These are some of the formats to consider when doing a booking, select the one that best suits your needs. If you have a specific situation which you cannot find in these formats simply contact us and we’ll create a plan for you.

Some of the occasions could be the celebration of an aniversary, a wedding engagement, birthdays, religous holidays, bachelor / bachelorette parties, or simply a get-together with friends.

1. Formal Dinners or Lunches: The chef will prepare a formal dinner or lunch for you and your guests including hors d’oeuvres and a five course meal. This is the most formal and elegant service, depending on the size of your event we have servers, bartenders and assitants available as well. Inquire for rates.
2. Casual Prix Fixe Menu: Choose one of the prix fixe menus below or think of something you are really craving for and the chef will prepare it for you and up to six guests. Special Offer: $300 + cost of ingredients
3. Personal Chef A very convenient alternative for people with specific dietary needs (Diabetic, Celiac, weight loss, spa) or for people that simply do not have the time to cook.The chef will prepare foods for the week, label and store them in your refirgerator and freezer. You will also get instructions on how to reheat and serve them as needed. Special promotion: $300 + cost of ingredients. This service make a great gift for someone
4. Blind Menu: The Chef will arrive and cook with the ingredients you already have in your kitchen. It is a fun process to watch, casual and ideal for a relaxed and fun group of people. Dinner or Lunch for four: $300

When booking an event:

Be accurate with the address and time of the event.

Have staples readily available in the kitchen

Please have the kitchen clean and have as much clear counter space available.

Have a cleaning person available after the event.

Gratuity not included

Kosher, Macrobiotic, Spa, Mediterranean, French, Italian, Greek, Ashkenhazi, American, Asian, Mexican, Caribbean, Cajun, Brazilian, Argentinean, Peruvian, Persian, North African, Scandinavian are some of the styles I have done in the past.

Celebrities I have cooked for include Nobel Peace prizes Nelson Mandela and Rigoberta Menchu, NY Mayor Dinkins and Mayor Ed Koch, Anna Kournikova, Roger Federer, Gabriela Sabatini, Lenny Kravitz, Madonna, Gloria and Emilio Estefan, Smashing Pumpkins, Denzel Washington and Boy George to name a few.

Engagements range from Dinner Parties, Holiday Parties, Lunches, Breakfasts, Brunches, Cocktail Parties, Dessert Receptions and Yachts to week-long engagements overseas.

I remember paying a visit at the French Culinary Institute one year and speaking to Chef Alain Sailhac, he mentioned that the school was working on the project of putting together  the school’s textbook and in his heavy french accent told me that I should contribute a recipe to the book and so he narrowed it down to a soup, a vegetable soup and to think of a recipe that would exemplify a precise technique. So I left NY thinking – vegetable soup and technique – hmmm. I was contacted by the school’s office and was sent all the paperwork, releases and such and the ball was on my court, I just needed to make the recipe and send it to them. Time went by, months passed and the gentle reminders from the school office about the deadline approaching turned into a last call of desperation on a Friday  - Chef Hughes if you do not provide us with the recipe by Monday we will not be able to include it in the textbook -

I can work under pressure and I actually love it because I probably work the best, but in Miami we were just hit by Hurricane Wilma I believe and my catering kitchen had no power; in fact I was without power for quite a few days already. I had emptied the fridges and discarded what was in it but the few remaining things that were still fresh I had placed them in the freezer and kept the freezer without opening it so I wouldn’t loose temperature. My choice of ingredient was narrowed by force to what was available and fresh in the freezer – Fennel- and so I took a few Fennel bulbs and started playing with them. Cut them in half and began slicing them thin with my knife and immediately came to my mind                - Caramelization – Such a simple technique, yet very valuable and overlooked and many times not done properly.

So there I was with my flashlight sauteeing fennel in the dark and acheiving what actually the recipe illustrates very well: How to take a vegetable, sautee it in butter and allow the caramelization process to take place, cooks often stop early in the process, they seem to be afraid to continue sauteeing, but if you are caramelizing onions, or fennel in this case and observe well you can actually see that it takes quite a while. The vegetable sort of begins being limp and whitish but eventually it becomes brown after a while. The transformation of flavor from the raw to the briefly sauteed to the actual caramelized one is immense, its like a different vegetable in taste.

This recipe is a great example of that, the soup its almost a light brown color and the complement of the toasted bread with aged goat cheese works wonderful.

The  book which is used at The French Culinary Institute as a textbook features a handful of contributors such as Bobby Flay, Dan Barber and Wylie Dufresne to name a few has been awarded Best Cookbook of The Year from a Professional Point of View by The James Beard Foundation 2008.

1. Invite your friends
2. Purchase ingredients, go wild, have fun!
3. Let the chef make a memorable meal.

A good selection of fine wines makes a huge difference so stock-up your cellar!

Special Offer: $300.00 for six lucky guests

When booking an event:

Be accurate with the address and time of the event.

Have staples readily available in the kitchen

Please have the kitchen clean and have as much clear counter space available.

Have a cleaning person available after the event.

Gratuity not included

When I walked into this kitchen and opened the fridge I found the ingredients that made me make the following menu.

