us the moment you know rather than on the day.