My way into the kitchen is through the back door

“Eating is so intimate and personal. When you cook for someone you are inviting them into your soul”- Julia Child

My story to the kitchen is through the back door. I started washing dishes at a young age, before school at a local tavern in the small town where I grew up. When I turned fifteen, I got the opportunity to wait tables, and I fell in love with the restaurant industry. After high school, I got accepted to the Philadelphia Art Institute Culinary Program, but I was convinced by outside sources that chefs don't make any money. So, I switched my flair for gastronomy to mixology and became one of the top bartenders in Chicago. I was crafting cocktails before it was cool. Infusing vanilla and chamomile into vodka. Blending a limited variety of liquors to create delicious drinks from behind the bar.

At night, I created these mouth-watering cocktails, and during the day, I would write for my blog about local restaurants and their food. My blog posts became articles, and the articles became advertisements for restaurants nationwide. With the money saved from bartending and my growing restaurant review blog, I opened my first business Naturally LeLa, a natural bath and beauty company. In my mind, skincare was my way of continuing to play with the alchemy of elements. Melting cocoa butter, stirring in fragrant essential oils, infusing herbs into hydrosols to create luminous skin care products. My skin care lines started taking on similarities to food. Body butters, foot scrub muffins, limoncello face washes.

The desire to create food for customers became more robust and my dream of becoming a chef never faded., In my mid thirties, I got accepted to Chatum University for food science but got forced out over a fight about my thesis. I wanted to prove how low-quality food in homeless shelters, especially gluten inflammation, was the cause of the rise of schizophrenia on the streets. I was before my time and my teachers thought I was crazy. So, I left. I became a health and holistic therapist at The University of New Mexico Taos, focusing on Ayurveda cooking. I wanted to heal the sick through food. I had the opportunity to travel and live in India for a year. It was there, during my internship at an Ayurvedic Hospital that my passion for cooking flourished. I spent six months in the hospital kitchen cooking and six months in the kitchen of a Yoga Ashram on the coast of Canacona, India. After India, I became the head chef at a vegan restaurant in Texas. I only knew one way of cooking, and only through experimentation, trial, and God’s will my dishes were created. I was raised a vegetarian, so I only knew how to cook vegan and vegetarian. I knew eventually, I would have to expand my knowledge of meat-based dishes to grow as a proper chef. I sought culinary schools and contemplated if I should try one more time.

My mother died suddenly during the pandemic, and everything I knew to be real shattered. My mind broke, my dreams faded, and I was lost. I found my way back to the East Coast. I went off the grid, severed my connection to the world, taught myself how to bake bread, and connected with her spirit, in a garden, on the land in which she raised me. Eventually I fell back in love with life, enriched by the soil, the leaves, the rivers, and the nourishment of home. I became comfortable with the natural progression of life and death, seasons, decay, and new growth. I decided it is never too late to satiate the ember of desire that burns in one's soul. So, at an age where most people consider themselves close to retirement. I started over again. I finally went to culinary school. I enrolled in the Bidwell Culinary program and got accepted. It took me a few decades, many good and bad experiences, a few trips around the world, and a lot of bread loaves to remember my soul’s passion: Cooking.

The dream has always been the same. Since the days of plunging my hands into the scolding, soapy water in that little tavern before high school, to the loud nights behind the bar in Chicago, to the meditative days of crafting skincare in my sunny studio, to the days of cooking for hundreds of students in the Ashram in India, and now in school. It's always been the same. The dream was to combine my core values and curate an experience encompassing nature, health, community, and food. I envision where herbs grow on tables and tomato vines reach for sunlight in windows—a place where people can eat healthily and be one with the macrocosm of where their food originates. I dream of eating inside a greenhouse where the negative ions from misted air and plants allow people to feel happy as they eat my food. Pulled from my time of cooking in the ashram, I cannot step away from scratch cooking. In my restaurant, all the food is made from scratch with freshly baked sourdough bread, homemade desserts, and freshly butchered and house-cured meats. I believe in community. Lifting each other up so that we can all succeed and fulfill our dreams. I incorporate a vast majority of local ingredients because I believe that the food in our environment is most acceptable to our cells. It assimulates to the energy within us in a holistic way. Education is also dear to my heart. In the future, I plan to incorporate a high school work program into my kitchen. I want to take on young aspiring chefs and teach them the way of scratch cooking and community farm to table in exchange for learning how to work in the kitchen. A chef is nothing without those who choose to eat their food. It's a symbiosis of taste, community, and health.

In conclusion, the question remains: Why do I want to be a chef? I have rolled this question over and over my tongue throughout the years. Sucking on the sweetness that is the desire. Swallowing the bitterness that is life’s distractions. I have tucked the question away in my cheek, saving it to chew on during a quiet drive down country roads. I have pondered why this life keeps nudging me into the kitchen. I can only come up with this…..It is a place where one can control the elements of this world. Fire, ice, meat, cream, vegetables, colors, flavors, textures. It is a place to tell a story without speaking a word. A place to deliver artistic creations that allow people to feel an emotion. Who wouldn’t want to push themselves to create such a feeling for their customers?

On a personal note, people think I'm crazy going into the kitchen at my age. Age is just a number; desire and willingness to chase after one’s dream does not age. It may fade over time, but if God wants it to be then it shall be. We must step out of our own way, pick up the knife, turn up the flame, and keep walking forward to find what satisfies that craving.

For those of you who still have a dream, it's never too late to achieve it. This one is for you!

Chef LeLa