Private Chef Tim Zekki brings duende restaurant to your home.
Share a chef’s passion for flavour with a bespoke dining experience.
Award winning private Chef Tim Zekki can cook at your home or your Somerset or Devon holiday accommodation. He’ll bring the restaurant to your home by creating either an al a carte menu or a fantastic tasting menu of 5 or 7 courses, customised to your tastes, with an optional wine flight.
Chef Tim Zekki believes great food begins with great ingredients, he seeks out the finest local suppliers, for the highest quality produce for your special occasions. He brings creativity and skills honed over 30 years as a chef, and a healthy obsession with food, including foraging, hi-tech techniques and fine ingredients.
Hire a private chef for your home event, Tim Zekki
About private chef Tim Zekki
Tim first started to cook at his father’s restaurant in Cyprus, where he inherited a love of foraging, pickling and preserving from his grandmother.
He developed his skills in London restaurants, and his love of fine ingredients led him to open and run two delis, in Isleworth and Twickenham in 2009, appearing on Gary Rhode’s Local Food Hero on UKTV six months later. After a move to the Chilterns he ran pop up restaurants under the name Duende.
Moving to Somerset meant a chance to settle into a permanent place, where Duende restaurant was recognised by Taste of The West, and won Somerset Life’s Best Restaurant in its first year. He has been a semi-finalist is the prestigious Craft Guild of Chefs National Chef of the Year awards for three years running.
The finest ingredients and a passion for creativity
Tim sources local, sustainable produce, and often includes wild ingredients in his tasting menus.
The duck for the dish that many guests describe as ‘the best duck they have ever had’, comes from either Creedy Carver at Crediton or Beech Ridge farm, Somerset, depending on availability. A very popular lamb dish uses meat from either Westcott Organics just outside Wiveliscombe or local butchers Thorne’s, who have their own farm nearby. Local Wagtail Farm supply some veg such as squash, whilst other vegetables and salad are from Ray’s veg at Halse, two miles away.
Tim enjoys pushing the boundaries of food, such as the challenge of inventing an amazing beef-based dessert course for Exmoor Food Fest’s Celebration of Beef.
During Lockdown Tim rose to the challenge of creating 5 course tasting menus for guests to put together at home. Tim is currently a regular chef for events at BBC Masterchef food critic William Sitwell’s Supper Clubs.
Sustainability
Tim Zekki of Duende restaurant uses high tech kitchen equipment to prep the food for an event to keep the carbon footprint low. Using fresh local produce, apart from supporting locals, is also a way to minimise emissions.
What is the meaning of Duende?
Duende is said to be the hardest Spanish word to translate to English. The meaning is akin to spirit, passion, inspiration – a spontaneous feeling arising in creativity. It’s particularly relevant to the arts that disappear, that are born and die perpetually, like the performance of a dance or a song.
In 2014 Duende started as a pop-up restaurant, appearing and disappearing around the Chilterns, so the meaning seemed especially relevant. It continues to be relevant for the private chef events in Somerset, where Tim is your chef just for the day.
"The duende never repeats itself, any more than the waves of the sea do in a storm”
– Lorca, poet
