Private dining at home
A full evening cooked in your kitchen — homes, gardens, holiday lets, yachts and private venues. Canapés through to petits fours, served at your pace.
- 2–20 guests
- Plated or family-style
- Front-of-house on request
Southampton · Hampshire · South Coast
A restaurant kitchen, brought to your table.
I'm Haydar Sevincli — a private chef and culinary consultant. I cook bespoke menus in your home, garden or venue, and I help restaurants and cafés build dishes, systems and teams that hold up on a busy service.
- 0years in professional kitchens
- 0guests per private dinner
- 0radius covered from Southampton
01 — The chef
Twenty years of service,
reduced down to one table.
Albatross Kitchen is a one-chef studio. Every enquiry is answered by me, every menu is written for the people who will actually eat it, and every plate leaves my hands — not a production line.
My cooking sits where Anatolian technique meets British produce: charcoal and slow fire, proper stocks, fermented and pickled accents, vegetables treated with the same seriousness as the protein. Nothing on the plate is there for decoration.
Alongside private work I consult for restaurants, cafés and hotel kitchens — writing menus that can be costed and repeated, redrawing sections so a service actually flows, and training chefs so standards survive after I leave.
- Fully insured & Level 3 food hygiene practice
- Dietary, allergen and cultural requirements built in from the first draft
- I arrive with the kit, cook in your space, and leave the kitchen spotless
02 — What I do
Two kitchens, one standard.
Private work for people who want a restaurant evening without leaving the house — and consultancy for businesses who need their kitchen to work harder.
Bespoke menu design
Menus written around your request, your season and your table — including vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, halal and medical diets, without a compromise course.
- Tasting menus
- Wine & food pairing notes
- Full allergen matrix
Cooked & plated on site
Nothing arrives reheated. I prep, cook and plate in your space to restaurant standard, then clear down and leave the kitchen exactly as I found it.
- Own knives & core kit
- Sourcing & shopping included
- Full clean-down
Boutique event catering
Parties, weddings, christenings, corporate evenings and product launches — small-scale catering where the food is the reason people remember the night.
- Canapé & bowl-food menus
- Sharing feasts
- Live cooking stations
Recipe & menu development
New dishes for restaurants and cafés — developed, costed, photographed and written up as spec sheets your team can reproduce on the worst night of the week.
- GP & portion costing
- Standardised spec sheets
- Seasonal changeovers
Kitchen layout & workflow
Section design, prep lists, mise-en-place systems, ordering and stock routines — so the same number of chefs get more out of the same number of hours.
- Section & station mapping
- Prep & par-level systems
- Service-flow audit
Chef & staff training
Hands-on training for your brigade: knife work, cooking technique, plating discipline, and the hygiene and HACCP habits that keep an inspection uneventful.
- Technique & plating
- Hygiene & HACCP practice
- Menu-launch demos
Workshops & tastings
Cooking workshops and tasting evenings for private groups, teams and celebrations — everyone cooks, everyone eats, nobody washes up.
- Groups of 4–16
- Team-building format
- Recipe pack to take home
03 — Private dining
The evening, from door to
the last glass.
The brief
We talk — occasion, guests, diets, the kind of night you want. I look at your kitchen (photos are fine) and confirm what's practical.
The menu
You get a written menu with a fixed, all-in price: sourcing, cooking, service and clean-down. We refine it until it's the menu you actually want.
The day
I shop, arrive 2–4 hours ahead, set up and cook. You pour drinks and talk to your guests. Courses land when the room is ready for them.
After
Plates cleared, surfaces wiped, bins out, kitchen as it was. The only evidence is a printed menu on the table and people asking when the next one is.
“A dinner at home should feel like a restaurant you can't book — not like catering that turned up in a van.”Haydar Sevincli
05 — For restaurants & cafés
If the food is right
and the kitchen isn't,
you still lose money.
Most kitchens I'm called into don't have a cooking problem. They have a systems problem: a menu that can't be executed at volume, prep that's rebuilt from memory every morning, and a team that was never actually shown the standard.
I work on site, in whites, through real services — not in a meeting room.
Book a kitchen auditMenu & recipe development
New dishes designed around your equipment, your team's skill level and your target GP. Everything leaves as a written spec: ingredients, weights, method, plating photo, allergens and cost per portion.
