Nicolas Desinai, private chef in Calgary
One price for twenty-four menus, French training underneath all of them
C$160 – C$176CAD a head, over 24 published menus
4.8— that is 57 ratings since 2023, unrounded, poor ones included
Cooking as Nicolas Desinai, working across Calgary, Alberta.
The read
Desinai is the flat-rate cook of the four. Twenty-four menus, and twenty-one of them are the same C$162 per guest — French, Mediterranean, Italian, seafood, casual, exclusive, the lot. Only two menus break the pattern, and only by a few dollars.
That is unusual enough to be worth saying plainly: with him you choose the food you fancy on the night rather than the tier you can afford. The accolades he lists are French and dated, going back to a young commis title in 1995, and the cooking follows — bourguignon, chateaubriand, rack of lamb, potato gratin done properly.
He is also the one who most often arrives with a second pair of hands. Guests mention an assistant plating alongside him on bigger tables, and one company Christmas party in the record ran as standing tapas for a room of adults and children.
How many
Two to twenty on every card, tapas format included.
Cooks what
French · Mediterranean · Italian · Seafood
Rate ladder
- C$160Casual Italian
- C$162Almost everything elsetwenty-one menus at one price
- C$176Mediterranean classic
Per guest. Drinks and travel outside Calgary sit outside these figures.
Behind the name
- Trained in Dinard, France — cooking, pastry and sommelier certificates
- Lists three-Michelin-star kitchens in his career
- Executive chef at Priddis Greens and Bow Valley Ranch
- Owned La Petite Table in Okotoks
- Best young commis chef, France 1995; gold medal cold plate, Germany 1997
Plates
A menu
One of 24 menus, rewritten here for length. Courses get changed for allergies and for what is in season.
Hosts
A company Christmas party with adults and kids in the room. They asked for tapas people could eat standing up and got exactly that.
Twelve guests and a toddler for a birthday. The effort in each plate was obvious, and everything came out cooked the way it was ordered.
Family visiting, dinner in a short-term rental. He turned up with everything needed for a plated meal in a kitchen that was not his.
Written from what each host left afterwards, in our words, with names as they signed them.
To book
Menus are settled with the cook first; nothing is locked until you both agree the card.
Compare against Nathaniel Davis from C$176, Marina Mellino from C$100 and Igor Dudkin from C$185.