Private Hibachi Chef in Seaside

Seaside is the most photographed square mile on 30A and the most constrained one to cook in. The cottages are close together, the lots are small by design, and the charm that makes the town famous — picket fences, tucked courtyards, second-floor porches — is the same charm that eats setup space. We have cooked here enough to have a shortlist of what works: the brick courtyard behind a Ruskin Place townhouse, the parking pad beside a Forest Street cottage, the open side yard on the Tupelo and Natchez blocks. What almost never works is the front porch itself, because the roof is too low. The upside is real, though. Central Square restaurants in July mean a ninety-minute wait for a table you did not book in April, and the walk back with a group of twelve is nobody's idea of a good time. Dinner arriving at your own courtyard at seven solves the entire evening.

We work in a footprint of roughly six by four feet with clear sky overhead and three feet of standing room on the chef's side. In Seaside that is almost always a courtyard, a brick or shell parking pad, or an open side yard. Second-floor porches are usually a no — both for the roof height and because we are not carrying a hot grill down an exterior stair at ten at night. Ruskin Place townhouses have worked well for us using the ground-floor courtyard. If your cottage has a rear alley pad, that is generally the best surface in town. We bring heat mats for any wood decking and we leave the surface as we found it.

Seaside's streets are narrow, shell-surfaced in places, and full of pedestrians and bikes from mid-morning until dark — so we arrive early, unload fast, and move the van out. Plan on us pulling up about 45 minutes before the seating. We will need one driveway or pad space held for that unload window; after that we can relocate the van. If your cottage is only reachable through a footpath, tell us in the booking notes so we bring the cart rather than discovering it at 6pm.

The Seaside bachelorette is a specific animal: eight to twelve women in two adjoining cottages, matching pajamas, and a Friday night where the plan collapsed because Bud & Alley's could not seat them. We are the fix. A courtyard hibachi dinner keeps the group together, requires no rides, and photographs beautifully against a white picket fence at golden hour — which, honestly, is half of why it gets booked. Birthdays here skew family: grandparents who have rented the same cottage for fifteen years, a kid turning eight who thinks the volcano is the greatest thing ever seen. Both work because Seaside's whole appeal is not getting in a car, and we are the only dinner that respects that.