 Poster: A snowHead
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@Davemc37, well, at least @Nadenoodlee and I are on your side. 
I'm sorry I have no experience of this kind of thing and therefore no recommendations.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Hi
The live out chef style service you have come across in Morzine is a function of demand volume and Morzine and surrounding resorts are at the peak of where demand is highest (significant level of Brit owned chalets) for this service, I'd suggest that Serre Che is somewhat at the lower end of the demand list, and, whilst I can't help specifically with a budget chef local to Serre Che, have you already googled 'service de traiteur briancon'? That should get all the local outside catering companies in the area. Due to scale I doubt there is a anglofile but plenty of french customers use catering services too - possibly not in the exact style you get in a typical UK run chalet but for a price I am sure they will make a proposal around your brief.
Madame Vacances (Skifrance) offer a contactless catering service which sounds like what you area requesting, but they don't have any properties based in Serre Che, but do in relatively nearby resorts. If you contact them and ask nicely they might point you towards their suppliers. But noting you are travelling on a peak week they might be reluctant to overstretch on a week they will already be working at capacity.
If those routes prove fruitless or out of budget then there is a more francophile alternative to Huski called Famileat https://www.famileat.fr/ and maybe a combination of both might provide you with some varied meal options throughout the week. Huski have a good rep though and also will accommodate wine orders - but it will be cheaper to use an online supermarket delivery service for your wine/drinks/breakfast goods and since the Pandemic french supermarkets have become much better at this, also a lot of resorts now have a daily bread/pastry/milk delivery. I don't think it is too onerous on the teenagers to be responsible for picking up fresh bread/pastries/cakes/tartes every day - you'll be needing lots of baguettes every day anyway to make your packed lunches!
Enjoy whatever you do - worst case, a compromise, as already suggested, just go to the deli or similar at the start of the week and order a variety of 'traiteur' made tray dishes and/or one night of rotisserie chicken (my campsite fav), no cooking, home made, sustainable local dishes the like of which is second nature in France and barely exists here and will be very affordable and still with minimum effort.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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@Davemc37, sorry, I didn't mean to come across as dismissive of your request, I was just thinking out loud of alternatives for you that might work if you were unable to find a chef service as I know what is available there. There's one called Zeste in the valley who will come and cook in your chalet. I can vouch for the standard of the cooking for at least one of the ladies involved. They used to do delivered meals, but now only do in-house cooking chalet-style. https://www.zesteserrechevalier.com/?fbclid=IwAR2cMNwcw8zwCw_FjPRWga8a6COIYuuPdCGjql1mw8kGR9IZm4qEjGGto9E
The ladies doing this are both British and have lived and worked in many of the hotels and chalets in the valley for many years.
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Hells Bells, don’t worry that’s not how I took it.
I am currently in discussions with Carol at Zeste but I suspect they may not have any availability our week. Just waiting for them to respond to an emai but thanks for vouching for their service.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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Frog legs, thanks too. Lots of good advice there. The two things you can be sure of are the kids will be happy to go to the bakers in the mornings and the adults will be happy to go get wine in the evenings.
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You'll need to Register first of course.
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I have booked this type of service a couple of times for groups of 10-12 adults. In Val D'Isere last March the service for 5 days cost 290€ pp including food for breakfast on the other 2 days. For next March I have booked a chef in Les Menuires for 6 days to provide breakfast, afternoon snacks and 3 course dinner with 1/2 bottle of wine for 280€ pp. No payment required until close to arrival.
I can't offer the OP any help in their chosen resort but just wanted to give some examples of what can be found.
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paying £500 travel costs to get a chef to SC from the uk is not an option.
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But, if you could find one who would regard it as a "free holiday" it would be a ridiculously cheap solution. My son catered in a number of chalets as a free-lance and earned a LOT. Being paid 2800 to include all food and drink for 14 people for a week is an offer he could easily have refused. Discussion threads on SHs often "branch out" from the original request and the ensuing debate can be entertaining and instructive. Anyone who gets frightfully irritated by thread drift would be doing their blood pressure a favour by avoiding internet forums.
We stayed in a range of "cheap" catered chalets in the past, and though there aren't as many as there used to be, they still exist and would be easier, and probably a lot cheaper, than trying to put together the different elements, from a distance, in advance. Suggesting that the OP have a look at that option doesn't strike me as unkind.
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| Quote: |
For next March I have booked a chef in Les Menuires for 6 days to provide breakfast, afternoon snacks and 3 course dinner with 1/2 bottle of wine for 280€ pp.
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That's a super luxurious option, but hardly "budget"!
