Has anyone had experience hiring a cook for your villa? My wife and I, along with our girls (6 & 8) and my wife's parents will be in St. John for a week in June '07. My wife and I had hired a chef on St. Martin for a night and loved it. This time around we were wondering if we had options that we could afford to do for several (if not most) of our dinners.

We don't need a cook for breakfast or lunch and we'd probably take care of the girls dinners ourselves. We don't want to eat out every night and would rather not cook much on vacation. I'd appreciate hearing about your experience and get an idea of the cost. Also, how far in advance (if at all) of your trip did you arrange this?

Thanks

My neighbor was a private chef specializing in dinners for villas on St. John but he moved a year ago. I looked in the phone book & found this where maybe you could check about prices, etc.

www.stjohnchef.com

You might also ask the villa rental agency. They should have a recommendation.

We hired the chef from stjohnchef.com to make us a dinner one night on our honeymoon. It was delicious! Expensive, but well worth it. Might be cost prohibitive to do it more than one night though.

Oh, I don't know how to copy from the other post, but it's under "St. John Stag" I listed a few sites there.

Thanks, everyone for the replys. I had seen the St. John Chef site before, but the other 2 from Tuxedocat's post were new to me. We do plan on getting advice from our villa rental company, I just wanted to do some research in advance so I knew how to weigh my options.

We will do one or maybe 2 nights with the whole chef service. What I was really looking for was something more basic (and affordable) for the other nights. The drop off service might work for that, but I've had friends visiting other islands that have been able to hire a cook to come in during the day, make dinner and leave reheating instructions. The menu choices were not neccesarily gourmet, but good and interesting still. And the per person cost was much lower than the chef service. Anyone have any info on hiring a more basic (non-chef) cook for dinners?

Thanks

Our experience with Laura Samms from passionfruitchefs.com last June(2006) was beyond our expectations. Over a 10 day period, they provided 5 "basic" dinners and a wonderful full-service wedding feast (Lobster!!). We had two 8-yr old girls with us and Laura made them feel very special with a just-for-kids dinner each night while the adults had the grown-up dinners.

We were happily surprised to find that Laura's version of "drop-off" meant they showed up with groceries, cooked and served the dinner hot, and tidied up the kitchen before leaving. We only had to do the dishes afterwards.

Being from Texas, we didn't want any fancy Chef'ing (except for the wedding feast) so Laura helped us work out menus for some very tasty caribbean style fish, pork roast, & chicken dinners thru the week. As for the pricing, the dinners were about $40 for adults and 1/2 that for the kids. Of course, that was for a group of 14. But Laura did work in some discounts for us as we also had them do the initial villa provisioning (including roasted chicken in the fridge the night of our arrival), replenishment throughout the week (we did very little grocery shopping that trip...except we kept running out of bread..you know sandwiches for beach picnics), two brunches, and most evening meals.

We did eat out a few nights, but it was really nice not to have to worry about getting the crowd loaded up each night for a trip into town. And who wants to deal with a hot stove after being on the beach all day?

To your last question, I started working with Laura in late February for our trip the 1st week of June. And we will absolutely be looking to book them for our next trip.

I remember one evening just after sunset reclining on the veranda after dinner with my dessert and coffee when I realized I was still in my swim trunks and T-shirt and wearing no shoes.
Feeling full yet tired and sunburned, I chuckled happily knowing there was no need to drive home. So I just finished my dessert under the stars. Yeah, it was worth it.

Just by chance, your name wouldn't be Dennis, would it?