Extraordinary, tailor-made dinner parties in the exclusivity of your home, at the venue of your choosing, al fresco, or someplace more creative. Collaborate on culinary experiences of any size, from two-person anniversaries to intimate dinners and large-scale celebrations, Vendador delivers private chef services with Michelin-trained execution and a fully personalized menu.
Truly be a guest at your own table.
Setup, service, and cleanup are handled entirely by our team.
For seated dinners, choose between an individually plated tasting menu with personal menu development from Chef, or Chef’s Secret Menu, where we design a surprise culinary experience based on your preferences.
Every element of the restaurant arrives with us: a sommelier, servers, mixologists, cooking equipment, plateware, glassware, serviceware, linen napkins, and full cleanup.
Spend the evening with your guests instead of in the kitchen.
From intimate tasting menus for ten in a formal dining room to estate gatherings for eighty under a tented yard, we bring private dining, sommelier-led wine service, licensed craft bar programs, and canapé service. A complete culinary experience that arrives at your door and disappears without a trace.
A chef-driven journey through 3 to 12 seasonally inspired courses, plated with precision, and presented with passion and elite hospitality. Every detail is provided: curated plateware, Riedel glassware, silverware, and linen napkins, so you never need to worry about having the right amount of anything. Each menu is custom-designed for you and yours, never repeated.
Reserve a seated dinner
From cellar curation to night-of pairings, our certified sommeliers and licensed craft bartenders bring the full beverage experience to your event. Choose from our rotating seasonal cocktail menu, a premium open bar, or three tiers of wine pairings. Every pour is intentional, every cocktail crafted by experts.
Explore bar & sommelier services
Elegant, high level bites designed for entertaining. From the dock, to the beach, to the garden, our canapé service sets the tone from the first moment guests arrive and keeps the energy alive all evening long.
Explore canapés & happy hours
Abundant, beautifully composed, and anything but ordinary. Our buffet presentations bring the same Michelin-caliber ingredients and philosophy to a format that flows naturally for open houses, cocktail receptions, and events where conversation moves as freely as the food.
Explore buffet cateringHover or tap the red markers to explore.
Chef Francis trained at Japonais by Morimoto, joined the opening team at Momotaro, and was Sous Chef at Roister of the Alinea Group. That pedigree shows up the night of your event in three places: the technique on each plate, the speed of execution that lets every course leave the kitchen at the right moment, and the discipline that lets a small team work cleanly in a residential kitchen with limited space. That training carries through every team member because we never source from staffing agencies.
The beverage program is part of the evening, not an afterthought. Three wine pairing tiers are available for tasting menus, or our sommelier can build a custom pairing around your existing cellar. For evenings that lean toward cocktails, our award-winning bartenders design seasonal cocktail programs and zero-proof options, set up a full licensed bar in your space, and break it down at the end. The team includes certified sommeliers and licensed bartenders, never third-party staff.
What arrives with Vendador is the operating infrastructure of a restaurant, scaled to your space. Cookware, plateware, Riedel glassware, silverware, serviceware, linen napkins, and the cleaning tools to put your kitchen back together arrive with our team. Before the event, we ask for photos of your kitchen and dining space so the team prepares the right setup. We protect your surfaces and leave the space exactly as we found it.
Every staff member who walks into your home has signed an NDA before the booking is confirmed. We protect the privacy of you and your guests, and will even bring a tray of food down to the Secret Service team. Our core team is small and consistent, so repeat clients work with people who already know their home.
Every menu starts from scratch. The arc of the evening, the people at your table, the dietary realities of the group, the season we are cooking in, the spirit of the gathering, all of these feed into the development. Two anniversary dinners booked back-to-back will look nothing alike. The final version is printed on handcrafted menus for the night. We do not use sample menus or catering packages.
Since 2021, Vendador has grown to more than 400 clients and over 300 five-star Google reviews, entirely through word-of-mouth. The hosts who hire us almost always come to us through a neighbor whose home we already cook in. If you are reading this page, it is likely because someone you know already hosts us. That referral chain is the marketing channel we care about most.
Most catering companies operate on volume. The same menus, similar setups, the same service for every event, multiple events a day. Vendador was built on the opposite principle. Every detail of your experience, from the menu to service flow, is shaped by a small, in-house hospitality team. We aim to be your intentional culinary partner through every season of life, the team you call for every reason worth gathering people around a table.
Every Vendador evening follows the same process.
Six steps, from the first conversation to the relationship that follows.
Every booking starts with a 10-minute phone call with Chef Francis. We learn the occasion, the people at your table, the date, and the core memories you want the evening to create. No two consultations are the same, because no two evenings are the same.
Within 48 hours of the consultation, Chef Francis sends a personalized menu proposal shaped around the evening you described. There are no standard packages to sift through and no hidden line items.
We refine the menu together until every course is right. The menu locks before the proposal is signed, so what we deliver on the night is exactly what you approved.
A 25% deposit confirms your event on the calendar. From there, our team stays in touch as the date approaches and reconfirms every detail with you a week before service. The preparation work is ours.
The team arrives around two hours ahead of your guests. We bring everything the evening needs, so you never have to worry about whether you have enough of anything. You are a guest at your own party.
The best part of this work is what happens after. Some of our clients have become close friends. Many call us back for the next anniversary, the next birthday, the next holiday. We hold preferred dates for returning clients, and the same team you met the first time is the team that returns.
