Food For Thought
“Tell me about your restaurant experience”
“Well…I have none, but I have this feeling that I’ll be really good at this & I’m a super positive person, so I will smile every day. I thrive under pressure and want to have a chance to prove it.”
This interaction and conversation with the Head Chef and General Manager at North Miznon began the most beautiful, chaotic and dream-come-true adventures of my lifetime.
Back in 2006, in Rock Hill, South Carolina, my love for food and cooking began when I was 22. At the time, I found myself as a recent college grad and newlywed who only knew how to “cook” two things – scrambled eggs and “zhuzhed up” ramen from the packet. I wanted to learn how to cook and my path began with a little “Julia/Julia” experiment of my own. I cooked a different recipe almost every day for 6 months. There were SO many disasters but at the heart of it all, I grew in love with the process of cooking.
My interest became more of a beautiful obsession as I found myself reading cookbooks cover to cover like trashy romance novels. Any free moment, I was in the kitchen experimenting with recipes, eating any and all types of food, curating trip itineraries based on exciting restaurants and food experiences. I took all the cooking classes available in Charlotte, NC, from knife skills to pie baking to Southern classics and more.
In 2015 I was a Marketing Director/Graphic Designer by day, but at night, I entered the social media world first at Lovely Huckleberry and then The Freckled Fork. I became involved in any and all food experiences I could find. I started putting myself out in the world as a home cook, hosting dinner parties, catering small scale events and attending Charlotte Food Blogger restaurant events.
The more and more I did, the stronger I felt…in my bones…that I was meant to do this on a grander scale. I loved my career as a designer, but I had this deep rooted love growing inside of me for food, the culture and the community. I knew that I was designed to be a connector of people through food, and I wanted to start pursuing that passion on a grander scale.
Early in 2019, my dear friend Kriska and I started hosting pop-up dinner parties featuring 4-course curated menus and drink pairings. We connected people from all over Charlotte, providing this amazing dining experience where strangers became friends. I knew it was time. It was time to take the leap and risk it all to change careers and pursue cooking on a professional level.
Sure, it might have been easier to take that leap in Charlotte, surrounded by our closest family and friends and our enormously supportive community. However I knew myself and knew that I wouldn’t jump “all in” with that safety net. I needed to do this for myself and by myself. I talked it over with my husband and he agreed to take this leap with me. We sold all of our things, home, cars, etc., in March 2020 to move to New York City.
March 2020. Does anyone remember that month?
Covid hit and we found ourselves sitting in a Uhaul with our 4yr. old and all of our possessions, debating whether we should enter the epicenter of the pandemic. We held off, moved in with my parents in Columbia, SC, for about 7 weeks. Finally, the first week of May 2020, we packed up our belongings (again) and moved to the city.
Due to the pandemic and the catastrophic effect on the restaurant industry in particular, my dream of working in a restaurant was delayed for about a year. Finally in January 2021, I was hired as a private chef for a wonderful company, Meal Prep Chef. Each week, I curated customized dinners and meal plans for 5-6 clients. Through that experience, I learned so much about cooking, how to pivot, how to portion and order food, etc. One day, a fellow Meal Prep Chef, Zikki, invited me to help her with a catering event. I did, we clicked in a big way, and she invited me to interview the very next week with her chef at the restaurant where she also worked.
I entered North Miznon on the Upper West Side, interviewed with Chef Victor and General Manager Itamar (see first line for how that conversation went down…wink) and they invited me to join their kitchen as a line cook.
I came in on the first day in October 2021 with notebook and sharpie in hand. I wrote down every. single. thing. I soaked it all up and all at once, I became overwhelmed with the feeling that my dream was slowly coming true. From my first day on the line, I battled. I showed up every moment I could, I asked questions, I entrenched myself on the line to understand everything. I bought bags of onions and carrots on my days-off to practice my knife skills, to get faster, more efficient. I was hungry for more and more. I absolutely loved every minute of it (and still do!), even the hardest services where I found myself with full tickets, running behind on focaccias and oh shit, I just cut my finger or burned my arm in the oven..these moments and more, gave me life.
For 6 months, I worked hard and in April 2022, I was promoted to the full time position of Sous Chef. This was an incredibly happy and bittersweet moment for me. I couldn’t believe that in such a short time, I was moving up and trusted so much by my Chef and my kitchen family. In all the happiness and validation, it also meant my already limited time with my husband and daughter would be even less. It meant I would need to leave my personal chef job. It meant even harder work and higher stakes. With all of that, I knew I wanted and needed to keep pushing forward and further. I was peeling back layer and layer of who I USED TO BE to discover the woman I was MEANT TO BE.
This position and this job required a great amount of pivoting and flexibility…not just from me, but from my family. I knew that this wouldn’t be forever and had hoped that for THIS season, we could sacrifice together and make it work…the 5 night-per-week shifts, the late nights, the parts where all I could and would talk about (annoyingly, I’m sure) was the restaurant, the food, the life.
Despite the challenges and losses along the way, within my family and within myself (including breaking my ankle which forced me to take an excruciating 2-month hiatus to heal), I grew stronger and more determined. Sometimes you have to burn shit to the ground in order for something new, something better to have space to grow. I think that may be the prescribed burn concept that farmers use to clear out the old and make space for new growth…and that might be what I did. And man, did the new growth come.
In May of 2023, I officially became Head Chef of North Miznon. With the full support of my family, friends, my kitchen team and my colleagues, I stepped up to the challenge of building on the wonderful foundation set before me and continue to grow North into a truly special place where diners can come and for a moment, feel like they are seen, that they belong and have a place at our table in New York City.
It’s beautiful, it’s stressful, it’s chaotic and I am exactly where I was meant to be for this season of life. I see the woman I am becoming and I am proud of her. I pinch myself every day when I think about this amazing journey of going from “couch to Chef” in a year and a half. This dream is being realized and I am so happy. I hope when my daughter looks at me now or looks back when she’s older and thinks about me, she sees what passion, hard work and determination can get you in the midst of the seemingly impossible. That sometimes in life, we have to make choices and decisions that might not be popular, but in the end, are for the better. I am a mother. I am a co-parent. I am a chef. And hopefully, I am better.
