Prep sheet 001 — Plymouth
We send a proper chef to your kitchen for an evening. You cook together, you eat what you made, and the technique stays in your hands long after they’ve gone home. Plymouth only, for now — four chefs, one city, done properly.
No cheffy nonsense. No 40-ingredient recipes. No foam. No franchise.
Learn to cook
Anyone can follow a recipe badly. You’ll learn heat, seasoning, timing and knife work — the four things that separate a decent cook from someone reading their phone over a pan. Then presentation — how to get it onto a plate so it looks like somebody meant it.
Great food
Every session ends at your table with a meal you’d happily pay for. Chefs build the menu around what you actually want to eat on a Wednesday, not what photographs well.
Personal
Same chef every time if you want them. They’ll learn your oven’s hot corner, your blunt knives and the fact that you don’t like coriander, and they’ll work around all three.
How it runs
A standard Full Service, 7pm start. Times shift to suit you — plenty of people cook at 4pm with kids underfoot.
19:00
Shopping already done and paid for at cost. They’ll look at your knives and say something kind about them.
19:15
Everything prepped before anything gets hot. This is the bit home cooks skip and it’s the reason weeknight dinner feels like a panic attack.
19:45
Hot pan, dry protein, don’t move it. Where most home cooking quietly goes wrong, and where one evening changes the most.
20:45
The last five minutes decide how the food lands. Hot plates, dry rims, sauce spooned rather than squirted, nothing crowded to the edge. Costs nothing and changes everything.
21:00
At your table, with your people. Your chef will join you if you ask and clear off if you’d rather they didn’t.
22:15
Washing up done. A hand-written card on the counter with the three things worth remembering. That card is the whole point.
The chefs
Four to start with, all of them cooking in other people’s kitchens across the city. Every one is DBS-checked, holds Level 2 Food Safety and cooked a trial service for us before they saw a customer. Two more are in trial now.
All four came off restaurant sections in the city and wanted their evenings back. They drive to you with knives, kit and the shopping already done — the cooking happens at yours, at your hob, on your timings. They keep their own diary, we keep them booked, and you can ask for the same one every time. Most people do.
PL4 · Mutley
Nine years on hot sections in the city, the last four as a sous. Teaches bread more than anything else now.
“Your oven is lying to you by about 20 degrees. Buy a £6 thermometer before you buy anything else.”
PL12 · Saltash
Ex-gastropub head chef. Day-boat fish, game off the Tamar Valley, and anything that needs a hot pan and a cold nerve.
“You’re not searing anything, you’re steaming it. The pan’s too cold and the meat’s too wet.”
PL6 · Derriford
Grew up in her family’s catering kitchen, trained professionally at 30. Spice, dosa, and the long slow base.
“The onions aren’t done. They’re never done when you think they are. Give them ten more minutes.”
PL1 · Barbican
Twelve years in kitchens, three of them running a pasta bar. Walks down to the fish market most mornings, and teaches nervous cooks better than anyone we have.
“Nobody’s ever ruined dinner by tasting it too often. Spoon in the pot. Now.”
Prices
No membership, no credits, no subscription you forget to cancel. Ingredients typically land between £20 and £55 depending on the menu, and you see the receipt.
£120
per session · up to 2 people
Most booked
£220
per session · up to 4 people
£380from
per evening · up to 8 people
No travel charge across PL1–PL9. PL10–PL21 adds £20. Every tier is chef-only as standard — add a hostess or a mixologist on top of any of them. Cancel free up to 48 hours out. Inside 48 hours we charge half, because your chef has already shopped.
Service levels
Every booking is chef-only as standard: they shop, cook, teach, plate and wash up. Add front of house or a mixologist when the evening is doing more work than dinner — a birthday, an anniversary, or the night you have fourteen people round and no intention of leaving the table.
| Included | Chef onlyStandard | Chef & hostess+£90 | Chef & mixologist+£140 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shopping, cooking, teaching, plating | Included | Included | Included |
| Washing up and the kitchen put back | Included | Included | Included |
| Door answered, coats taken, glasses kept full | Not included | Included | Included |
| Courses cleared and the table reset between them | Not included | Included | Included |
| Your chef stays at the hob teaching, instead of running food | Not included | Included | Included |
| Three cocktails built round the menu, mixed at the table | Not included | Not included | Included |
| A zero-proof version of every one of them | Not included | Not included | Included |
| Ice, glassware and bar kit brought in and taken away | Not included | Not included | Included |
| Best for | Learning to cook. Four in five bookings. | Dinner parties where you want to actually sit down. | Birthdays, anniversaries, showing off. |
All three Chef, hostess and mixologist together is +£210 on any tier. Your mixologist will teach you the builds too, if you want them — same deal as the kitchen.
When Chef and hostess run seven nights. We have exactly one mixologist at launch, so that level is Fridays and Saturdays only and books about three weeks out. Worth planning around.
Drinks Spirits, wine and beer are billed at cost like the food, on the same receipt. Your mixologist brings everything else.
Cook for us
For Plymouth and Tamar Valley chefs who want the cooking without the admin. Self-employed, your own diary, cooking in clients’ kitchens — no premises, no lease, no registration of your own to worry about.
We find the bookings, take the payment, carry the insurance and have the awkward money conversation so you don’t have to. You drive over, you cook, you go home.
Yours
Your rates, your diary, your menus. Say no to anything.
18%
Our cut. That’s the whole commercial model, no listing fees.
£5m
Public liability cover on every session, included.
£1,400
What eight sessions a month bills at our standard rates.
You’ll need Level 2 Food Safety, a DBS check (we pay for it), a trial service with one of our leads, and to be within about twenty minutes of the city.
Book
Plymouth, and as far out as the drive stays sensible. Check yours — it takes a second and we’ll tell you straight if you’re outside it.
Straight answers
Anything we’ve missed, email hello@fingchefing.com and a human replies.