Villa Residency

A residency is a service contract, not a dinner. The chef becomes part of the house for a week: shopping, three services a day, the children’s pasta at six, the dinner at nine, the dietary list, the bins, the inventory. The skill being hired is planning and stamina, and the test of a good residency chef is day five, when the guests are tired of fish, the market was closed and there is still a dinner for fourteen.

Pricing is per day and scales with head count and the number of services. Expect 450 to 1,100 euros a day for the chef depending on the market, 85 to 180 euros per person per day for food if you eat well, and a second salary for a hand or a house manager above ten guests. A full week for twelve with all services in the Mediterranean lands between 9,000 and 18,000 euros including food.

The host’s job is structure. Agree the week’s rhythm before arrival: which nights are showpieces, which are simple, which night the house eats out so the kitchen rests, and when the chef’s hours actually end. Residencies that go wrong almost never fail on cooking. They fail because nobody wrote down that fourteen people would want lunch on the day of the boat trip.