Musical Cuisine

We were invited to a birthday party where Ari cooked for us. The food was super delicious and most of all very beautifully presented. The flavors were great and the variety had something for everybody in the group. It was a wonderful evening and we hope to enjoy Ari’s culinary art again. He was also very gracious when we thanked him at the end of the evening. Great party and great food!

We are a condominium association in Lincoln, MA that hired Chef Ari to provide a sit-​down, catered dinner in conjunction with our Annual Meeting for approximately 30 of our members.
Working within a limited budget (by definition, aren’t ALL budgets limited?), Ari proposed a three-​course meal that included salad, main course with vegetables, and dessert. Guests were polled in advance so that each could indicate a choice of main course options: either dill panko-​encrusted salmon or garlic lemon roasted chicken breast. The ultimate split was close to ⁵⁰⁄₅₀.
Our dinner meeting was held in the Association’s community room. While Ari did some preparation before arriving, he used our community room’s kitchen to prepare and plate each course on-​site – guaranteeing freshness and service at the proper temperature.
The dinner was spectacular! Nothing was «run of the mill» about this experience. Everyone raved about taste and presentation, which matched the highest gourmet standards. The portions were ample – not the teeny-​tiny bites that are often associated with fancy-​schmancy, self-​aggrandizing custom cuisine.
Ari was a pleasure to work with in planning the affair, and he met and conversed with our guests during the evening as time permitted. A warm, down-​to-​earth personality able to deliver a stellar dining experience.

I organized a party for my birthday with 15 – 20 guests and decided to hire a private chef to cook for us. I had never used catering services before and I was new in Boston, so I searched the internet. I was so lucky to find Ari! He is a very creative, efficient and friendly chef. All of the food was really delicious! I made many, often difficult requests to plan the menu, since we had to avoid a lot of ingredients because of the guests’ allergies and food preferences. And I hate to send my guests home hungry even though it was a cocktail party. The proposed menu was very interesting with its variety of ingredients and preparations. For some of the dishes, like risotto, I had no idea how he could serve them as a cocktail party food. I was so excited to see his presentation.
On the day of the party, Ari arrived two hours before it started. He brought all his cookware, serving plates, etc. and by the time my guests started coming, he had already prepared most of the food. All of my guests were impressed and enjoyed his food and many of them went to chat with him in the kitchen. :) I really appreciated his cheerful response to them. At the end of the party, I offered the leftovers to my guests, who were happy to take them home.
I am so happy that the party turned out to be a really special moment, thanks to Ari and the food and ambience he created. Now I am looking for occasions to ask him to come back and surprise me. :)

I had heard a lot of great things about Ari from my colleague over the last few months — about his delicious and beautiful food as well as how easy he was to work with. So, when I was given the task to come up with a creative way for our 14 person leadership team to have dinner together, I inquired about Ari. My goal was to have a delicious meal that didn’t require sitting down formally around the table. I wanted the food to be a prompt for conversation and the atmosphere to be fun and welcoming. Ari totally delivered and exceeded my expectations.
The menu was amazing and very unique. The light appetizers (tomato soup like you’ve never had before and a green apple delight that I can’t really describe in words) were amazing and just the perfect taste for everyone to get excited about what lay ahead in the menu.
The rest of the menu featured a really amazing salad with a virtual egg (check out Ari’s website for photos of his food
), coq au vin (best I ever had) and lamb tederloin that was delicious.
The really awesome part of this dinner party was that in talking to Ari I described how the last time this team got together for dinner we were able to prepare it ourselves in a test kitchen (thanks to a great donation!) and how great it was to practice preparing delicious food together. Ari very generously offered to have 3 – 4 volunteers help him prepare dinner. I think this must be pretty out of the ordinary — what professional chef wants to show a bunch of part-​time at home cooks to prepare delicious food! — but it totally made the experience that much better. Ari was patient and showed us a few tricks that I’ve been bragging about for the last week.
This meal was truly one-​of-​a-​kind and Ari was absolutely amazing to work with. I would absolutely recommend the experience to anyone and hope to be able to treat our team again in the future.
P. S. This meal was prepared for the leadership team at Year Up Boston a non-​profit organization that works with young adults ages 18 – 24 years old and prepares them for careers and higher education (
). Ari already had a sense of our organization when I connected with him and was so open-​minded about our very tight budget and how he could create a delicious meal around our monetary restraints. :)

This was an anniversary gift from our daughter and Ari provided a delicious, imaginative and beautiful meal for the two of us.
Each course was a little work of art and everything tasted even better than it looked.
He explained each dish (which had been selected and preplanned with our daughter) and was a relaxed and unobtrusive presence throughout the meal.
I thoroughly recommend Musical Cuisine

Gifted Ari has been my dinner chef for three years at a week-​long writers’ retreat for twenty people on a remote island. This is a very challenging job, requiring complex provisioning as well as menus for millionaires on artists’ budgets. After a day of solitary writing, dinner is the big event of the day for the writers, and Ari’s are star-​spangled, from hors d’oeuvres to desserts that look like works of art. He is an inventive and playful cook, qualities which only work if the the chef has well-​honed, professional skills, which Ari most certainly has. He is very reliable, produces his beautiful dinners on time, and best of all, serves them up with a generous spirit and a merry heart. I’m not sure which we love more — Ari or his food. But then, they are inseparable.

Ari is a professional food artist — and his personality makes him one of a kind. I’ve had the pleasure of experiencing Ari’s work on a number of different levels — I’ll start with least formal and work up.
1. As Ari’s roommate I’ve been privy to delicious, impromptu salad, steak, and chicken dinners. The man can’t go wrong — if you’re looking to hire him as a full time private chef he can keep you guessing while also cooking your favorites.
2. On a trip to the Dominican Republic Ari cooked 4 different dinners — including jerk chicken (delicious), and lobster tail (which I’m not a huge fan of, but it was still delicious).
3. Finally, Ari catered my a dinner for my girlfriend’s parents and two of their friends. She gave Ari a list of a few of their favorite foods and he went from there, producing the most artful meal I have ever seen, or tasted. The six course meal can be found here:
To top it off, Ari is also hilarious. I highly recommend Ari for private catering events, parties, or, in a dream world, as a private chef.