I'm renting a villa in Algarve, Portugal in August. I'm looking for a cook to come and make some dinners for us. I'm not interested in a commercial catering service. Any suggestions?

Ask your rental agent.

It's a very popular service in the Algarve, so you can just do searches on the internet. There's lots of overlap between the private catering services and the private chefs/cooks, so you should take a look at some of those websites too. The catering services do arrange for individual cooks to come to your villa to cook in your own kitchen, for small groups and large groups. Here's an example of what I'm talking about

http://www.finedininginstyle.eu/our-food/

You might want to first take a look at a couple of different services and then ask your rental agent for input. That way you'll already have an idea of what prices are and what's typically included. You can probably find independent reviews of some of these services too on the internet.

Our rental agent is in England and has been no help. We have asked him to check with his local people, but get no response. Everything I saw on the internet were commercial services, but I'll look again. Thanks.