With up to five vaccinated visitors allowed a day from Nov 22, private-dining chefs operating from their homes are back in business. They include those who have signed up with the Pelago booking platform set up by Singapore Airlines.

Launched in June with activities like local tours and staycations, the platform added private-dining experiences to its offerings in September - making it more convenient for diners who would otherwise have to call up or message individual chefs for bookings.

Unfortunately, these were quickly put on hold during Singapore's stabilisation phase of the Covid-19 pandemic when households were allowed only two visitors a day.

For the home-based chefs, cooking for just two persons simply did not make economic sense.

Two of them, however, used the downtime to prepare a meal for The Straits Times to showcase what they have to offer. And the two experiences could not be more different.

While freelance stylist Crystal Yap serves home-style dishes like mee siam and kueh pie tee, Mr Yeo Kai Siang from Chez Kai whips up French-Chinese fine-dining fare.

They are among more than 15 such experiences available on the Pelago platform. Others include Peranakan dining, kimchi-making and creating cocktails in a home bar.

The more adventurous can also try out a nose-to-tail dining concept while carnivores can chomp on a feast of dry-aged steaks. Prices range from $78 to $188 a person.

To book, go to Pelago's website and search under private dining.

For more stories on exploring Singapore, go to str.sg/sg-go-where.

Omakase with a media stylist

Price: $100 a person

Ms Crystal Yap, 43, started cooking for friends for a fee at her home in Seletar in 2017. Before she knew it, they were recommending their friends and word of mouth grew.

But it was just an occasional gig for the stylist who used to work with media companies like HBO and MTV, preparing the wardrobe, hair and make-up for artistes doing shoots.

Then Covid-19 happened and her day job "went down the drain", as she puts it. So she decided to use her culinary skills to start a home-based business.

In 2019, she moved back to her mother's terrace house in Serangoon Garden to take care of her.

The place boasts a rooftop terrace ideal for entertaining guests. She set up a table there where, weather permitting, there is a view of the sunset as dinner commences. And from taking in paid guests once a month, the single mother of three young boys started doing it once a week.

Her five-course menu consists of self-taught dishes she picked up through the years.

She says she grew up spending a lot of time in the kitchen while her grandmother and aunt cooked. And though they did not actually teach her, she found that she picked up a lot of things just through observation.

"I moved out at 18 and had to learn to cook. That was when I found I had a flair for it," she says. "Being brought up in the kitchen, I realised I had all this knowledge in my mind. I knew how to do Cantonese soups and other childhood dishes."

Later, she had a relationship with an Indonesian and lived briefly in Jakarta, where she picked up more culinary skills.

So the menus for her private- dining experience can be very varied, though the focus is on South-east Asian cooking. "Every seating is different. Some dishes are from home recipes, others I picked up from my travels. There is no way to describe my cooking."

She has a few set menus, but would check if her guests are drinkers or prefer more seafood or meat, and work around that.

"Some diners would ask, 'What can you do?', and I'd say, 'What do you like?' They can request only seafood, spicy or not spicy. Or some might ask, 'Can you make gulai?', and I would do it. Others have no idea and say, 'Whatever.' People like that flexibility."

For The Straits Times' dinner for two, she prepared a cold tofu starter with ikura and century egg sauce, kueh pie tee, ngoh hiang with a slaw and mee siam, all accompanied by an addictive sambal and keropok. Dessert was bubur cha cha ice cream.

Ms Yap joined the Pelago platform about half a year ago after it reached out to her on her Instagram account. She had a few responses, but then the limit on two visitors a day kicked in and most of the bookings were cancelled.

"For private dining, people want to gather as friends and not for a romantic dinner for couples. And for me, it's not worth it because it's the same amount of work whether I'm cooking for two or eight persons."

During the past two months, she took up catering jobs and offered bento boxes for delivery. She also accepted freelance stylist jobs for videos.

But she is ready to resume her private-dining gigs. She says: "I'll do it as often as I can without killing the passion for it. I'm happy with the flexibility and taking bookings when I can."

Private dining, Neo-Bistro style at Chez Kai

Price: $150 a person

I first tried the modern Western cooking of Mr Yeo Kai Siang in January last year (2020). But in the space of almost two years, it has improved by leaps and bounds, becoming more confident and refined.

"In the beginning, I was purely doing things I liked to eat. There were different components that didn't work very well," the 29-year-old says. "But I streamlined the cuisine and went with a Franco-Chinois concept. It's Chinese ingredients and preparation paired with French techniques, sauces and presentation."

He is no novice in the kitchen, having worked in restaurants like FOC in Hongkong Street.

Even after he hung up his chef's whites in 2019 to work in procurement for a food and beverage company, he decided to keep up with his cooking by offering private dining. It was just a hobby then.

Last November, he decided to go into private dining full-time. What prompted the change was the circuit breaker in the middle of last year (2020) and his fiancee Ang Zi Yi, 26, whom he met around that time and who joined his venture.

They saw the shutdown as an opportunity to overhaul the business. With time on their hands, they started researching new ideas, while Ms Ang also worked on her skills at serving and introducing the dishes. And when they relaunched Chez Kai four months later, they had become a well-oiled team with Ms Ang running the front of house and Mr Yeo cooking.

The six-course dinner they served The Straits Times was worthy of a fine-dining restaurant, with creative dishes boasting layered flavours like a Hokkaido scallop on corn puree topped with puffed rice and Shanghai hairy crab roe, and a fried dry-aged red snapper with crazily crispy scales that was dressed with Thai basil oil and finished with a sweet shrimp sauce.

Even the housemade dark rye loaf was outstanding, with a crisp crust enveloping fluffy bread partly coloured by blue pea flower juice.

The couple signed up with Pelago in June, even before the platform launched its private-dining experiences, because of the varied options it offers, which include activities like visits to a gin distillery. Says Mr Yeo: "It's a one-stop shop for things you can do in Singapore, especially during the pandemic period. I felt it was good to get more exposure by working with a company like that."

One advantage Pelago has over other booking platforms, he adds, is that payment can be made with Singapore Airlines' KrisFlyer miles. "That benefits those with expiring miles and encourages people to try out different things, including private dining."

But diners will have to book fast because the couple plans to give up private dining soon to set up a restaurant. Mr Yeo's family has sold the Haig Road house they are operating from and will be moving out.