Frequently Asked Questions

Los Angeles. I take work across the city and the surrounding area, and I travel for the right project.

I’m taking inquiries now — tell me your timing and I’ll tell you what I can do.

Yes, I am available as a vegan private chef in Los Angeles — and for dinner parties, catering and wellness retreats there too.

I moved to San Francisco in 2005 to pursue vegan cooking, and I became a proper chef in 2014. Since then I have led kitchens in San Francisco and Chicago, opened Fancy Plants Catering and Fancy Plants Cafe, and cooked at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur.

I love finding local produce and showing off the qualities that make it special and seasonal. I keep a deep pantry of ferments and umami flavor builders that I use to make even the simplest dish taste sublime.

I appreciate food from many different cultures, and often a wonderful fruit or vegetable is the reference point for a dozen appropriate dishes. I like distinctive, seductive flavors — bold, balanced and healthy.

A private chef takes over the food side of your life to whatever degree you want — planning the menu, buying the ingredients, cooking in your kitchen, and leaving it clean, so the only decision left for you is what to eat, not who’s going to cook it. For me that takes a few different shapes: weekly meal preparation for a household’s everyday eating, a dinner party built around a specific evening, or catering for a larger event, all working from the same plant-based, fermentation-driven kitchen I’ve built in San Francisco, Chicago, and now Los Angeles.

The work isn’t just execution — I’m doing the planning too: what’s in season, what the household actually likes to eat, and how a week of meals or a single evening’s menu should be structured so it holds together.

If you’re not sure which version of “private chef” fits what you have in mind, that’s a good first thing to ask me about.

With me it is four steps, and none of them commits you to anything.

1. A ten minute phone call. What brings you joy, what meets your nutrition goals, and what should we avoid. That is most of what I need.
2. A sample menu. I write one for your household, drawing on the hundreds of recipes I’ve developed in restaurants, for families, and for specific diets and health requests. You are welcome to look through past inspirations as well as tell me your own.
3. The shopping. I handle it.
4. A cooking trial. We cook a real meal together in your kitchen and find out whether we are a good fit. This is the part that actually answers the question, for both of us.

I am currently taking inquiries from families and individuals in Los Angeles. Special consideration is given to full or part-time employment and to weekly and bi-weekly arrangements.

It depends on what the work actually involves. Shopping, preparing, serving and cleaning are different jobs, and an engagement that includes all four is priced differently from one that doesn’t. Weekly and bi-weekly arrangements, and full or part-time employment, are quoted differently again.

Rather than publish a number that would be wrong for most inquiries, I quote after a short conversation about what you need. The grocery bill is separate and is billed to you at cost — you pay for the ingredients, not a margin on them.

I do. Sourcing is part of the cooking, not an errand that precedes it — what is good that week decides a great deal of what I can put on the table, and I would rather make that decision standing in front of the produce than from a list written days earlier.

The grocery bill is forwarded to you at cost, separately from my rate. You pay for the ingredients; you do not pay me a margin on them.

Yes, and those are the arrangements I am most interested in. Special consideration is given to full or part-time employment and to weekly and bi-weekly service.

There is a reason I prefer it. Cooking for the same household over months means I learn how you actually eat rather than guessing — what you reach for, what you leave, how your week is shaped, what changes when someone is unwell or travelling or training. That knowledge is the difference between a good meal and a meal that fits your life.

If you are considering bringing a chef on properly rather than booking one occasionally, say so in your first message and we will talk about what the arrangement should look like.

For a private chef agreement we can plan a week ahead. Some families prefer that I choose whatever looks good at the market and, knowing their tastes, trust me to take it from there. I’m flexible.

Absolutely. I have cooked for celiacs, for kosher families, for adherents of sugar free and oil free preventative diets, for people with specific health goals, for people managing health concerns, and for fitness goals. And vegan, of course.

Tell me what you are working with in the first conversation and the menu is built around it from the start, rather than adapted afterwards.

Yes. If some of the household eats plant-based and some doesn’t, that is a menu problem rather than an obstacle — and it is one I enjoy. The goal isn’t to convert anyone at the table, it’s to cook food built well enough that nobody misses what’s missing.

My approach leans on fermentation and umami — techniques like miso, koji, and aged ferments that build the same savoriness and depth people associate with meat and dairy, so the food reads as satisfying on its own terms rather than as a substitute for something else. It’s not deprivation; every food culture in the world has a deep repertoire of dishes made without animal products, and that’s the tradition I’m cooking from.

If your household is a mix of vegan, vegetarian, and everyone-eats-everything, tell me the mix and I’ll build a menu around it.

Yes. I have cooked weekly Shabbat dinners for a household over a period of years, alongside Passover and Hanukkah, and I am well versed in kosher practice. Everything I cook is plant based.

