Ask guests what they remember most about a villa stay at Casa de Campo® more often than not, it is dinner.

Specifically: dinner at the villa. The private chef who knew by day two that one guest preferred lighter sauces, that the children needed to eat at six, that the birthday on Thursday called for something that felt like an occasion. The breakfasts where Dominican produce — mangoes, avocado, fresh-caught fish — appeared in ways that the guests would not have thought to ask for but immediately recognised as exactly right. The evenings where nobody had to think about where to go, what to book, or how to get back.

A private chef at Casa de Campo® is the single most frequently cited upgrade by guests who have experienced it. This guide explains exactly how it works — how the chef is arranged, what the briefing process looks like, what a typical day of meals involves, and what it costs — so that you can decide whether it is right for your group before you arrive.

How the Private Chef Arrangement Works

At Casa de Campo®, villas fall into two broad categories from a staffing perspective: those that include a cook or chef as standard in the rental rate, and those where chef service is an optional add-on.

Villas with chef included: A number of villas in the Caribbean Paradise Homes portfolio include a cook or chef as part of the standard staff package. Villa Mar Azul, for example, includes a housekeeper, chef, and waiter. Casa Minitas includes chefs, chef assistants, and waiters as standard. When browsing villas, the staff configuration is listed on each property page — look for “staff included” in the villa details.

Villas where chef service is an add-on: For villas that include only a housekeeper as standard, a private chef can be arranged through Caribbean Paradise Homes as an additional service. The chef is engaged for the duration of your stay and briefed before arrival.

In both cases, the process of working with the chef is essentially the same — and it begins before you arrive.

The Briefing Process: What Happens Before You Land

The quality of a private chef experience is almost entirely determined by the quality of the briefing. A chef who knows your group before you walk through the door delivers a fundamentally different experience from one who discovers your preferences on arrival.

Caribbean Paradise Homes sends a pre-arrival briefing questionnaire to every villa guest who has a chef arranged. It covers:

Dietary requirements and allergies. Any allergies — including minor intolerances — should be declared completely. Cross-contamination in a private villa kitchen can be managed in a way that a restaurant cannot always guarantee. Be specific: not just “gluten-free” but whether it is coeliac-level avoidance or a mild preference.

Cuisine preferences and dislikes. This is where the chef begins to understand your group’s character. Do you eat fish regularly or only occasionally? Is there anyone in the group who avoids spice? Does anyone have strong negative reactions to particular ingredients — offal, mushrooms, anything like that? The more specific you are, the better calibrated the menu.

Children’s requirements. If travelling with children, their preferences and eating schedules are the single most important element to brief in advance. Most families with young children want children’s dinner at 6pm and adult dinner later — this is a completely standard arrangement that the chef handles routinely. Note the children’s ages, their reliable favourites, and anything they will reliably refuse.

The birthday or occasion flag. If there is a birthday, anniversary, or any celebration during the stay, tell us. Chefs at Casa de Campo® are used to being asked to mark an occasion — a special cake, a themed dinner, a particular dish that has meaning to the group. These moments are planned for rather than improvised.

Meal schedule preferences. How many meals per day do you want the chef to cover? The most common arrangement is breakfast and dinner daily, with lunch at the villa on days when the group is not eating at the beach club or a resort restaurant. Some groups prefer all three meals in-villa; others want only dinner. The arrangement is flexible and agreed in advance.

Grocery pre-stocking. Separate from chef service but closely related — Caribbean Paradise Homes can arrange for the villa to be pre-stocked with your preferred drinks, snacks, breakfast ingredients, and pantry staples before you arrive. This is particularly useful for the first morning, when everyone wakes up before the chef’s day starts.

What a Typical Day Looks Like With a Private Chef

The daily rhythm with a private chef at a Casa de Campo® villa settles quickly into something that feels genuinely different from any other holiday mode.

Morning. The chef typically arrives before or at breakfast, depending on what was agreed. For most groups, breakfast is the most relaxed meal of the day — fresh fruit, eggs prepared to order, toast, pastries, juice, coffee. Dominican tropical fruit — mango, papaya, pineapple, passion fruit — is genuinely exceptional in season, and a chef who sources it locally will arrive with produce that bears no resemblance to what you find in a Northern Hemisphere supermarket. The villa kitchen is not a restaurant kitchen; the chef is not cooking for 40 covers. Breakfast for eight people can happen at three different times if guests wake at different hours, and nobody has to wait.

