Working in restaurants was always a profession that I gravitated toward, even though I told myself my passions lie elsewhere. Throughout high school and college, my love for cooking and food grew exponentially, until I could no longer ignore the signs.
Upon graduation from Northeastern University, I decided to follow my heart and work in a few kitchens, eventually leading to culinary school at CIA in upstate New York. Moving back to my home state changed everything for me as a professional in the culinary industry. Before starting at CIA, I became involved with Dan Barber and his team at Blue Hill at Stone Barns, a career choice that would gain me knowledge of the industry and food and food systems, friendships, and connections that have lasted the test of time. Working at Blue Hill throughout my tenure at CIA, I received a crash course education on all things restaurant industry, and, upon graduation, I was ready to push myself to another level of cooking. After my time at Blue Hill, I worked in notable kitchens such as Gramercy Tavern, Daniel, and Momofuku Ko. I worked as a sous chef at a short-lived project on the Upper West Side, gaining exposure to formulating menus and crafting dishes to suit my vision. In the months before the pandemic, I was working at Charlie Bird, a hip NYC wine bar with a pasta menu that is well-known throughout people in the city who are in the know.
In the past three years, I have been running my own private chef business, Lana Cooks, as a pivot in response to the shutdown of normal restaurant life. I have had the pleasure to cook for clients all over the tri-state area and as far as the southwest and the Caribbean, and have spent the past year finessing and understanding my vision and style of cooking.
Recently, I have been exploring my own voice as a woman of color, organizing pop ups of all kinds, from extravagant tasting menus highlighting foods from the african diaspora and their connecting foods of the US. My vision as a chef is to highlight and explore what is deemed as “American” food and trace the lines back to Africa and the experiences of my ancestors in this country. I know that American food culture would be nothing without black food culture, roots, and heritage, and I want to highlight this in a meaningful way in my food experiences and presentations. I have done pop ups in the city ranging from a plated eight course dinner highlighting the diaspora to an annual block party to celebrate Juneteenth, and everything in between.
My most recent adventure has been spending a month in Patagonia with legendary Argentine chef Francis Malmann, learning to cook with fire.
It seems that this path has been the right one, as in the last year I have been featured on the Cherry Bombe podcast, and I’m their print publication, my events have been covered by Eater and the Infatuation, and most recently I was featured in Netflix’s “Pressure Cooker” reality chef competition series, which saw about 428 million viewers, as reported by the Hollywood Reporter.
I plan to continue to share my food with as many people as would like to try- and cannot wait for what the future has in store