- Costed to a target GP before it ever hits the pass
- Cross-utilisation to cut waste and stock lines
- Seasonal changeover calendar
Kitchen layout & operational flow
I map every section, walk the movement of a plate from fridge to pass, and remove the steps that cost you seconds a hundred times a night. Then prep lists, par levels and ordering routines to hold it in place.
- Section & station redesign
- Prep lists and par-level sheets
- Delivery, storage and rotation discipline
Staff training & technique
Hands-on sessions with your brigade: knife skills, temperature control, sauce and stock work, seasoning, and plating discipline so dish 90 looks like dish 1.
- Technique blocks by section
- Plating standards and photo references
- Junior-to-CDP development plan
Hygiene, HACCP & readiness
Practical hygiene training and paperwork that gets filled in because it makes sense — temperature logs, cleaning schedules, allergen control and traceability, checked against how your kitchen actually runs.
- Daily due-diligence routines
- Allergen matrix & labelling
- Mock walk-through before an inspection
Menu launch & demo days
A full demo service before you launch: I cook the new menu with your team, we time it, we break it, we fix it. Front of house tastes everything and learns how to sell it.
- Live demo & timed run-through
- FOH tasting and descriptions
- Two-week follow-up check
06 — Workshops & tastings
Cook it once with me and
you'll cook it forever.
Hands-on sessions for private groups, teams and celebrations — in your space or a hired kitchen. Aprons on, everyone works a station, and the session ends with the group sitting down to eat what they've made.
Charcoal & live fireMezze & flatbreadFresh pasta
Knife skillsFermenting & picklingPlating masterclass
Wine & food pairingTeam-building format
Ask about dates
- 4–16people per session
- 3–4 hrsincluding the meal
- All kitingredients & equipment provided
- Recipe packto take home afterwards
07 — How I work
Four things I don't
negotiate on.
01 Produce first
Menus are written after I've seen what's good that week, not before. If the fish isn't right on the day, the dish changes — and you'll be told why.
02 Real technique
Stocks reduced properly, meat rested properly, vegetables cooked with intent. No shortcuts hidden under a sauce, no garnish doing a job the cooking should have done.
03 Your kitchen, respected
I work clean, quietly and out of your way — and I leave your home or your business in better condition than I found it. Every time, without being asked.
04 One point of contact
You deal with me from the first message to the last plate. No account managers, no handover, no one else answering for the food.
08 — Practical questions
Before you
get in touch.
Anything not covered here, just ask — I answer every message myself.
Where do you cover?
Southampton and roughly 40 miles around it — Winchester, Portsmouth, Bournemouth, the New Forest and the Isle of Wight. Further afield is possible for larger bookings and residencies; travel is quoted transparently.
How far ahead should I book?
Two to four weeks is comfortable for a private dinner. December, and Friday and Saturday evenings in summer, go much earlier. Short notice is always worth asking about — cancellations happen.
What do you need from my kitchen?
Very little: an oven, a hob, a sink, a work surface and a plug. I bring knives, core equipment and the ingredients. Send me two or three photos of the space and I'll confirm the menu is realistic before you commit.
How is it priced?
One all-in price per head for private dining, covering sourcing, cooking, service and clean-down, with travel stated separately if you're outside the local radius. Consultancy is quoted as a day rate or a fixed-scope project. No percentage add-ons and no surprises on the invoice.
Can you handle allergies and specific diets?
Yes — vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free, halal, nut allergies and medical diets. Tell me at the brief stage and the menu is designed around it, so nobody at the table gets a lesser version of the evening. A full allergen matrix comes with every menu.
Do you bring staff for larger events?
Yes. Above roughly ten guests, or for standing receptions, I bring kitchen and front-of-house support. Numbers are agreed and priced in the quote so you know exactly who will be in your home.
Are you insured and food-safety certified?
Yes — public liability insurance and Level 3 food safety practice, with HACCP routines applied to private work as well as commercial. Certificates are available on request for venues that need them on file.
09 — Enquiries
Tell me about
the occasion.
Send a few lines — date, place, number of guests and what you have in mind. You'll get a personal reply, usually within 24 hours.