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 and the score they left beside them, unrounded.
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.