Personal Chef at Home in Alfama

About our service in Alfama

Working in Castelo, Sé, Mouraria or the steps of São Miguel begins before the kitchen: it begins in the street. There is no pulling up at the door, and the shopping comes up on foot, over narrow, uneven steps. So we plan the volume carefully and buy to the exact measure of the menu, with no surplus that would then have nowhere to go. Inside, the picture repeats itself: a two-burner hob, a small oven or none, a half-height fridge and a short worktop that has to serve for chopping, plating and parking dirty pans all at once. In those conditions long frying is out of the question, especially with no extractor, and the smell would cling to the house long after the guests had left. What works well here is something else: pot dishes that gain from time, fish cooked simply, vegetables prepared in advance and finished at the last minute, puddings that need no oven. A dinner for four or six in an Alfama flat is done without hurrying, with the preparation chained so the worktop is never blocked. We serve at the table where there is room for it, or take the plates straight from the hob to the table, which is what usually happens in these houses. We also work for people managing holiday lets in the quarter who want meals left ready for guests, cooked in that flat's own kitchen and labelled by day. The rules of the service are the same everywhere and worth repeating. We have no production kitchen and no central base: everything is made in the house where we are going to serve, with the equipment that is there. We neither supply nor serve alcoholic drinks, as we hold no drinks licence. And when someone at the table has a serious allergy, we say frankly that in a domestic kitchen, shared with the people who live there, the absence of cross-contamination cannot be assured.

What we do as a personal chef at home in Alfama:

Services Included

• Dinners for a few guests in kitchens with very little space
• Menus chosen for a two-burner hob and no extractor
• Meals left ready and labelled for the days that follow
• Shopping done by us in the local shops, to the measure of the menu
• Washing-up and worktop dealt with before we leave

Areas We Serve

We cover the whole historic quarter: Castelo, Mouraria, Sé, Santa Apolónia and the Escadinhas de São Miguel.

Work Gallery