Punta Mita Villa Rentals With a Chef: 75 of Our 128 Houses

At ten past seven the kitchen light is already on and somebody you have not met is doing something quiet with a knife. By the time the first of your group comes down at eight there is coffee, there is fruit cut and arranged, and there is a question: huevos divorciados or chilaquiles, and does anyone not eat chilli. Nobody has booked a table. Nobody is going to, for six days.

This is the thing the phrase villa with chef is pointing at, and it is worth understanding properly before you choose a house, because the phrase covers at least three different arrangements.

The number

Of our one hundred and twenty-eight published houses in Punta Mita, seventy-five include the chef in the rate. Another fifty-two have one available at an extra cost.

So "does it come with a chef" is a real question with a real answer on every listing, and it is the first line to read. It is also why this peninsula is an easier week than most places in Mexico: on three houses in five, the single biggest piece of work in a group holiday has already been solved before you land.

What "chef included" actually means

Here is where the listings earn their keep, because they are specific and they do not all say the same thing.

Casa Koko inside the gates lists a house manager for ten hours a day, a concierge for ten, butler service for ten, and chef service meaning a professional chef, a sous-chef and a kitchen assistant. Casa Koko Iyari puts hours on it: chef and kitchen assistant, nine in the morning until nine at night, custom menus. Casa Wirikuta runs full staff from seven until ten at night, with a professional chef and two sous-chefs.

And then Estate Ikal says something different and equally honest: breakfast and lunch preparation by private cook. Not three meals. Two, beautifully, and dinner is yours to decide.

Both of those are "chef included". They are not the same holiday. The staff tab tells you which one you are booking, and it is thirty seconds of reading that prevents the one disappointment that actually matters.

The groceries, which is the line everyone misses

You pay for the food. The cooking comes with the house.

Several listings say it in as many words — cost of groceries not included — and one adds a twenty per cent service fee on the shopping, which is the house doing the market run for you. None of this is hidden; it is simply at the bottom of the tab where people stop reading.

In practice it works like this. On the first evening somebody asks what you eat, what you do not, and whether anybody has an allergy. The next morning a list goes to the market at La Cruz, and from then on the fridge contains things your group actually eats rather than a hamper somebody guessed at. The bill arrives at the end, itemised, and it is food at market prices rather than restaurant prices.

Who the chef is

Mexican, almost always local, and frequently the reason people rebook the same house. One of our listings names its own: Casa Entre Rocas runs a twelve-person staff from seven until ten with Professional Chef Badir Hazael and sous chef, waiters and mixologists. Casa Akama, on the Punta de Mita side, lists a dedicated staff of ten and a chef and culinary team doing three meals a day with locally sourced organic ingredients.

What they all have in common is that they cook for your group rather than from a menu. Tell them on the first night that one of you is vegetarian, one is eight years old and one would like fish every single day, and all three of those things simply happen for the rest of the week.

The things worth asking for

Ask for ceviche on the first afternoon, before anything else, because it is what this coast does best.

Ask them to cook what you caught that morning — hand over a tuna at eleven and it comes back at eight as sashimi, then seared, then tacos.

Ask, once, for whatever the chef would cook for his own family on a Sunday. That is the meal everybody talks about afterwards, and it is never the one on the menu card.

And ask for breakfast late on at least one morning. The whole point of this arrangement is that the kitchen runs on your hours, not the other way round.

Eating out of the house, once

After five days of this, going out is a treat again rather than a relief — and this peninsula has the restaurants in Punta Mita and the villages beyond the gate for it.

One name worth knowing: Chef Héctor Leyva is among the best known cooks on this peninsula, with his own place outside the gate and a reputation for events. He is not a villa chef — he will not be the one in your kitchen on a Tuesday — but if the week has a birthday or an anniversary in it, he is the kind of arrangement the house manager can look into.

The beach clubs do evenings now and then, which is the other way out of the house.

Which houses

If the chef is the reason you are coming, start with the seventy-five rather than the hundred and twenty-eight. Say how many of you there are, how many bedrooms you want rather than how many bodies the listing allows, and whether you want three meals or two.

Start with our fully staffed houses in Punta Mita and tell Rocío how your group actually eats — that is the whole brief, and it is the one she can work with.