By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Chef Boby Mitov wants to cook for you.
And not just serve you in Naslada Bistro, his restaurant in downtown Bowling Green, and not just from his menu.
Mitov has launched his “Boby, your personal chef” service, to help those wanting wholesome, filling dinners yet lack the time to cook them.
The service works like this. The customer fills out a Google document that spells out their likes, dislikes, and dietary restrictions. Do they like chicken? Grilled or fired? Spicy or bland? Should meals be gluten free or maybe vegetarian or vegan?
From that questionnaire, Mitov will then create a menu for the customer. Each meal will consist of a main dish and two sides, one a cooked vegetable, the other a green salad. The salad, he notes, will not come with dressing. The customer will have to provide that themselves.And if a customer has a cherished family recipe handed down from grandma, he’s willing to make that.
The meals are $15 each for standard ingredients, more pricey ingredients increase the cost, with a minimum order of eight with a discount for the first order. The customer picks up the meals, though they can be delivered for an additional charge.
All this is done at the kitchen at Naslada, 182 S. Main St. Mitov does all the shopping. As he does with the meals he serves in the restaurant, he uses non-GMO products and strives to use as much organic food as possible. Even if that’s not so important to the customer, he said, it’s important for him.
He’s just started and has served two families.
He doesn’t see this as a luxury, but a service for busy families.
“It’s not takeout, it’s very customized,” Mitov said. A customer may prefer rice instead of noodles with their chicken paprikash.
He hatched the idea a few months when his younger son started playing travel soccer. The families were so busy hustling from one place to the other, they had to resort to stopping for fast food.
They didn’t have time to cook the healthy meals they wanted for themselves and their children.
Besides offering this convenience, Mitov sees this as part of his mission to spread the word about how eating healthy food has a direct relationship on a person’s well being.
This is the newest twist in Mitov’s culinary enterprises. He launched Naslada in the food court of the Woodland Mall on “Black Friday” in November 2003. He closed that in early 2006, and opened the restaurant downtown in its current space in April, 2006, where he operated for the first few years without a license to serve alcohol.
The establishment now can serve hard liquor as well as beer and wine. The restaurant is open for dinner at 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and lunches on Friday and Saturday.
The personal chef service will be offered Monday through Thursday, when his kitchen is available.
The business, he said, is changing with supermarkets such as Kroger offering ready to eat food and meal kit delivery services such as Blue Apron. One trend, he said, is ghost kitchens that only prepare food for take out and don’t offer dine in service. That saves on a lot of overhead, he sad.
Younger customers want more choices, and are more selective about what they eat.
Mitov feels the personal chef service is another way to address that demand.
Contact naslada@hotmail.com or 419-378-1513.