Mid-morning. The chef plans the day’s menus, does any necessary shopping or sourcing, and prepares mise en place for lunch and dinner. This is also when any adjustments from the previous day get incorporated — if a dish was slightly off-spec, or someone mentioned they’d love more of a particular thing, it feeds into what comes next.

Lunch. On beach days, many groups eat at Minitas Beach Club or one of the resort’s casual restaurants. On villa days — which tend to multiply as the week progresses, because the villa reveals itself as an increasingly pleasant place to spend the day — the chef prepares a lighter midday meal. Salads, ceviche, grilled fish, sandwiches, fruit platters. The kind of lunch that is genuinely good without being an event.

Afternoon. The villa is quiet. The pool is warm. The chef is preparing dinner. This is the part of the villa experience that guests who come from hotel stays find most disorienting in the best possible way — the complete absence of any logistical obligation. No reservation to get to. No taxi to arrange. No decision to make.

Evening. Dinner is typically the most carefully prepared meal of the day. The chef discusses with the group what time suits — usually 7:30pm to 8:30pm depending on whether children are eating separately. For multi-course meals, aperitivos appear on the terrace before dinner, and the chef may present dishes at the table or plate everything from the kitchen depending on the meal’s character.

The private outdoor dining space — the terrace, the pool deck, the garden, wherever the villa positions its outdoor table — is where the experience becomes genuinely difficult to replicate in a restaurant context. Eight or twelve people around a table in the Caribbean evening, food that was made specifically for them, no neighbouring tables, no service timing pressure. This is what guests describe when they say the chef experience was the best decision of the trip.

What Kind of Food Do Private Chefs at Casa de Campo® Cook?

The answer depends on who you book — and the briefing.

Casa de Campo® villa chefs are generally trained in Dominican and broader Caribbean cuisine, with strong competency in grilled seafood, tropical salads, and the fresh produce that the Dominican Republic’s climate produces at exceptional quality. The best chefs in the villa market have expanded this foundation into a genuinely broad repertoire — Latin American cuisine across different traditions, Mediterranean cooking using local fish and vegetables, and a solid command of international dishes that guests from North America and Europe are most likely to want.

What most groups end up eating:

A typical week might include a Dominican feast night — sancocho (the slow-cooked Dominican stew), tostones, fresh-caught local fish in a light citrus preparation, and desserts built around local fruit. This is often the meal that guests cite specifically: the evening when they understood that Dominican food is genuinely excellent and not merely functional.

Alongside this: grilled lobster and shrimp from the Dominican coast; ceviche made with fish bought that morning; pasta nights when the group wants something comforting; steaks when someone’s preference is carnivorous and uncomplicated; light lunches of crudités, hummus, and fresh bread; breakfasts that feel appropriate for the climate — lighter, fruitier, more tropical — rather than the eggs-and-bacon default.

What to ask for:

If there is a cuisine or dish that is genuinely important to your group — a particular tradition, a regional speciality, a dish that has meaning — put it in the briefing. The worst case is that the chef cannot do it well; the usual case is that they can, or can find someone who can, or can offer something adjacent that is equally good.

The Waiter: The Often-Overlooked Part of the Equation

Many villas that include a chef also include a waiter, and it is worth understanding what this adds to the experience.

The waiter in a villa context is the person who sets the table, serves meals, manages drinks throughout the evening, and clears between courses. For groups of 8 or more, the presence of a dedicated waiter transforms dinner from a meal into a properly served occasion — the kind of service that would cost significantly more at a comparable restaurant.

The waiter also handles the logistics that might otherwise fall to guests: keeping the drinks cold, making sure the table is set before dinner, clearing dessert plates while the group moves to the terrace for the last drink of the evening. For large groups, this element of the arrangement is often cited as being as valuable as the chef.

Villas where waiter service is included in the standard staff package — such as Casa Minitas and Villa Mar Azul — provide this seamlessly. For villas where it is not standard, Caribbean Paradise Homes can arrange additional staff.

What Does a Private Chef Cost at Casa de Campo®?

Chef service is priced per day, typically covering two to three meals. Rates vary by villa and by the specific chef arrangement, and Caribbean Paradise Homes confirms the cost as part of the total stay estimate so there are no surprises.

