Diwali 2024: Fancy a private chef for your house party?

Often thought of as a service that exclusively caters to the rich and famous, private and intimate dining experiences are growing in popularity, as curious diners seek out meals beyond the traditional restaurant setup. These experiences are vastly different from private catering, where diners are made to pick from a predetermined (and often predictable) menu where truffle, burrata and avocado reign supreme. It’s a subtle difference, but private dining differs from supper clubs and other experimental dining experiences where the focus is more on the chef and storytelling with food. Private dining offers a blank slate, from menu to decor to format. For some, that’s terrifying. But for others, the freedom to eat outside the box is thrilling.

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The private dining arena has been a space that trained culinary professionals have long overlooked. But thanks to the efforts of chefs such as Harsh Dixit, more young chefs graduating from culinary schools are venturing into the scene. Before he was actor Ranbir Kapoor’s private chef, Mumbai-based Dixit ran the hugely popular but short-lived meal prep service Six Pack Meals, which put together wholesome, flavourful and calorie-counted meals for subscribers. He is now using his background in nutrition science to design and deliver stellar meal experiences for curious eaters. He’s taking the comfort of a homemade meal and adding a layer of chef-iness to the experience via The Private Chefs Club, which he founded two years ago. “For us in India, the ultimate luxury is a hot, home-cooked meal. I’m just bringing some serious knife skills to that party," says Dixit. Those knife skills are being used to create everything from a caviar-on-dosa khakhra snack to a kimchi soda cocktail, based on inputs by guests.

For other chefs with restaurants and kitchens of their own to experiment in, private dining has offered a chance to do something off-book. Chef Manu Chandra of LUPA in Bengaluru used his years of experience weaving together intimate dinners for special guests when he launched Single Thread Catering. “Step into any social circle in any city and you realise that just about every party feels, looks and behaves the same. I think these experiences have been able to give clients an opportunity to create something more heartening and exciting," says Chandra, while explaining how smaller meals like these have to be planned from the point of view of what the home kitchen can deliver. “It’s a feast alright, but with a certain homemade quality," he says. For a recent booking, Chandra and his team sourced chillies from across the country to create a meal that highlighted each of them in different ways for a “chilli lover".

According to Dixit, diners from across age and income groups are opting for private chefs, even outside of India’s mega cities. Both Dixit and Chandra tell me they can barely keep up with the demand coming from Surat, Ahmedabad, Vadodara and Chennai. Dixit is now in the process of setting up a studio in Hyderabad.

“On one hand, it is very aspirational, but on the other hand, the access to good chefs has widened. We still have a culture of calling khansamas home for special occasions, but more diners from across the country are realising that it’s possible to experiment a bit more freely," says chef Vicky Ratnani, who regularly puts together private meals for diners in Delhi and Ludhiana. This, says Ratnani, is allowing for a “cross pollination of cuisine ideas". For a recent dinner, Ratnani made his version of a butter chicken with romesco, a Catalonian tomato sauce.

Hailing from Lucknow, chef-consultant Taiyaba Ali pulls from her Awadhi heritage to recreate special dishes that blend her culinary heritage with modern cooking techniques for guests across the country. For a recent wedding party in Bengaluru, Ali created a shahi tukda crème brulée, a nod to the groom’s love for the Indian dessert, as well as a nihari puff and a choux pastry with savoury water chestnut and chilli chutney.

In Aurangabad, chef Mohib Farooqui runs Accentuate Food Lab, a cosy eight-seater private dining space where he serves inventive creations of his own, like a thecha capellini and creates customised meals. Recently, for a vegetarian fine-dining experience, Farooqui and his team crafted a Cantalupo & Prosciutto course, using cantaloupe to replicate the dry-aged ham.

Having moved from Denmark to Aurangabad to be closer to his ailing mother, Farooqui didn’t have enough funds to launch a full-scale restaurant. Taking a leap of faith, he opened a small private dining space in his residential building. The format, Farooqui says, allows him to balance multiple projects at the same time.

With the festive season here, these chefs are juggling calendars and fielding requests to create exciting meals outside of a traditional restaurant setup.

Apart from delivering an exciting culinary experience, Dixit and his team are attempting to “fix" the relationship we have with our food, using his learnings and experience running his healthy meal service, Six Pack Meals. “We’ve come to associate bingeing and over-indulgence with celebration and having a good time. Because we calculate the protein-to-fat-to-carb ratio of every meal we prepare, we’re trying to encourage people to eat more mindfully," says Dixit.

This season, if you’re looking for a different way to bring your loved ones together, consider a private dining experience. After all, what’s more festive than a plate of food that’s been thoughtfully prepared?

Word of Mouth is a monthly column on dining out and dining well. Smitha Menon is a food journalist and the host of the Big Food Energy podcast. She posts at @smitha.men on Instagram.

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