Where we cook in Ibiza
We cook right across the island. The south around Cala Jondal, Es Cubells and Sant Josep, where most of the large villas are. Santa Eulalia and Cap Martinet on the east. Talamanca, Jesus and Roca Llisa close to town. Sant Antoni for the sunset side. And the quieter north around Sant Joan and Sant Llorenc, where the houses are further apart and the drive is longer.
We also cross to Formentera, which needs planning rather than luck: everything travels by ferry, so the shopping is done on Ibiza and the timings are built around the crossing. It is arranged at an extra cost, and it is worth saying so at booking rather than the day before.
What the island gives us
Ibiza has a food culture most visitors never meet, because it sits behind the one they came for. Bullit de peix, the fish stew that is really two courses and takes the afternoon. Sofrit pages. Flao, the mint and cheese tart. Sobrassada from the island rather than the supermarket. Salt from Ses Salines, worked since the Phoenicians and still the reason those flats exist.
The fish is the argument for eating at the villa rather than going out: what comes off the boats in the morning is on your table that evening, instead of after a forty-minute wait for a table booked three weeks ago.
How a week here usually works
Ibiza runs late and the days blur. Most groups we cook for settle into a pattern by the third day: nobody wants breakfast before eleven, lunch happens by the pool, and dinner is either the reason to stay in or skipped entirely because everyone went out. Our Full Time and Half Time services are built for that, and the nights you plan to be out are the nights not to pay for a chef standing in an empty kitchen.
The season runs from May to early October, with July and August at their fullest. Those are the weeks when the good chefs are committed months ahead, not days.
When to book
The season runs from May to early October, and the island is at its fullest from the middle of July to the end of August. In those weeks chefs are committed months ahead rather than days, particularly for stays of a week or more where the same person cooks every evening and learns how your table likes to eat.
May, June and September are the months worth knowing about. The same island, the same water, warm enough to eat outside every night, the roads passable, and a great deal easier to arrange at short notice. If your dates are flexible at all, those are the weeks to ask about first.
How we choose the chef for your villa
It is the question people ask before any other, and it is the right one: who is this person coming into my kitchen for a week? Which is why the enquiry form asks what the week looks like before it asks anything else — how many of you, how you eat, whether there are children, whether the evenings are long tables at the house or quick suppers before going out. The vetting that matters in this job is not a certificate on a wall. It is knowing how a particular chef behaves in a particular kind of house, and that is the match being made when we answer you.
What you can check without taking our word for it: the reviews are public, under World Private Chefs on Google, and they are written by people who had somebody cooking in their villa. Read those rather than our own page about ourselves.