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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@pam w, and I refer m'learned friends to the OP's OP,
"We are on a low budget "
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@Davemc37,
Get the teenagers to do the cooking, cleaning & food shopping (on a very tight budget) - tell them it's training for the chalet host jobs they"ll be looking for when they want to do seasons. 
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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| under a new name wrote: |
@pam w, and I refer m'learned friends to the OP's OP,
"We are on a low budget " |
I think that had been clarified - certainly 200 Euro per head seems acceptable maybe even 300 given peak time requirement. Lets split the difference at 3500 all in. 500 per day pays for a lot of takeaways, tartes and gelatos so I suspect there is a solution to be had even if it's an enterprising ski bum just doing his version of Deliveroo.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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@Dave of the Marmottes, I could do all meals, and a bit left over for that, could even include lunches out.
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| sugarmoma666 wrote: |
| @Davemc37, have you checked what facilities you have available for cooking? For e.g. does the chalet have an oven. I've looked at Hu Ski as an option (having experienced their catering at the PSB) but wasn't sure how well it would work for a big group if you don't have a large oven available (which can be the case). |
I've stayed in some bad catered chalets, but nothing like as bad as the Hu Ski food we experienced at the PSB. Maybe Admin had beaten them down on price, but even so!
Just thinking about the various propositions. This is an internet forum, it's what people do... and often the best ideas come from 'outside the box'.
Any ski bum is also going to be shopping at the local supermarket, and carrying endless bottles of wine back to the chalet.
I imagine being said skibum and it will be, breakfast: £2 (you'll be eating a lot of porridge and there certainly won't be croissants at £1 each); Cake £1; Dinner £10 and wine £3. So £16 per head per day, or £224.
Your budget is £200 per head, so £2,800, and it's across 6 days (broadly), so £466 per day. That leaves your chef £242 profit. He has to shop for and set up for breakfast at 7, serve it 8-9 and clear away 9-10. 3 hours, though he can bake a cake in that time. He then has to go shopping and bring the shopping back, cook, serve and clear away, which I think will keep him busy from 4-10pm, so another 6 hours. That £244 makes it under £30 per hour. I wouldn't do it! (Though I note that you do seem to have found people who would theoretically do it, for all that they are booked up months in advance at that price - which suggests their price is too low.)
Finally, having just looked on their website, Alps-2-Atlantic in Morzine charge €40 per head for dinner. That seems to me to be a similar price to a restaurant. Why not just go out to a restaurant?
And I wouldn't want somebody else supplying any old wine to my chalet, nor dictating what I get for breakfast, when that's coming out of his budget and the less he spends on me the more profit he makes. I'd want to make sure I was ordering in the food and wine, and paying the skibum for his time. And who knows if he can even cook; cooking for 14 isn't that easy - least of all in a strange kitchen! And that's a huge quantity of washing up for one person. No catered chalet would expect a single person to do this much; and they'd have the food delivered too.
So to use the £1,464 budget for the cook most efficiently, I'm with Pam and would think about flying one out. Flights for £200, ski pass for £250. Does one of the teenagers have a friend who has done a cooking course who fancies a week skiing and to be paid £500? Give them a hand carrying the wine back from the shop, and doing the washing up (on a rota) and I think you might find you were onto a winner.
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You know it makes sense.
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James the last,
Alps 2 Atlantic covers breakfast, afternoon tea and 3 course evening meal with wine for that price so it’s not just dinner. I doubt you’d be able to get that from a restaurant for a similar price.
Part of the reason for trying to do it the way we want is so that we don’t have to go out every night but also we are in a relatively quiet part of serre chevalier so it wouldn’t be easy to book tables for 14 every night.
As for flying a chef out let me know where you can get flights and transfers for £200 during half term. £450 to £500 minimum and that with an impractical and grotty 6 am return flight.
It wouldn’t work anyway as we don’t have a spare room in the chalet. (I’m a little afraid now that I’ll get twenty responses on who should sleep with the chef.)
All in all I know there are many different angles that you can take with a ski holiday but I’m looking for helping with sourcing not alternative options. We’ve arrived at our preference as a group with around 20 years of ski holiday experience each, so we know what we want.
The lesson here is simply don’t leave it so late to book your holiday.
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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James do tell me more about your experience with hu ski. What was so bad about it, quality portion size, delivery?
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Poster: A snowHead
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@Davemc37, "don’t leave it so late to book your holiday."
Are you that late? Maybe for 14, over 1/2 term I suppose?