Word of Mouth
five stars & over 300 reviews on Google
“Our meal was phenomenal. We felt like we were at the chef’s counter of a fine dining restaurant with the added bonus of not having to leave our home.”
“My wife and I had never hired a private chef before and had no idea what to expect. A friend recommended Vendador for our anniversary and we are so glad we listened. Chef Francis and his team were incredible. Warm, professional, and genuinely great with our three little ones while we actually got to enjoy our anniversary dinner uninterrupted for the first time in years. Every course better than the last, and they left our home spotless.”
“Perfection. Thats the single word I would use to describe Chef Francis and the curated experience Vendador puts together. Having hired and worked with other private chefs, no other chef and private dining experience compares.”
You provide the guests. Everything else arrives with us.
Across Chicago, twelve neighborhoods make up the heart of our work. For each one, we’ve included a short note on the homes and hosting style, our favorite restaurant in the neighborhood, and a venue we recommend for events outside the home.
Greystones along Cleveland and Burling, single-family homes near the park, and rowhouses with the kind of architectural detail you can’t replicate in new construction.
Favorite restaurants: Boka, Galit
Favorite venue: Cafe Brauer
Vintage walk-ups, and single-family homes with rooftop gardens along the Southport Corridor and the streets east of Wrigley, with a hosting culture that draws on the neighborhood’s upbeat social culture.
Favorite restaurant: Itoko
Historic mansions, prewar buildings along Astor Street, and high-rise residences with lake views, hosted by Chicago families with deep roots in the city.
Favorite restaurant: Gibson’s
Victorian-era homes and historic townhouses around Wells Street, in one of Chicago’s oldest and most architecturally protected neighborhoods.
Favorite restaurant: Petite Edith
High-rise condominiums, converted lofts, and penthouses with skyline views, hosted by clients whose calendars rarely allow for the in-the-kitchen attention an evening deserves. We’re here for you.
Favorite restaurants: Obélix, Indienne
Favorite venue: The Driehaus Museum
Loft conversions in former meatpacking warehouses, single-family homes on Aberdeen and Carpenter, and modern townhouses in Fulton Market.
Favorite restaurants: The Loyalist, Creepies
Favorite venues: The Publishing House, Loft Lucia
Historic mansions along canopied Hoyne and Pierce, three-flats, and converted lofts, in a neighborhood with a long and active hosting culture.
Favorite restaurant: Schwa
A fun neighborhood of converted industrial spaces, frame houses, and renovated workers’ cottages along tree-lined streets, where dinners tend to feel relaxed even when the meal is serious.
Favorite restaurant: Le Bouchon
Favorite venue: Charcoal Factory Loft
Historic boulevards, gorgeous two-flats, and single-family homes along the boulevard with a hosting culture rooted in the neighborhood’s creative and design-aware community. Pack a picnic.
Favorite restaurant: Lula Café
Favorite venue: Greenhouse Loft
High-rise residences along the lakefront and Mag Mile, where building service entrances, doormen, and elevator coordination are part of every evening.
Favorite restaurant: The Purple Pig
Lofted condominiums, brownstone rows, and high-rise residences along the lakefront, in a neighborhood that has built a distinct identity from the rest of downtown.
Favorite restaurant: Apolonia
Favorite venue: Chicago Illuminating Company
A neighborhood of historic mansions and university-adjacent homes, where the hosting culture runs intellectually serious rather than performative.
Favorite restaurant (in the whole city!): Virtue
Favorite venue: Promontory Point
Yes. We regularly cook in high-rises across the Gold Coast, Streeterville, River North, and South Loop. We’re familiar with service entrances, freight elevator coordination, doorman protocols, and building insurance requirements. We can provide certificates of insurance to your building management when needed.
Yes. We routinely build menus around allergies (including the major eight), kosher and halal observance, vegetarian and vegan preferences, and medical dietary requirements like Celiac. We ask for these details when finalizing your menu so that every guest is served thoughtfully.
Yes. Our entire team, including chefs, sommeliers, and service staff, signs NDAs as a standard part of their employment. We can sign event-specific NDAs at your request. Discretion is part of how we work, not an add-on.
Yes. Our team is trained to execute Michelin-level menus in residential kitchens of any size, including pied-à-terre kitchens with limited counter space, single-oven setups, with minimal prep area. We bring our own cooking equipment, knives, and small wares. We ask all clients to send photos of their kitchen and dining space prior to arriving so we can prepare.
Personalized menu development with Chef, all ingredients sourced from specialty purveyors, cooking equipment, plateware, glassware, silverware, linen napkins, professional service staff, setup, and full cleanup. Beverages, sommelier service and bar staff are available as add-ons.
We coordinate parking and load-in directly with you ahead of the event. For high-rises, we use service entrances and freight elevators. For single-family homes, we typically request one spot in your garage if accessible for load in and out and/or guest parking passes for outside your home if on a permitted street.
Typical Vendador booking lead time is 4 weeks for standard events, 6-8+ weeks for large multi-course tasting menus, with shorter turnaround possible based on availability. 6-8 months in advance for weddings, but less for elopement dinners and micro-weddings. If your event is inflexible on date, we recommend you reach out as soon as possible. Vendador accepts event bookings within 12 months.
We operate with an event minimum of $2,000 and tasting menu experiences begin at $300 per person. Since no two events are alike, the final price is curated jointly through a consultation. These prices are for private dining experiences and are not reflective of corporate lunches and catering packages. Learn more about corporate catering.