Private dinner parties are usually considered the preserve of the wealthy. Hiring a personal chef to bring the restaurant experience to your home is likely to cost at least £80 to £90 a head.
But a Nottingham chef is making it an affordable treat for what he describes as "normal working people". As a result, Dave Marshall has been inundated with requests, with weekends fully booked until August.
For £40 per person, the chef provides all the ingredients and cooks a three-course menu for groups of five up to 18 people.
The chef, who has worked in cafes and restaurants since he was 16, said: "I make enough profit for me. I want it to be available to everybody. My customers are just normal working people. It's just people with normal jobs - builders, people who work at supermarkets or teachers. They're my clients.
"Other chefs, their client bases are mega rich whereas that's not mine. I'd say I make more money because do it cheaper and I do so many. A lot more people can have it." The menu, which has a choice of starters, mains and desserts, changes every couple of months. Just like a restaurant, diners can choose a different dish.
Currently starters include ham croquettes with pea and mint puree and wild mushrooms in a creamy Champagne sauce with toasted sourdough and parmesan. Mains of duck breast with a rich port jus, chicken stuffed with tarragon mousse and 12-hour slow-cooked blade of beef are served.
Desserts are lemon posset with berry compote and lavender shortbread and sticky toffee and rum pudding with vanilla creme anglaise. Some have asked for steak, which carries a £5 supplement - while another request for a forthcoming booking has been for shepherd's pie.
"It will be the best shepherd's pie they've ever had in their life. I'm going to get a leg of lamb, and slow braise it down and make it proper nice with a nice minty jus," said Dave, who trained at what was then Clarendon College and has worked at the original Coco Tang near Broadmarsh, Merchants at the Lace Market Hotel, World Service and up until lockdown, Porterhouse by Barlows at Annesley Woodhouse.
Bookings have soared. What started off as Friday and Saturday nights has now expanded to Sundays, when Dave cooks up a "mega" roast. Requests for Wednesday and Thursday nights are now coming in so this month he's booked up for three or four days a week.
He said: "It started off at Christmas time, so when I did it in December, it was all festive stuff but after that, it was birthdays and people who just fancied it. Everyone I've been to has said it's dead cheap. At £40-a-head, I don't think you could go to a restaurant and have three courses for that.
"You can use your own booze so it's a lot cheaper and you don't have to drive. I think this is why people like it. You can be as loud as you want. As soon as I get to people's homes they're 'do you want a beer or a glass of wine Dave?' They want you to be fun, it's not just about cooking, it's about entertaining them.
"One party of women were like wild animals but it depend who your target audience is. I've been to some houses where it's 'sir and madam' but 99 percent of the time everyone's having a right laugh. I have made loads of new friends doing it
"Nine times out of ten after I've cooked for them I'll sit down and have a beer with them and they want to have a chat about the TV show," he said, referring to the controversial Channel 4 series Go Back to Where You Came From, which explored contrasting views on migrants. In one episode the chef was seen cooking for a family in Syria whose home had been bombed.
Back home in Notts, not only does he cook, he'll set the table if that's what the client wants, he serves the guests, and then does all the washing up, leaving the kitchen spick and span. He said: "After a Sunday dinner, I was deep cleaning the canopy. They were all 'can you move in?'"
Dave, who lives in Eastwood, has cooked for dinner parties in Notts and Derbyshire. He even had a request for a gathering in Aberdeen but advised them to find a chef closer to home. During lockdown, he began making TikTok videos before gravitating to food reviews on Facebook. Although it was a lucrative pastime, something was missing.
"Social media is good and the money's ok but you've got no structure. I was a bit fed-up and bored. I didn't feel like I had a purpose. I missed cooking. I thought I'll do one [dinner party] and see how it goes because I hadn't cooked for a while so the first one I did was a freebie for people I knew. There was about 13 of them and they loved it. From there the messages went mental. December, I was fully booked and now I'm fully booked until the end of August."
At least 60 percent of his business comes through word of mouth and recommendations via Facebook. "A lot of chefs are quite scared to get into private dining, I was. I've always wanted to do it.
"When you work for somebody, it's quite secure, it's easy. With private dining there's no overheads but you have to have the reputation there. Like any tradesman people have got to be able to trust you. They want to know they're going to have a good time.
"I wanted my own restaurant but it's hard. One of my friends has just closed his restaurant. He was fully booked but couldn't afford to run the restaurant. How heartbreaking is that? His gas and electric was £3,000 a week."
Client Jackie Smith, 70, booked Dave to cook for her family in the run-up to Christmas. Her daughter Holly and her partner Kate, both teachers, and granddaughter Maisie, enjoyed a three-course dinner of venison, pork and beef in Spondon.
Jackie said: "It was very exciting. We'd never had a private chef before. He was such a gentleman and very lovely to have in your home. It was so professionally arranged. The price was ridiculously cheap - I gave him extra.
"We eat out a lot and the food he produced tasted amazing and he used top class ingredients. Afterwards he did all the washing up and chatted to us. He even did some karaoke with my granddaughter before he left."
