With 1,000 registered cooks, Chef Surfing has its focus set on Latin America | Hacker News Reader

With 1,000 registered cooks, Chef Surfing has its focus set on Latin America

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23 pointschefsurfing21 comments

I wonder if the success in Latin America is due to existing cultural norms where it is acceptable to eat food that has not been 'authorized', nor subject to crackdown, by a city health dept. In Argentina you can go to a person's home turned into a restaurant for a couple of nights a week, get an amazing meal and hang out with great people who also stumbled across the place. Some of the best meals ever in Buenos Aires were had in these places.

This is true. The grey zone in which "Closed door restaurants" operate in Buenos Aires, for example, requires only that the chefs have catering licenses issued by local government fairly liberally.

Chef Surfing is a startup born in Buenos Aires and inspired by the independent chef movement of Argentina and South America. Our favorite purta cerrada Cocina Sunae [1] by chef Christina Sunae serves the best south-east asian food available in Buenos Aires. I highly recommend this place to tourists, expats and local Argentines!

[1] http://www.cocinasunae.com/

We had a perfect meal at Christina's, and perfectly paired with wine. I really hope this takes off - we also loved http://colectivofelix.com, it was more homely in feel and as it was smaller we were able to talk to the other guests, making for a great evening together. If this could become the airbnb of food, count me in as a life-time subscriber.

We used the service once at Santiago, Chile.

Amazing experience. Much better than going to a restaurant.

which chef did you use? what was it for? i'm looking through and this seems like it could be great for when a bunch of people come round and expect food... but the idea that you can order a week's meals for $15.000 is also tempting (we're going to gain weight...).

We used chef Nancy (link is at the end. Was a "small group dinner" with around 7-8 people, we got Mexican Food :).

https://chefsurfing.com/es/chefs/chile/region-metropolitana-...

Thanks for the writeup Anna. Founder of Chef Surfing Eric Knudtson, please A.M.A.

What could someone expect to pay for a 2 person private dinner?

It really depends on the chef and city you are living in. In Santiago, Chile service prices start at 10,000 pesos ( ~20 USD ) per guest. If the size of your party is larger the price can be lower however that is generally the starting price. One chef in Santiago ( Chef Nancy Bavestrello [1] ) delivers meal packages at a lower price if the order volume is higher.

[1] https://chefsurfing.com/en/chefs/chile/region-metropolitana-...

"In 2013, their ambition is to reach 5,000 registered chefs and get 1,000 bookings via its platform."

Was there a typo here, or does this mean that most registered chefs on the site do not get booked?

This is no typo. To date we have only booked 169 chef services. We are focused on delivering bookings for the chefs however due to the open nature of our platform we have no way of knowing how many bookings a chef actually receives as a benefit of being on ChefSurfing.com ( we link directly to their own external site if they have one ) and it is very likely that once a chef and customer have contact with each other they maintain this relationship without Chef Surfing being involved.

Some of the chefs we are close with have called us after working a job they received via Chef Surfing and told us about how the customer would like to do more business together and asked us "if that's ok". That's not just ok with us, it's our goal ( getting the chefs more work and higher pay ).

Ah, makes sense. Thank Eric!

that's cool, but it means that when i look at the site there's little to tell me how popular or good different people are. i don't know how you can do it, but getting more feedback would help a lot, i think (but i will try it anyway, i suspect, in the next few weeks - santiago).

Great feedback Andrew. I think we need to change the design and make it more clear, however we do request that every completed "order" receive a review and comment from the customer. We also allow chefs to receive written endorsements as well which are publicly displayed on the site.

The chefs are sorted by reviews, endorsements and other quality-ensuring factors so that the first chefs you see are those we know most about and know deliver great service.

Can I suggest not getting the geo info when using the site? It was confusing for me and several other people I've shown it to in the last minutes, as we get various cities with no entries, and it's not clear what cities/countries have actual chefs available. Once I selected Mexico for example, it was fine, but it's not clear where the service is actually available.

Great suggestion, thank you Marquis! To everyone in California, we do have a few chefs signed up in San Francisco [1] and Oakland [2] although we've only just started to promote the site in the USA.

[1] https://chefsurfing.com/en/chefs/united-states-of-america/ca... [2] https://chefsurfing.com/en/chefs/united-states-of-america/ca...

I've been following them for months, and the team rocks!

Gracias Senor Gluck!

US needs to lighten up so we can get this here!

I can't wait for this to break out of the Latin American market and get over here to Australia! :) I love the idea!

Way to go Chef Surfing! I've been fortunate enough to meet Chef Nancy in Santiago thanks to them.

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