Who can Hire a Personal Chef?

The holidays are upon us, and for some, it means it’s time to go out and buy the same old, same old gift cards and items for friends and family. Or does it? Rather than gifting the exact same thing every year or what everyone else is giving, why not give your family and friends a new gift experience that they can enjoy right in the comfort of their own home. You may find that you have started a new trend of gift-giving in your circle.  

CookinGenie Gift Card for Any Occasion

This year, it could be a great idea to consider giving a CookinGenie gift card to your friends and family for any special occasion. As much as we’ve moved back to more normal events in life, such as finally being able to gather to celebrate the holidays and important life milestones, there are still things in life that aren’t back to how it was before the pandemic. For example, family members with severe health conditions often don’t get to go out like they used to previously. In addition, many businesses are struggling with keeping up with demand due to supply chain issues and finding help. 

Reasons to Gift a CookinGenie Experience 

1. It’s something that’s fun and unique. You can almost guarantee that your gift will be memorable and one-of-a-kind (unless there’s another CookinGenie lover in your circle of friends and family). 
2. You’ll provide the gift recipient with a relaxing dining experience that they can enjoy whenever they need a night off. You’ll gift them a night of no cooking, dishes, or shopping. 
3. A CookinGenie experience lets your gift recipient get a restaurant-quality meal at home without the hassle of visiting a restaurant. No looking for a parking spot or waiting on a table. 
4. Not to mention that gifting a CookinGenie gift card may even result in the recipient giving you one in the future or inviting you to a gathering where they use a CookinGenie personal chef. 

CookinGenie Experience 

A CookinGenie gift card is the perfect gift this year as it offers a new experience while still being practical. Who doesn’t want to have a personal chef experience? You’ll be gifting them an evening of relaxation and great food. A CookinGenie experience starts by selecting a chef and a menu that the chef will prepare at the recipient’s home. Once they’ve decided on the details and checked out with their gift card code, the fun begins. The chef will shop for the fresh ingredients to cook that evening. Once they arrive at the house, they’ll start preparing the meal using the home’s pots, pans, and other necessary kitchen tools. The food will be served right away to get the freshest experience possible. After the chef is finished cooking the selected dishes, they’ll handle the kitchen clean-up leaving the gift card recipient the opportunity to relax and enjoy their meal without worrying about handling the clean-up at all.  

A Gift That Fits All Occasions 

Some ideas include: 

• Special days: a CookinGenie gift card is the perfect gift to celebrate special days in your loved one’s life. They can get a special meal prepared specially for them in their home. 
• Newlyweds: Couples that are newly married can enjoy a romantic dinner at home with their personal chef from CookinGenie. 

• New Parents: Bringing home a newborn can be a busy time for first-time parents or even more experienced parents. A gift card from CookinGenie can give them a meal where they can indulge in some self-care while also balancing the new task of caring for a baby.  
• Anniversaries: Celebrate any anniversary with a fresh meal prepared for you in your own home. Spark that romantic feeling for wedding anniversaries or have a congratulatory dinner for work or other anniversaries.  
• Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve: Family get-togethers can be a lot of work. Why not make it a little easier on your family and friends by providing them a CookinGenie gift card that they can use for a special holiday meal.  
• Birthday celebration: Everyone knows that one person that ends up cooking their own meal for their birthday. Or they choose to go out to a restaurant usually because they don’t have someone to cook for them or their loved one isn’t gifted in the kitchen. Why not change it up and give them a CookinGenie gift card? 
• Newly moved: Moving to a new place can be a task that most people don’t relish. Why not give them the opportunity to relax with a personal chef for an evening?  

• Buy a new house: Celebrating the purchase of a new home is always fun. Make your housewarming gift one that will delight their tastebuds. 
• Bright light in the darkness: Some events in life are hard to go through. The loss of a loved one, medical diagnosis, or other adverse events may not need to be celebrated, but you can do something to help. Sometimes, a meal can be precisely what’s required to give comfort and hope for the future. 
• Sometimes it’s just fun to give a gift. 

