kitchensurfing

I live in New York. This means that as much as I love eating and talking about food, there are some pretty severe limitations on what I can actually cook in my New York City-sized kitchen. All I want for Christmas is a center island. Do you know who is used to cooking in a closet-sized space, though? Professional chefs. And do you know that you can have a professional chef cook in your tiny New York City apartment and it won't cost you the equivalent for dinner for two at Per Se?

Wha..? Enter Kitchensurfing. They can find you a real-live chef who will come cook in your (maybe shabby) kitchen for anything ranging from a casual dinner for you and the significant other to a giant, Day of the Dead-themed dinner party (on my bucket list, what can I say?). One of their newest services is Same Day Dinners, where, as you might have guessed, you can book a chef on just a few hours' notice. But here's the kicker: it's $25 a head, including tax and tip and cleanup and everything.

Mike and I were lucky enough to try it out a few weeks ago and while I was skeptical that our chef, James, could actually get in and out of our apartment in 45 minutes, I was very pleasantly surprised. As you can see from the picture above, this was a professional operation. There were garnishes! It also featured bacon in almost every dish, which I really appreciated. Our menu, which I picked out online from about different three options, was cider-brined pork chops, Brussels sprouts with bacon and potatoes cooked in duck fat (is there any other way?). The pork was perfectly cooked, the potatoes were bananas and the spouts crisp-tender, as they should be.

A few more pictures from our date-night-in below.