ABOUT
As soon as I grew tall enough to reach the kitchen counter, I would sneak downstairs and bake cakes in the middle of the night. Food was the way my family expressed love to each other - via teatime sponge cakes with pillows of whipped cream and berries, warming stews after long winter walks, and raucous Brazilian barbecues in the summer.
Despite the early love of feeding myself and those around me, I took an unconventional route to cooking as a vocation, via half a politics degree and a modelling career. After ill health put a stop to my fashion work, I learned to appreciate the link between what we feed ourselves and our physical and mental health. Eventually I bit the bullet and moved to New York to train professionally at the Natural Gourmet Institute - a school with strong focus on the role of food as medicine and the environmental impact of our choices. After graduating I spent time in kitchens in New York City and upstate at Blue Hill at Stone Barns - a restaurant ranked 11th best in the world and helmed by Dan Barber; a true visionary for sustainable food and growing. Other sustainable stages have been at the original Silo in Brighton, and Loam in Galway.
Since moving back to the UK I spent 5 years as a partner and head chef at Crumble, a small but mighty catering company servicing fashion shoots, film sets and parties of all magnitudes. At the same time I honed my retreat cooking skills on yoga, surf and skate trips all over Europe and the UK, and spent a frenetic few months taking part in the WastED pop up on the roof of Selfridges.
My food philosophy is one of abundance. This can manifest as an abundance of seasonal produce, of flavour, of texture and of nutritional value. I don’t believe in denying or depriving yourself when it comes to food, rather that when we introduce new deliciously nutritious elements, often the things that haven’t been serving us naturally fall away. My food is unapologetically comfort food, designed to nourish on all levels without leaving you feeling weighed down (though if you go back for thirds I can’t make any promises).