Services
We Cook in Your Space
Everything below happens where you already are — a vacation rental or private home, a venue, a retreat center, a glamping site, a ranch or an inn. We bring the food, the kitchen work and the clean-up to you.
Four ways to work with us — from a quiet dinner for two to a wedding weekend. Every one of them ends with a clean kitchen and nobody in your family stuck serving.
How We Work
We come to you
Almost everything we do happens where you already are — your house, your rental, the retreat center you booked, a farm at the end of a dirt road. We plan the menu around your date and your guests, buy from farms and boats we know by name, cook on site, serve the table, and clean up. What changes between the services below is scale and staffing, not care.
One · Private Dinners
Dinner at your table, cooked in your kitchen
A multi-course dinner for two to twelve guests, cooked start to finish in the kitchen where you’re staying and served as each course comes off the stove. The menu is written for your table — what’s in season, what you love, what you can’t eat — not pulled off a set list. This is the service most people mean when they say private chef, and it’s the one we do most.
Good for
- Anniversaries and quiet dinners for two
- Birthdays and milestone celebrations
- Bachelorette and bachelor weekends
- Family gatherings and coastal getaways
How it runs
- Three to five courses, plated or family-style
- We arrive two to three hours ahead
- Wine pairings and bar service on request
- Kitchen left cleaner than we found it
What it costs
From $175 per person for dinner · from $125 lunch · from $95 brunch
Typically $195–245 for dinner
Menu, sourcing, cooking, service, and cleanup included.
Two · Weddings & Celebrations
The whole weekend, fed properly
Mendocino weddings tend to sprawl across a few days and a few locations, and the food is usually the thing nobody planned far enough ahead. We cater the whole arc of it — welcome dinner, rehearsal supper, the reception itself, the next-morning brunch when everyone is slow and grateful — with a kitchen team, service staff, and a timeline we actually hold to.
Still choosing where? Our Mendocino wedding venue guides cover capacity, the catering reality, and the questions worth asking before you sign.
Good for
- Receptions, family-style or plated
- Welcome dinners and rehearsal suppers
- Morning-after brunches and grazing tables
- Elopements and small ceremonies
How it runs
- Tasting and menu design ahead of the date
- Kitchen team plus service staff on the day
- Dietary needs tracked per guest and labeled
- We work alongside your planner or act as one
What it costs
From $250 per person for the wedding itself, typically $275–350.
Rehearsal and welcome dinners from $215 · morning-after brunch from $95
Book 8–12 weeks out; summer weekends go first.
Three · Retreats & Group Stays
Every meal, for as many days as you’re here
A retreat lives or dies by its meals. We cook multi-day programs at retreat centers and large rentals across the county — breakfast, lunch, dinner, and the things people reach for in between — built around whatever framework your group runs on. Plant-based, gluten-free, low-glycemic and allergy-safe menus are a specialty here, not an accommodation: Chef Chantelle was the founding chef of a plant-based kitchen long before this.
Good for
- Wellness retreats
- Yoga retreats and teacher trainings
- Corporate offsites and leadership weeks
- Creative retreats and big group houses
How it runs
- We quote from your schedule, meal by meal
- One menu that works for the whole room
- Cooking on site at your venue’s kitchen
- Honest answers about what your budget buys
What it costs
Custom quote, per person per day, based on how many meals we’re covering.
Single dinners start at $175 per person.
Four · Farm Dinners, Pop-Ups & Community Tables
The long table, and the public ones
Private farm dinners are one long table, food harvested steps from where it’s served, and a menu that exists only on that night — often cooked over open fire, outdoors, weather included. We also host public pop-ups through the year, including evenings with Caspar Bread & Wine, with sliding-scale tickets so the table stays open to whoever wants a seat. That part isn’t a marketing exercise; it’s the reason we cook.
Book us privately
A long-table dinner on your land, at a farm, or anywhere with room for one table and a fire. We handle the cooking, the hosting, and the timing of the evening.
From $275 per person — tasting menu or open fire.
Typically $295–350
Come to a public one
Sliding-scale community dinners and pop-ups around the coast. The last one sold out, and the mailing list heard about it first.
Cook alongside us
Interactive dinners and hands-on lessons where your group works the pass with the chef. Popular for bachelorette weekends and team offsites.
Included Every Time
What the per-person price covers
Menu design and consultation
Sourcing and all the shopping
On-site cooking and plating
Service through the meal
Table staging and setup
Full kitchen cleanup
Wine, specialty rentals, and gratuity are billed separately. There’s a $1,400 minimum on every event, and your quote is exact and all-in once the guest count and menu are set — the pricing guide has every rate.
Add-Ons
Things people ask us to handle too
Wine pairings and bar service · Floral tablescapes and candles · Grazing boards and cocktail-hour snacks · Extra service staff · Specialty rentals · Interactive cooking components
Mention any of it in your inquiry and it lands in the quote, priced plainly.
Booking
Too small for a caterer? You’re exactly our size.
Most catering companies on this coast are built for two hundred people, and a table of fourteen falls straight through their floor — not out of rudeness, but because a full crew, a truck and a kitchen to load out of never made sense at that scale.
That gap is where we work. Fourteen people at a long table. A rehearsal dinner for twenty while somebody else handles the reception. A family that has taken a house for a week and wants two proper dinners in it. A retreat that needs feeding three times a day for four days. Mendocino Chef is built for exactly that — small teams cooking on site, and a table of fourteen is a completely normal booking here.
And we’ll be straight with you about the other end: if you’re planning a two-hundred-guest reception, you want a company set up for two hundred, and we know who to send you to.
Most asked for: rehearsal dinners · microweddings · retreat catering · birthday dinners.
Two more we do that people don’t think to ask for: a week’s worth of cooking stocked in your fridge before a group arrives, and breakfast for a crowd — a proper hot buffet for forty or fifty rather than a seated brunch. Both are quoted differently from the rates below. Just ask.
Three steps, no mystery pricing
Step One
Tell us the date
Date, guest count, where you’re staying, and anything the table can’t eat. Two minutes on the inquiry form.
Step Two
We send a real menu
Within two business days: a menu written for your event and an exact per-person quote. See two sample proposals.
Step Three
We handle the rest
A 50% deposit holds the date, balance due the week of. See the FAQ for the fine print.
Where We Cook
All across Mendocino County
Private homes, vacation rentals, retreat centers, farms, and community halls from the coast to the valley: Mendocino, Fort Bragg, Albion, Little River, Caspar, Elk, Point Arena, Westport, Philo, Boonville, Ukiah, and Willits. Anderson Valley too. If your rental has a kitchen — or a fire pit and enough table — we can work with it.
Planning Something Specific?
Bachelorette parties · Bachelor parties · Birthday dinners · Anniversary dinners · Corporate events · Retreats · Wellness retreats · Yoga retreats · Farm dinners
Still deciding? The sample menus show how a night gets built, the pricing guide has the full breakdown, and What to Expect shows two sample proposals.
Have a date in mind?
Tell us the date, the guest count, and the occasion — we’ll come back with a menu and a plan within two business days.