As a general orientation:

• For villas where chef is included as standard, the cost is incorporated into the villa’s nightly rate
• For villas where chef is an add-on, daily rates for chef service typically range from approximately $150–$300 per day depending on the size of the group, the meals covered, and the level of service
• Grocery costs are separate — the chef shops for ingredients and the cost of produce is typically settled at the end of the stay or pre-arranged with a grocery budget

These figures are guides rather than fixed prices. The specific cost for your villa and group is confirmed when you book.

One practical note: groceries in the Dominican Republic are reasonably priced relative to North America and Europe, particularly for local produce, seafood, and Dominican staples. The grocery cost of a week’s worth of meals for a group of eight is typically modest relative to the equivalent of eating out for every meal.

Private Chef vs. Eating at the Resort’s Restaurants: How to Balance

The private chef and the resort’s restaurants are not in competition — they serve different purposes and the best approach is to use both across the week.

The resort’s restaurants — La Caña, SBG, Minitas Beach Club, La Piazzetta in Altos de Chavon — provide atmosphere, social energy, and occasions that the villa cannot replicate. Dinner in Altos de Chavon is dinner in a 16th-century Mediterranean village above the Chavon River. SBG on a Saturday night is a social event. Minitas Beach Club at sunset is one of the most beautiful dining settings in the Caribbean. These experiences belong in the week.

But the private chef provides something the restaurants cannot: meals that are specifically made for your group, in your own space, without the logistics of getting there, waiting for a table, or coordinating a large group’s preferences from a fixed menu.

Our recommendation to guests, which we outline in the complete dining guide, is typically two or three restaurant evenings across a seven-night stay, with the remaining evenings at the villa with the chef. This balance tends to produce the week guests remember most favourably — enough variety to feel that you have experienced the resort’s dining offer, and enough villa evenings to feel that the private chef experience was genuinely a part of the holiday rather than just a fallback.

How to Arrange a Private Chef Through Caribbean Paradise Homes

The simplest approach: when you contact us about a villa, tell us you want a private chef. We will confirm whether the villa you are considering includes one as standard or whether it is an add-on, quote the cost, and include it in your total package from the start.

Once the booking is confirmed, you will receive our pre-arrival briefing form before your stay. The form is the primary briefing document — fill it in as thoroughly as you can. If anything changes between completing the form and arriving, our concierge team is available by phone and WhatsApp throughout your stay to relay updates to the chef.

The chef will introduce themselves when you arrive, confirm the briefing, and typically ask a few questions before the first meal of the stay. From there, the dynamic that develops between the group and the chef over the course of a week — the chef learning the group, the group becoming comfortable making requests — is one of the less expected pleasures of the villa experience.

Contact our concierge team to arrange chef service for your villa →

Frequently Asked Questions

Does the chef cook all three meals every day? The arrangement is flexible and agreed in advance. Most groups opt for breakfast and dinner daily, with lunch covered on villa days and eaten at the beach club or a restaurant on out-days. All three meals is also available — confirm with us when booking.

Can the chef accommodate strict dietary requirements? Yes. Vegan, vegetarian, coeliac, severe allergies, and complex dietary combinations are all accommodated when briefed in advance. The villa kitchen allows a level of control over cross-contamination that restaurant kitchens cannot always provide.

Does the chef speak English? Most Casa de Campo® villa chefs communicate in both Spanish and English. For complex dietary briefings or specific requests, our team acts as the liaison to ensure nothing is lost in translation.

Can the chef cook for a special occasion — a birthday cake, a themed dinner? Yes. Occasion meals are among the most frequently requested and most appreciated elements of the private chef experience. Include the details in the briefing form.

What if we don’t like the chef or the food isn’t what we expected? Contact our concierge team immediately. Our on-the-ground team will address it directly with the chef or arrange a replacement if necessary. We manage the relationship with the chef so you don’t have to.

Is the chef the same person every day? Yes. The continuity of having the same chef throughout the stay is part of what creates the progressive calibration of meals to the group’s preferences. If a chef is unavailable for a specific day, a replacement of equivalent quality will be arranged.

Ready to plan your stay? Browse our villa collection to find a property with chef included, or contact our concierge team to arrange chef service for any villa in our portfolio.