MEALS ON WHEELS, ITALIAN STYLE

 

 

Personal chefs are a concept that most people would not think of as a viable consideration. They are the province of the extremely wealthy. The rest of us cook our own meals or go out (when we can). But since the start of the pandemic, Pasquale Martinelli, a truly extraordinary chef from Mola di Bari Puglia, Italy, now based in New York, has been offering personalized, home dining, Alloro Private Dining for people who originally didn’t feel comfortable going out to restaurants, and now just want to have their minds blown in their own kitchen.

 

Pasquale created a special hospitality experience where he and his team come to your house and give you a meal only the best restaurants could hope to emulate. His business is thriving in 2024. He has made dinner for wealthy bankers and entrepreneurs, and adventerous average folk, and also for Paul McCartney, Nancy Pelosi, and former Mayor Bloomberg and formerly alive Henry Kissinger.

 

Via email, clients are able to curate their own menu based on their preferences. Pasquale firmly believes that a personal chef is more than your average cook at a restaurant — he sources all the ingredients himself, going to Union Square Farmers’ Market for vegetables and waking up at 3 a.m. to go to Hunts Point Market in the Bronx, because that is when the best fish arrives.

 

When a client contacts him, he may go back and forth 4-5 times over email to ensure that everything they expect is delivered. Whether or not they have a specific type of dinner they’re looking for, or a guest has a certain allergy, Pasquale will make every adjustment to ensure that the hosts are satisfied from the moment he walks in the door to the moment he leaves.

 

He’s, frankly, obsessive about the details.

 

 

 

 

Being from Puglia, he is very familiar with family dinners and he tries to recreate that for every client. “I feel like I am the Italian Grandmother sometimes.”  He takes a lot of pride in curating the best ingredients; and spending the time and money to get the best available product for his customers. “In life, most of the important moments happen at the dinner table. Whether it’s the birth of a child, an anniversary, a birthday, etc., there are many essential moments that everyone experiences at a dining room in their home.” (I think he means celebrating the birth of a child rather than children being delivered on the dining room table, although that used to be more prevalent an occurrence.)

 

There is no set menu, but that is a positive, because he wants every guest to decide the best meal for them. For starters, each guest begins with their individual appetizer such as roasted cauliflower tips sauteed with raisins, carmalized onions, pine nut breadcrumbs and finished off with Puglia’s high-end Extra Virgin olive oil. Many of the second courses are pasta,  handmade on premise using only organic imported semola produced in his hometown in flour mills. For example, Orecchiette “alla San Giovanni” an old Pugliese traditional tomato based sauce that is originally prepared the day of Saint John in Puglia, June 24, to celebrate the arrival of the new tomato season. Variations of this dish can include anchovies and/or wild capers or tomatoes on the vine which are preserved in the summer for winter by hanging then in cellars at home. The main course could be a Colorado rack of lamb drizzled with a variety of Pugliese Extra virgin olive oil, coarse sea salt and fresh herbs that are broken at the table by hand. This is topped off with  traditional Pugliese dessert called Tette delle Monache, which is a soft sweet bread stuffed with cream and topped with icing sugar.

 

 

 

 

Pasquale offers three different packages, but they all begin with a cocktail hour, during which finger food is passed around to the guests by the accompanying captain, including his signature, piping hot, mini deep-fried veal meatballs and cucumber rings topped off with tuna tartare, mango, and osetra caviar or shaved Italy-imported truffles.

 

He has a sommelier available for every guest, via email, who prepares a wine pairing if desired. The wine is an additional charge, but the plus side is that there is no additional markup like there would be in restaurants, and if you want the same wine a week later, you can go back into the email and the same price will still be available.

 

Depending on how big the guest list is, Pasaquale may have a team of 3-6 people.

 

The Silver package, first listed above is a 3 course meal and starts at $200 per person plus tax and gratuity.

 

The Gold package is a 5-course meal, curated to every individual client, with the cocktail hour and wine pairing, is $300 per person. After the cocktails, there is an appetizer, a pasta course, a 30-minute break, a main entree and then dessert.

 

The Black package is a ne plus ultra 9-course meal, for $500 a person plus tax and gratuity. “I am not just cooking for people, I am trying to create an experience for people. We need to treat our guests like we treat our family.”

 

That’s a pretty lucky family, wherever they may be…

 

The quality of food and ingredients that Pasquale brings to every client is a big part of why he has been so successful. Given his Italian upbringing, the importance of ingredients like extra virgin olive oil and the kind of wheat and flour makes a significant difference in the quality of the meal. His attention to detail and requests is a significant reason he continues to have repeat clients. “I make everything from bread to pasta to crostini to salad on premise, and it is the personalization for every client that makes what I do a signature.”

 

Lately, Pasquale has been learning a lot about nutrition. “I attended various courses, including one in Nutrition Sciences at Stanford University. I was fascinated by the fact that my classmates were dietitians and doctors, and I was the only chef,” he recently told Gambero Rosso, the Italian food and wine publication.

 

He went on to add: “Sometimes my clients get emotional when they taste my dishes. I believe it’s the greatest gratitude that a chef can have. Here I learned that there is food off the plate and on the plate. And what’s off the plate is just as important. It takes you to distant places, it tells you how a recipe was prepared, where its ingredients come from, and all the love behind it.”

 

 

 

 

Contact Pasquale at:  https://www.alloroprivatedining.com  (I mean, seriously… This is an experience to have before you join Henry Kissinger.)