That is where every charter starts, and it is the part I enjoy most. Send me a few lines about who is coming aboard and how they like to eat, and I’ll come back inside a day with a week written around them — yours to change as much as you like. Private and charter, available worldwide.
Seared salmon, heirloom tomato, micro herbs
Guests fill in a preference sheet about two weeks before a charter — allergies, dislikes, celebrations aboard, how you like to eat at sea. Most chefs read it after they've been hired. Send me yours now and I'll return a drafted seven-night menu, with the dietary requirements already designed around, within 24 hours.
No obligation, and nothing you send leaves my kitchen.
On the live site this hands the sheet to your menu planner and drafts seven nights around the restrictions.
Thirty-six dishes, six to a card. Every one cooked and photographed on board — swipe or tap a card to deal the next one.
Ten years at sea, almost all of it as sole chef: motor and sail, private and charter, from 16 to 50 metres, for up to ten guests and crews of up to ten.
Bahamas, Florida and the Caribbean through the winter; the Mediterranean and the US north-east in summer; an Atlantic crossing; owner’s trips, back-to-back charter and long private programmes with the same family across several seasons.
Two new builds where I planned and set up the galley from the drawings, and one galley stripped and prepared for a five-year survey at the yard.
Before the water: a decade in four- and five-star hotels and upscale restaurants — Gran Canaria, Berlin, Taipei and a fourteen-point Gault Millau kitchen in Switzerland — from chef through sous and executive sous to head chef.
Sizes and regions only. No vessel names, no owners, no guests.
I photograph food. I don't photograph guests, interiors, documents or anything that identifies a vessel or an owner. Nothing from a charter is posted while the charter is running. If a boat prefers nothing at all is published, that's the default and no one has to ask twice.
Certificate numbers, issue dates and expiries are not published here. Copies go to the captain or management company on request.
More than two decades in kitchens, ten of those years at sea. I trained in Germany, in restaurants and hotels — the classical route, learned in the order it is meant to be learned. Then I left to collect influence rather than read about it. Switzerland first, then Taiwan, then the Caribbean. Fusion in the honest sense: you cook somewhere long enough that the place gets into your hands.
Somewhere along the way I came back to where I started. I prefer simplicity now. I take things off the plate more often than I put them on, and three elements that are right beat seven that are clever. What the travelling gave me has not gone anywhere — it sits underneath the food rather than on top of it. And the cooking keeps moving: the market, the crossing and who is at the table all go into it, so no two weeks come out the same.
I enjoy cooking fish and seafood as much as meat, and I plan a charter around the preference sheet rather than a fixed repertoire. Over the years I have cooked for most ways of eating there are, and the measure of that is simple: a guest who eats differently from the rest of the table should never be able to tell they were accommodated. Provisioning is the part of the job I actually enjoy — knowing which market on which island has the good tomatoes is worth more than any technique — and the accounts that come with it are kept properly: receipts in order, the budget where the purser expects to find it.
Away from the galley I train with weights, hike, and spend most of my time outdoors. It shows up in the cooking — lighter, cleaner food that leaves guests able to do something with the afternoon.
I still travel whenever I can: new countries, new cultures and the cooking that comes with them. That part never stopped. Art, music and architecture hold my attention for the same reason cooking does — they are all decisions about proportion and restraint.