Holiday cooking often means a table of eight or ten with a range of dietary needs, and restrictions that arrive late after a conversation with a rabbi. Working to them is part of the job rather than an interruption to it.

Yes. Children are the future of the family, and I have had the pleasure of cooking for some amazing children as a private chef. Where it’s welcome, I love sharing my curiosity and joy of food with them — it helps them build healthy habits and an adventurous palate.

I have found children can be wonderfully appreciative students, and I have cooked for some picky ones too.

Nothing in the kitchen is more important. Before I can think about taste, I think about what is safe and appropriate for the diner.

Cleanliness, sanitation, a methodical flow through the kitchen, proper cooking and cooling, and constant attention to allergens and preferences are the first order of importance.

Los Angeles has some of the most remarkable farmers markets in the world. Local growers till the foundation for the fruit and vegetables I use, and I seek out organic grains, pulses and cereals. I love wild and foraged ingredients where they are appropriate.

I also keep a cellar of ferments, flavor builders, vinegars and preserves, and I grow tempeh and make aged vegan cheeses.

After cooling the food safely, I pack it into containers appropriate for eating, heating or serving. Everything is labelled and dated, and any instructions you need come with it.

Some families like me to cook and store a week of food at a time. When I do, I build harmony across all the dishes so they can be combined and reused in interesting ways rather than eaten in the same order every night.

Absolutely. Cooking in San Francisco introduced me to an enormous range of ingredients and styles, and in Chicago people got comfortable bringing me things they wanted veganized. I even made an episode about it.

Bring me the dish. Treating each request as a chance to learn more about food, nature and people is most of why I enjoy this work.

Yes, and I love to. My favorite medium is a five-course curated dinner party.

I can be discreet, or I can be engaged — introducing the dishes, answering questions, pouring your wine. Wonderful service makes a dining experience seamless, and I love sharing the joy of food.

Yes. I have cooked and hosted over five hundred dinner parties. Public dinners are sold through Tock.

If you have a venue in mind and would like me to cook a dinner there, write to me.

Yes. I have catered weddings for up to three hundred people, as well as fundraisers, parties, graduations and galas.

Send a catering request with the date, the venue and roughly how many people, and I’ll tell you what’s possible.

Yes. We draft a simple contract for catering, and I ask for a fifty percent deposit.

Yes. I cooked breakfast, lunch and dinner for two hundred people over a weekend at the famed Esalen Institute in Big Sur, and I love exploring the intersection of food and wellness.

I will cook, and I also love to participate — I practice yoga and meditation. Get in touch about a retreat or wellness event.

Absolutely, if the work is fulfilling and rewarding. I certainly have a passport.

Yes, and I love to. I have built courses on vegan cheesemaking, fermentation, croissant making, vegetable literacy, creating umami in Eastern cooking, umami in Western dishes, salads and dressings, and sauce making.

A good chef also knows how to teach. If you hang around the kitchen I will gladly share the process, and put you to work if you like — people have. I like to make cooking simple and fun, and I am looking forward to teaching vegan cooking classes in Los Angeles. Ask about lessons.

Essentialist Cooking is my name for the idea that everything on the plate should be there for a reason, in service of three things I care about: health, happiness, and harmony. It’s not minimalism — I’m not trying to strip food down — it’s a filter I run every dish through: does this make us healthier, does it make us happy, does it bring harmony to the people and the place around the table?

In practice that means cooking with the seasons, leaning on fermentation and aging — the miso and koji work I’ve been doing since 2012 — to build umami without animal products, and treating a meal as more than fuel. Diversity on the plate matters too: nature offers far more variety than the handful of crops the food industry depends on, and I’d rather cook from that abundance than around it.

It’s the philosophy behind everything I make, whether that’s a weekly meal for a household or a full dinner party.

Feeding so many wonderful people is an award unto itself.

I have also won Vegan Iron Chef in San Francisco, and was nominated Best Vegan Chef in the USA by VegNews. Fancy Plants Cafe was nominated Best Vegan Cafe and was awarded Best Cafe in Lakeview. I have won achievement awards from several animal welfare organisations, and I have been lucky enough to cook alongside many chefs I admire, both in collaborations and as the chef for their own events.

The people I cook for, first.

In the Bay Area: Eric Tucker and Millennium, Amaryll Schwertner, Alice Waters, Anthony Myint, Brandon Jew, Miyoko Schinner, Bryant Terry, Russell Moore, Cortney Burns and Nicolaus Balla, and Chad Robertson.

In Los Angeles and beyond: Tal Ronnen of Crossroads, Chef Ito of Au Lac, Aaron Adams, Jeremy Umansky, Amanda Cohen, Adam Sobel, Guy Vaknin, Sandor Katz, David Zilber, and William Shurtleff and Akiko Aoyagi. Michael Pollan. E. O. Wilson.