Give a Chef for the Holidays

Eat Street

"My very first client wanted to lose weight the old-fashioned way: calories in, calories out." With that as her marching orders, Pamela Nevarez began her career as a personal chef and began Eat Street. While not all of her clients have such exacting goals in mind when they hire her, Nevarez does her best to accommodate them.

Nevarez has been cooking professionally for some 27 years, and in that time, she's amassed a vast repertoire of menus and a keen sense of what people seek in their everyday eating. The ubiquitous time, crunch plays a part among the reasons people seek out a personal chef. You may intend to get yourself to the market and whip up a fresh plate of sole with creamed spinach. But when the watch reads 6:30 as the key goes in the ignition, the prospect of having such a meal all prepared and waiting for you at home is pretty damn appealing. That's where Nevarez and her delivery meals deliver.

Other more urgent circumstances have people ringing up Nevarez; health issues like diabetes, chemotherapy, and celiac disease require special attention to diet, and Eat Street can keep clients on track and on diet. To assess these needs, Nevarez consults with new clients prior to donning her apron and whipping up meals. "It's absolutely a must to interview [new clients]. What are their goals? Lose weight? Recover from chemo?" Less demanding but nonetheless essential information is, "What do they like to eat? What they don't like to eat." Having obtained a sense of whom she's cooking for, menus are devised, and deliveries can be made up to twice a week.

The nonformula, personalized approach is working for her. And evidence shows it works for her clients. That initial client who wanted to lose? He lost 40 pounds.