CHEFIN connects you with vetted private chefs across Melbourne and Victoria. Your chef does the shopping, cooks on the night, and leaves the kitchen the way they found it. That can be at your place, your office, a space you have hired, or a house you have gone away to. You pick the dining style. We find the chef whose cooking suits your menu, your dietary requirements and the occasion, and a concierge stays with it from the first call to the last plate cleared.

Family-style share plates start at $165 a head, GST included. CHEFIN chefs have cooked for more than 100,000 guests, including teams at Airbnb, Microsoft and Tesla. Finding a good chef is the easy part. What sits behind them is the rest of it.

You pay per person, and the rate depends on the dining style and how many are coming. Family-style share plates start at $165 a head, three-course plated fine dining at $195, and five-course at $245. All inclusive of GST, with nothing added at checkout. There is no call-out fee, no ingredient surcharge and no cleaning charge either. The number you are quoted covers the chef, the groceries, the cooking, the service, and the kitchen left the way they found it.

Each package page shows its current rate. For an exact figure on your date and guest count, ask the concierge. Prices can shift on public holidays and for last-minute bookings.

What every package includes:

• A vetted private chef, matched to your menu and dietary requirements
• Menu design and revisions with your chef before the event
• All ingredients, sourced and shopped for by your chef
• Cooking on site at your venue, arriving ahead of service
• Full kitchen and dining area clean-up
• Concierge support from booking through to the event
• All taxes: the displayed rate is the final rate
• Public liability coverage, and payment held in trust until after your event

What sits outside the per-person price:

• Wait staff and bar staff: available as an add-on
• Drinks, tableware, glassware and cutlery: can be arranged as add-ons

Melbourne’s food culture was built by migration, and its chefs come out of that. The city has the largest Greek population outside Greece, an Italian community that made Lygon Street what it is, and Vietnamese, Lebanese, Sri Lankan and Ethiopian kitchens that are just the local shops rather than a night out. A chef here moving between a French technique and a Sichuan one is not doing anything unusual.

Victoria supplies most of what lands on the table.

Gippsland dairy and beef, Western District lamb, King Valley and Milawa cheese, Yarra Valley berries, Mornington Peninsula produce, and calamari and mussels from Port Phillip Bay. The Queen Victoria Market and Prahran Market give chefs same-morning access to all of it.

The seasons run the other way, and menus follow.

Summer is stone fruit, tomatoes and seafood through Christmas. Autumn brings mushrooms, figs and game. Winter turns chefs towards slow cooking, root vegetables and citrus at its peak — and Melbourne winters make that the strongest season for hosting indoors. Spring is asparagus, peas and the first berries.

Wine pairings come from within an hour.

Yarra Valley Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, Mornington Peninsula Pinot, Geelong Shiraz and King Valley Italian varietals. A Melbourne chef pairing locally is working with four distinct regions, not one.

The venues are the variable.

Melbourne runs on Victorian terraces with narrow galley kitchens, warehouse conversions in Collingwood and Cremorne, post-war houses out east, and apartment towers in the CBD and Southbank. A terrace kitchen in Fitzroy and a warehouse conversion are two very different problems to cook in. Tell your concierge which one you have got.