Dine in five-star style

Auckland chef Mark Zajtman has a list of well-heeled clients. Picture / Martin Sykes

Madonna favours an organic vegetarian diet, Meg Ryan is fond of tuna wrapped in squares of seaweed with Japanese butter, and Christina Aguilera is easy to please with ham and cheese sandwiches - but no crusts, of course.

Welcome to the world of personal chefs to the stars. Catering for the whims of celebrities is all part of the job when you're working for the rich and famous.

No self-respecting star travels without a private chef in their entourage. Some even have two - Gwyneth Paltrow has one for savouries and one for sweets.

We expect this kind of self-indulgent behaviour from privileged multimillionaires, but surely this level of luxury is not available to everyday people. Wrong. Personal chefs are the latest dinner party must-have and a growing number of culinary professionals are happy to respond.

"What these consumers are buying is peace of mind," says Auckland chef Philip Reynolds, who enjoys cooking at select private dinner parties, taking unpaid leave from his full-time job as head chef at Otto's.

In our increasingly frenetic lives, where we constantly try to fit more in, it's easy to see why employing a professional chef is proving increasingly attractive. It allows people to enjoy the intimacy of entertaining in their own home without the anxiety associated with shopping, cooking or cleaning up. Ah, bliss.

Those who dread the thought of throwing a dinner party will be relieved to know that they are not alone. Experts have found that one in eight people suffer from kitchen performance anxiety when they have people over to dinner. The unrealistic standards set by TV chefs are believed to be responsible for the high stress levels in the kitchen.

The answer is to sit back and relax with the guests while a professional takes charge of kitchen duties.

"For those who lead busy lives and don't have much time, it's a smart move," Reynolds says. "It's like taking out insurance to guarantee a stress-free occasion. It's no different to getting someone in to do your house-cleaning or mow your lawns."

He likes the challenge of interpreting his client's requirements, right down to what he wears for the occasion.

"If it's a formal sit-down dinner party I'll go the whole nine yards and wear my white chef's jacket and hat, but for an informal Sunday brunch I'll dress casually so I won't stand out from the other guests."

In Australia and the United States many chefs are leaving restaurant and hotel kitchens to provide home-cooked meals for well-to-do, busy families.

The demand for healthier meals is fuelling the trend. Special requirements - such as the fashionable low-fat, low-carbohydrate South Beach Diet - can easily be catered for.

The typical personal chef does the shopping and, at the client's home, prepares enough meals for two weeks to a month. These are frozen, ready to heat and eat.

Entrepreneurial chefs are also promoting their services as the ideal gift for new mums. Instead of stretch-and-grows, friends and families are buying a week's worth of mouthwatering frozen meals.

The American Personal Chef Association says there is a sharp increase in the demand for services. In 1994 only 1000 families employed a chef - a decade later the figure was 100,000. United States-based Entrepreneur magazine describes the personal chef industry as one of the four fastest-growing businesses in the country.

Auckland chef Mark Zajtman has an impressive CV that includes cooking for the Prime Minister, the Governor-General and the Queen.

Since he began marketing himself as a personal chef four years ago, he has built up a list of well-heeled clients. He also cooks for visiting celebrities and has just finished a stint preparing meals for an international fashion icon and his family while they were holidaying here. Zajtman won't reveal the name of his famous client.

"I do a lot of work for a boutique in-bound travel operator. To us, service, discretion and professionalism are the key to what we do.

"The family arrived by private jet and travelled around the country by helicopter. People didn't even know they were here."

Their dietary requirements were fashionably low-fat and low-carb.

"They wanted five egg-white omelettes for breakfast, all with different fillings, and no carbs after lunch."

Creating menus that encourage healthy eating is certainly a selling point when it comes to marketing the service of personal chefs, along with gluten-free and allergy-sensitive options.

"The one thing that money can't buy is your health," Zajtman says.

"The emphasis is always on the best ingredients, bought fresh on the day."

If you employ a chef for your dinner party you'll have the bonus of getting his knowledge of how best to match food with wine.

"I've found a lot of amazing wine collections in New Zealand homes," Zajtman says. "Matching them with the

food makes the occasion even more special."

Though Zajtman enjoys working as a personal chef, it's not yet fulltime. He supplements his income as a consultant freelance chef in the hospitality industry.

"I don't believe it's possible to make a living as a personal chef in New Zealand," says Zajtman, who was born and raised in Melbourne.

"But I do believe that employing a personal chef will become more and more common here."

It's clear that Reynolds and Zajtman enjoy the opportunity to get out of the high-pressure environment of a hotel or restaurant and working in someone's home.

"One of the things I love about working in someone else's house is that you can show them what their kitchen is capable of doing," Reynolds says.

"Sometimes people have 30 pieces of equipment but they only use three of them. "I get so enthusiastic about what I'm doing that I tend to draw people in to the process. Cooking is a passion with me and I try to extend that to the client.

"I'm not one for keeping secrets. If I have decided something is good then I like to share that with my clients."

WHAT IT COSTS

A dinner party in your own home costs from $175 a head. A daily service for two starts at $400, including GST, plus groceries, ingredients and storage containers if needed.