Kitchensurfing: Your Private Chef, For $50 Or Less

If you're having a dinner party, making the preparations can be nothing short of a nightmare. You need to plan a menu, go shopping, cook, plate, serve, and wash dishes, barely leaving any time for you to enjoy the meal. There's a new company that can solve all of those problems (and can set you up with a great dinner for any number of people, any night of the week), by sending a professional chef right to your house.

It's called Kitchensurfing, and it's currently available in New York; Los Angeles; Chicago; Boston; Washington, D.C.; The Hamptons; Seattle; and Berlin. Here's how it works: You visit the website, choose your city, and click "find a chef" (in New York, more than 200 chefs are involved). You scan through all the available options (each listing provides you with information about the chef as well as the menu that they'll prepare), then you select a chef, let them know how many people they'll be cooking for, and book a time and date.

We had the opportunity to check out the service and it was a major kick. The chef showed up carrying roller bags filled with pots, pans, cooking utensils, and ingredients, and he immediately got to work. He explained that all the prep and mise en place is done at a central commissary, so when they show up it's the equivalent of your order being placed in a restaurant. Instead of preparing everything in your apartment from scratch, all they have to do is fire and plate it. Within half an hour, we were enjoying a restaurant-quality pea and mint soup, followed by roast Cornish game hen with mushroom sauce and roasted root vegetables. The chef cleaned up the kitchen while we dined, and all that was left for us to do was wash our dishes; he didn't even need to use any of our cooking equipment, and tip was included in the price of the meal.

Having a personal chef is very cool, but until now it's been a luxury for only the incredibly wealthy. With Kitchensurfing,  a few clicks of your mouse can bring a professional chef to your house and create a restaurant-quality meal for about the same price (if not less) than going out to a restaurant. It's revolutionizing the dinner party, and also presents a brand-new (and incredibly fun) alternative to going out for dinner.