How to Gift a Personal Chef Experience from CookinGenie 

Giving a gift card for CookinGenie couldn’t be easier. Visit the CookinGenie gift card page. Once there, you’ll see a variety of gift card categories to find the perfect design to fit your gifting needs. You can have the gift card emailed or texted to the recipient with your personalized information. You can also print up the gift card to hand over in person. We offer a feature where you can add a message. Then, they’ll be able to use the gift card online to select a personal chef and dishes they’d like to enjoy. During checkout, they’ll need to apply the gift card code. That’s it.  

Questions or concerns about gifting a personal chef experience from CookinGenie? We’re happy to go over anything you’re not sure about or help you with purchasing a CookinGenie gift card for your gifts. Let us help you gift an experience rather than a boring gift card this year and for years to come. 

You’ve got a dinner party coming up, and you’re going through all of the different options you have available to you. However, if you’re not considering hiring a personal chef to handle your dinner party’s menu, you may be doing yourself a disservice. Learn more about the complete process of hiring a personal chef for your upcoming dinner party, and you’ll see why it’s an excellent choice for you. 

Reasons to Hire a Personal Chef 

Hiring a personal chef for your dinner party may seem like an unusual idea, but it’s actually a great idea. There are a lot of benefits that come from hiring a personal chef to handle your dinner party menu. No one wants to stay in the kitchen when you have guests that you want to mingle with during the party. A personal chef makes it possible to get a fantastic meal that’s hot and fresh without you having to slave away in the kitchen trying to get everything done will be a host. Your night to spend time with friends and family doesn’t have to be preempted by you being in the kitchen all night long when you sign up for a personal chef. Plus, you get more services than you may be expecting when hiring a personal chef. 

Services you get by hiring a personal chef 

Hiring a personal chef means more than just having the cooking completed for you. It means you don’t have to worry about menu planning. You can select the menu you want without having to think about ingredients. Your personal chef will handle all of the shopping for you. You won’t have to set foot in a grocery store to pick up the ingredients for your gourmet dinner. No worrying about what time you need to start one course to get to the next on time. Your personal chef has it covered, and everything will be perfect at the start of dinner until it’s time for everyone to enjoy their dessert. Plus, clean-up can be a drag after a party, especially in the kitchen. Hiring a personal chef means that they’ll handle the clean-up of all the items that they used to prepare the meal. You’ll only have to focus on other areas of your home after the party is over and the last guest leaves for the night. 

Getting the right chef for your needs 

The beautiful thing when it comes to hiring a personal chef is that there is a wide variety to choose from for your particular needs. You can always find the perfect chef that’s skilled in preparing the specific meal you’re looking to serve for your dinner party. One of the things you can do to help you choose the right chef is to think about what menu you’d like to see at your dinner party. For instance, if you have a themed dinner party planned, you’ll want to have an idea of what to serve that goes with the theme. For example, an Italian-themed night may be best suited with a personal chef that prepares lovely Italian dishes.  

Once you’ve narrowed down an idea of what you’d like to see served, you can go through the different personal chefs available to you to find which one would be just right for your dinner party with the best availability.  

What to consider before hiring a personal chef? 

There are a few things to consider before hiring a personal chef. Before you start your search, you’ll want to think about your dinner party plans. How many people will you be inviting, your theme, what type of menu you wish to have, and most importantly, you’ll want to think about your budget. Knowing this information in advance will help you when you start considering the different meals and chefs available to prepare them at your home the night of the party. In addition, the budget you set can be a good guide for determining which personal chef you should choose as you’ll find rates will change based on their skill and the menu that you decide upon for the night.  

Where to find a personal chef or a personal chef service provider? 