Tiradito with Chipotle, Avocado, Cucumber and Sunflower Sprouts

Sardinas a la Plancha with Garlic and Parsley

Rack of Lamb with Fig Jam and Cumin-Roasted Beets and Carrots

Pineapple and Bannana with Saffron Syrup

Gather a group of friends at your place and Chef Alan Hughes will teach anything you’ve been wanting to learn, homemade pastas, proper cooking of fish, meats and poultry , tapas, french cuisine, italian, mediterranean you name it!  Or simply consult with us and we will make a specific program for you. You will learn a lot of techniques, tips and secrets to the right procedures. These hands-on intensive classes are fun and you will learn a lot! Special offer: One session class for six $400 + cost of ingredients. ($67.00 per person + cost of ingredients)

Special pricing available for a set of four sessions of classes.

Tapas made by the students

The Ultimate Crostini with baked Camembert and raw Beets

For two consecutive Sundays you will be taught proper procedures to start a fire; the first  Sunday with natural charcoal and the second Sunday with wood.

You will learn proper techniques for cooking traditional cuts of beef such as Tira, Vacio, Entraña and Ribeye; as well as Chorizos, Morcillas, Mollejas and a slew of accompaniments, salads, Chimichurri and Salsa Criolla. We will discuss as well some Wine-pairing options and proper sequence of service. After the class we will enjoy the fruits of our labor eating an Asado al-fresco. Classes run from 11am to 3pm on Sunday April 3rd and April 10th. Cost is $ 140.00 for both classes ingredients and wine included. Limited to 7 eager students.

Lacquered Duck Breast with Chinese Black Rice, Spiced Caulifower and Apricots and Coconut Milk

A few months ago my partner and I embarked on a Culinary performance called the Guerrilla Gourmet Van.

We created a lounge space in the back of his van; which is very spacious and then kidnapped a few people in the street and invited them inside, where I was sitting and served them a four course tasting menu for free. That was it.

We had so much pleasure  doing it that when I told him that in two weeks I would be in Madrid for Madrid Fusion (the culinary congress) he said he would be in Rome but would catch a flight to Spain and we would do it there. Sure enough, when I arrived at the airport with my girlfriend he was there with a rented van and proceeded to do the performance the same day I arrived. In this case, since I didn’t have a kitchen to cook I decided to do unusual presentations of classic Spanish dishes.

 Our first performance was in the Design District, we announced through a few of the social networks the location we were going to be in. The moment I posted it I received the first call asking exactly where I was, two minutes later the next one and so forth.

Oficial presentation of the first video: September 2nd. Stay tuned

 One of our first meals was near the airport in San Jose in what they call Sodas; simply a cheap buffet geared to locals and working people. It has the ever present Rice and beans, stewed meat ropa vieja style, fried chicken, fried fish (tilapia) some sort of chicken item, yuca, and other roots and cabbage and lettuce salad. Surprisingly this was one of our favorite spots; we were by all means going to avoid the “high end” cuisine of Costa Rica simply because I refuse to pay expensive meals for dishes that I can do better, or it’s simply not worth it. I want authentic local food, what the locals eat, the way they eat it. So this place was full of street workers, garbage removal personnel, nurses, you name it.

In the Pacific coast we hit various other Sodas and had the regular Casados which is one plate of rice, Beans, some protein wether it’s meat, fish or chicken and salad. Once or twice it’s ok but after a while I realized that there wern’t many other options. We started to get a little dissapointed, began cooking ourselves with great fresh fish caught on-the-spot and that was nice but not what I was looking for.

Even more frustrating was to find that there was an inmense lack of fresh produce. We were going a little crazy and really wondering how come people don’t plant, with such soil and great weather how come I can’t seem to find veggie gardens everywhere.

Eventually we found after a while, after many misses in the Atlantic The dish that should be rpinted in their $1,000 colones bills or maybe even be the center of the Costa Rican flag. The Dish: the piquant, seafood and coconut stew that blew me and my son’s mind; or tastebuds rather.

Rondon (from Round down)

A heavily Caribbean-influenced stew that reminisced of Cocina Bahiana, food from Bahia, Brazil. It was all that the book said and more. We had our first one at a place called Maxi’s close to Punta Uva, we were served a huge bowl of it with pieces of crab, fish, root vegetables and a thick coconut soup base, spicy and pungeant. Outstanding!

This was my best find in Costa Rica, other than the glorious fresh tropical fruits like a long pod called by them Guava (nothing to do with the Guava we know in the US) the fresh Cocoa pod (which has been my favorite fruit for years) the rest of the Tico food was quite disappointing. The Rondon did it and made up for everything else.

Tico breakfast

GUAVA, THE FUKIN WEIRD POD....

The produce we picked was ok, not amazing, but good enough; at this time of the year with the scorching  heat of the summer and rains it is not expected to have the best produce. (My veggie garden is resting until next planting season) So for that matter some of the items are brought in from other suppliers. The selection was good though, they also carry eggs, milk, goat milk and the best part; the share of the cow. I didn’t ask much about how it works but it is quite gratyfing for my friend’s family to have access to in-your-face organic beef.

I am not sure how many of these co-ops are in the Miami area but I have a feeling they are defenitely flourishing all around and that is a good thing.