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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When my son cooked for chalets the owners/guests told him what they wanted to eat (he would talk to them the week before to find out about what they liked and plan the first day's food) and he shopped accordingly - in Val d'Isere the availability of ingredients was easy, though less so elsewhere. The food was expensive, but very good quality. Lobsters readily available! The guests paid at cost for the food and drink and paid the agency $X for his services. Of which the agency paid him less than £X, of course. To go for a deal where the cook makes more money if they spend the minimum on food and drink has evident disadvantages. It's obviously the deal with cheap catered chalets, but the advantage of cheap chalets is that they're cheap, you do none of the work, don't have to be planning it all months in advance and you know not to expect the quality of wine you'd buy for yourself. And if the chef gets Covid or food poisoning at the last minute someone else finds a substitute.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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@Davemc37, where is the chalet in Serre Che?
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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Villneuve
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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@Davemc37, this is a perfectly normal question and it will be interesting to see the outcome and I hope you post up the solution if you find something. The FB search option sounds sensible if you can find a decent group or page. Have you contacted the SC tourist office? They may be able to point you in the right direction. . Have you considered sharing the cooking though...?
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we ve hired a chef in for several years
350 euros per day to shop, prepare, cook, serve, clear away a 3 course evening meal for 14. Food bill settled as per costs incurred
gives you control and flexibility and much less grief than getting 14 people ready and to/from a restaurant
as we drive down we take vino with us
better quality at less cost
great way to do it if you can find a chef
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@Legend. I had suggested Serre Che Seasonaires FB page, seems like a sensible place to start.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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| Quote: |
350 euros per day to shop, prepare, cook, serve, clear away a 3 course evening meal for 14. Food bill settled as per costs incurred
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That sounds like a fair deal all round. I do agree that traipsing a big group, including kids, out to a restaurant in the evening would be a pain.
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| Davemc37 wrote: |
James the last,
Alps 2 Atlantic covers breakfast, afternoon tea and 3 course evening meal with wine for that price so it’s not just dinner. I doubt you’d be able to get that from a restaurant for a similar price. |
Nope. That's the price for dinner only - check their website! https://www.alps2atlantic.com/classics-menu/ "Evenings only €40pp per night." Afternoon tea is a cake. You can buy that in any patisserie. And breakfast bread likewise. They're not putting much effort or cost into that part of the service!
Hu Ski supplied the food for the PSB last yera. The food was really mediocre; think bad school dinners. I can't remember a single detail about it, apart from the ice cream served with some ridiculously inappropriate liqueur on top that left (i) everybody in fits of giggles and (ii) the liqueur in the bottom of the plates. If we'd paid their headline £20 per head for it, it would have felt - to me - very expensive indeed.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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James look again at the alpes to Atlantic website, you can get 3 course dinner only for 40euro a head but you can also get 6 day full package breakfast, afternoon tea , 3 course dinner with wine for 265 euros which is 44 euros a day.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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| Davemc37 wrote: |
we won’t have access to a car so can’t get to larger ones,
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 erm, taxi?
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@TheGeneralist, there is even a valley bus that stops outside at least one of them, and a fairly large and well-stocked butcher, boulangerie and Sherpa in Villeneuve, but that isn't helping with the OPs request, as he doesn't want the faff of catering, although does want the flexibility of the accommodation. A real Brexit bonus that decent chalets are now in short supply. I wouldn't be surprised if it used to be part of Crystal or Nielsons operations in the valley. There was always less than in other resorts as the majority of visitors are French.
I've done my best and looked around. Short of contacting one of the French traiteurs, there's not a lot available. The lady who looks after my apartment would know if there was. She came up with Zeste and HuSki, as did the Serre Che Seaonnaires page.
I reckon my own cooking would be better than HuSki, so wouldn't waste my money, but Zeste if available would be good.
@Davemc37, have you already found Chalet Prestige? https://www.chalet-prestige.com/en/page/chalet-prestige-catering-service.399.html
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You know it makes sense.
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@Hells Bells, have you personally experienced HuSki's delivery offering? (If not, it would seem harsh to be making judgements on them in this way.) The thread I linked to above suggests that the PSB may not have been a fair representation of their offering (although personally I thought it was fine).
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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I‘m also a bit surprised about the comments of the Hu.Ski food at the PSB. I thought it was fine, good in fact, for the price (which was 85 GBP for 6 x 3 course evening meals). IMO it was perfectly good home cooked food, with good portions - basically what I would expect from a catered chalet. I have unfortunately had much worse chalet food! I‘d order from Hu.Ski personally having experienced them at the PSB.
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Poster: A snowHead
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@sugarmoma666, I haven'tand I'm really not judging them,their model just isn't for me. I can produce my own good quality home-cooked food in my kitchen which is better than any chalet I've stayed in, and it certainly wouldn't cost me the usual Hu.ski price. I don't find it a chore to make dinner either. No bragging intended.
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FAQ