Finding a personal chef for your event or personal chef service provider can seem tricky. There are a number of personal chefs that work for themselves, and you can do an online search trying to find one that will work for your needs for your upcoming dinner party. There are also personal chef service providers that you can use to find a personal chef. When it comes to convenience and service that has started to grow a following, you can’t go wrong with CookinGenie. Our personal chef directory on our website makes it easy to find the perfect chef and meal to fit your needs for your dinner party or event. Easily scroll through the website while you see who is available.  

How much does a personal chef cost? 

There is a lot of speculation that a personal chef is very expensive and is only a service that someone who’s rich can afford. The truth is that a personal chef is very affordable, and there are options for just about any budget. Your dinner party menu being cooked in your home by a personal chef is comparable to going out to a restaurant for your meal. Of course, more significant portions or meals that take specialty ingredients may run at a higher cost, but it’s very affordable. When you use CookinGenie for your dinner party planning, you’ll be able to see how much a meal will cost you before you book, allowing you to ensure that it fits your budget. 

(Read Here – How Can You Save More by Hiring a Personal Chef?)

Check out CookinGenie today to see what personal chef’s and meal menus are possible for your dinner party. You may be surprised when it comes to the choices available, portion sizes, and prices. If you already use CookinGenie for special events or family dinners, you already know the great options open to you. So start planning your dinner party today. 

For many people, pad Thai—the delectable sweet, sour, and spicy stir fry of rice noodles, tofu, eggs, veggies, bean sprouts, crushed peanuts, and an umami-rich sauce that can be found on the menu of virtually every Thai restaurant in the US—is their first taste of Thai cooking.  

So, it’s interesting to learn that the dish that most Americans think of as the quintessential Thai food didn’t even exist until the mid-20th century.  

In her book Materializing Thailand, nutritional anthropologist Penny Van Esterik says that the dish was born out of prime minister Plaek Phibunsongkhram’s campaign throughout the 1930s and 40s to build a national identity for Thailand. Hoping to create a sense of pride in “Thai-ness” by uniting his country through culture, he changed the nation’s name from Siam to Thailand,  commissioned a new national anthem, banned local languages and dialects from schools, and set out to create a national dish.

(Also Read – Tracing Tacos – A Journey Through Time)

Curiously, the main ingredient in the dish that Phibunsongkhram—who was known as Phibun—promoted isn’t even native to Thailand. Stir-fried rice noodles originated in China and were introduced to the kingdom of Siam by Chinese traders in the 1700s. But promoting a stir-fried noodle dish helped solve a serious problem that Phibun’s nation was facing: flooding and war had caused a severe rice shortage, and encouraging people to eat noodles helped preserve the country’s precious rice supply.2 Phibun’s administration took the basic recipe for stir fried rice noodles and loaded it up with nutritious bean sprouts, onions, peanuts, eggs, meats, and a tamarind-based sauce, then encouraged vendors to sell the dish from street carts all over the country. It was, Phibun’s son later pointed out, the first fast food in Thailand.3   

Phibun’s efforts to make pad Thai a part of his country’s heritage succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. Today, it is a staple of the Thai diet. Beyond Thailand, it has become a beloved dish worldwide: In 2011, pad Thai ranked number 5 in CNN Go’s reader poll of the “World’s 50 Most Delicious Foods.”4 Wondering how this simple noodle dish became an international culinary superstar? Mark Padoongpatt, a professor of Asian and Asian American studies at the University of Nevada Las Vegas and the author of a history of Thai food, says this, too, was driven by the Thai government as an act of culinary diplomacy: in an effort to stimulate exports and encourage tourism, it established the Global Thai Restaurant Company, Ltd. to train chefs and send them around the world to open Thai restaurants5.     

And now, CookinGenie brings this beloved classic noodle dish to your house. We offer three varieties of classic pad Thai—Chicken, Shrimp, and Vegetarian—cooked from scratch with wholesome, authentic ingredients like rice noodles, sweet-and-sour tamarind paste, spicy chile-garlic paste, and Thai preserved radish. Book your Genie to bring a true taste of Thailand to your very own kitchen.