Gaia Cuisine

Nina B.Nov 2021

My family and I had a wonderful experience with Chef Nikki for my birthday dinner. She took the time to understand my food restrictions and gave me delicious options to choose for dinner. She was communicative, professional and extremely thorough. Plus she left my kitchen emasculate afterwards! Easy going, and relaxing experience with her 👍🏼😃

Armen K.Feb 2020

Would hire again

Natalie N.Feb 2020

I am rating my experience with Gaia Cuisine and chef nikki as a whole. I received an itemized hiring contract about a week prior to our private dinner party, whereupon I put down a 50% deposit. Nikki was to arrive at the event site, my grandmother's home, between 1-2pm for a dinner to begin at 6. As I had communicated with nikki and set everything up, I wanted to make sure I was at the house to help her navigate the kitchen and not inconvenience my grandmother, so I arranged a sitter for my children, rushed around all morning to get my errands completed, and arrived at their home around 12:50pm. I then received a message via the app from nikki that her morning engagement ran late and she would now be arriving at 3. No apologies, just matter of fact. I was bummed because of all the work it took to get me out the door, but understood things can happen - but it bothered me that she didn't at least apologize or see how that could put anyone out. My grandmother had cleaned all morning, set the table, and cleared her entire afternoon to be present for the chef. Nikki did say she thought we could still eat at 6pm. 3pm comes and goes with no word from nikki. I finally received a message around 3:50 that she was lost. Turns out she was down the road about 5 houses down. Another hour late. No apology. She was polite, but not overly nice. We helped her bring the groceries into the kitchen and show her around to familiarize herself with her setup, and quickly felt ushered out. We let her get to work. To her credit, I believe we were seated just after 6 and began eating about 6:15pm. The meal itself was great. Well-cooked and portioned. We paid for a server to help with the courses. I was under the impression this was someone she worked with, but they met that night. He was very quirky, and it was immediately apparent he was not a trained server. He was clumsy with my grandmother's dishes, he was slow to refill drinks, and made a joke about doing everything as he piled all of our plates while clearing. But he was nice. Dinner finishes, they've actually washed our dishes, I enter the kitchen to discuss settling the remainder of our bill. I asked nikki if I pay the server directly or do I pay her for him and then she pay him? She said to him directly preferably, so I did. I paid him his $150 fee plus a tip. Then I doubled what I paid her the other half of what I owed and tipped via venmo. They left. My sister in law and I go to the kitchen to make sure it's clean so my grandmother doesn't need to do anything. There's food on the floor, a few dishes that were missed that needed cleaning, broken kitchen shears, and water or who knows what all over the floor, that I slipped in. We re-cleaned it all so it was in the same condition as before nikki arrived. I get home that evening and reviewed everything and quickly realized that in nikki's itemized bill, the server fee was included, essentially meaning we paid him twice - once to her and once directly to him. I messaged her to let her know and just explained that I thought in the kitchen she was telling me to pay for him entirely (seeing as he wasn't her employee), but realized now she was talking about the tip. I told her it was my mistake but I got confused by her response in the kitchen. Her response was not kind. She resent me a copy of her contract and basically said well it's your mistake, I'll talk to him, but how could you be confused. She was very condescending. She ended by saying she'd update me in a couple of days. This was Saturday night. On Tuesday or Wednesday of the following week, I hadn't heard from her, so I messaged her just asking if she'd heard from Michael. Her response was unreal. She told me not to message her again - I "was on her radar." She urged me not to make demands on other people when it was my mistake. She told me in her career, she'd never had someone ask for a refund when they'd been given nothing but the "greatest hospitality." She said if the server decided to give back his double payment, she'd venmo me. I'm happy to say that she did in fact return the double payment to me today. How he could think we'd tipped him that generously is beyond me. The messages are acutely condescending. If you've read this far, congratulations, you're patient. Basically, nikki is a good chef. Customer service or general consideration and courteousness was not good.