For Healthyish Food

THE CULINISTAS, theculinistas.com lindsey taylor wood, CEO of the Helm, a VC firm for female-led start-ups, has hired the Culinistas for large summit events and small dinner parties. Wood is the type of person they tend to attract: extremely busy female founders who appreciate the type of healthy food (gluten free and dairy free, but you wouldn’t know it) that their chefs tend to specialize in (Gwyneth Paltrow, not surprisingly, was an early client). Founders Jill Donenfeld and Tiana Tenet have actually seen their business expand as restaurants contracted last year, extending in-home chef services to upstate New York and yearround in the Hamptons. You can host a dinner party of pistachio-roasted carrots and couscous with pea shoots for your pod starting at $750, or buy a new-mom friend a postnatal package, where, twice a week for three, six, or 12 weeks, a chef will grocery shop, then prepare meals from start to finish in one’s home. “People would ask me nonstop, ‘What do you need? What can I get you?’ ” says Gail Simmons of Top Chef.

“My answer: the Culinistas.”