The Room Behind the Restaurant

Somewhere between a restaurant table and hiring a chef sits the arrangement that most households here eventually want, and it is the hardest of the three to find because it is barely advertised.

A room at the back. A closed kitchen for an evening. A chef who cooks something not on the menu for fourteen people who all know each other. These exist across the Riviera and in central Athens, and almost none of them appear on a booking platform.

Why it is not productised

Because for the restaurant it is a favour with revenue attached rather than a business line. Closing a room means turning away covers, and the calculation of whether it is worth it depends on the night, the season and whether they want you as a regular. That is a judgement, not a price list, which is why there is no price list.

It also explains why the same request gets a different answer in February and in July. In August, at a seafront room, the answer is almost always no, and the fact that you are willing to pay more is not the relevant variable.

How to ask

• Be a customer first. A household that has eaten there four times gets an answer that a stranger with a large budget does not.
• Ask in person, or through someone who eats there. Email to a general address is the least effective route available.
• Bring the shape of the evening, not a brief. Number of people, the occasion, roughly when, and then let them tell you what is possible. Arriving with a specification invites a no.
• Be flexible on the date. A Tuesday in November is a conversation. A Saturday in July is not.
• Ask what they would like to cook. The best of these evenings happen when the kitchen is doing something it wants to do.

The request that works is not the largest budget. It is the one that makes the evening interesting for the kitchen.

What it costs

We are not going to publish a figure, because there is no standard one and any number here would mislead. The structure, though, is usually one of three: a minimum spend for the room, a per-head price agreed in advance for an agreed menu, or simply the bill plus an understanding about the room.

Establish which structure you are in before the evening, in plain terms. This is the single most common source of awkwardness afterwards, and it is entirely avoidable with one direct question.

The alternative that is often better

For a household with a house built to entertain, and most houses on this coast are, the kitchen coming to you is frequently the better version of the same evening. Several serious kitchens will send a chef and a hand. Almost none of them advertise this either.

It is the single most useful question to ask a restaurant you like and the one almost no new arrival thinks to ask. The answer, more often than people expect, is yes.