As I was figuring all this out, one full-time job I had was in Global R & D at Le Pain Quotidien, the French boulangerie chain. I didn't really know who I was, and I felt really lost and kind of depressed for a long time, especially while comparing myself to my business school peers who were leading "glamorous" lives making tons of money. I did every job under the sun for a while. I spent the next year just trying to figure out what I wanted to do in food. So I decided to leave, took a quote-unquote "sabbatical," just to go find myself in the world. Really, I felt like I was listening to a sales pitch on repeat every single day. People were always trying to one-up each other or trying to talk about what they had. I felt like I had regressed back into the same corporate drama I had been trying to run away from. It was a very big emotional realization for me, that I had built my life on all these things that didn't really matter.Īfter that, going back and starting at Columbia, I realized it was just not the right scene for me. And then at culinary school I was surrounded by a lot of other career-changers who were warm and thoughtful and took care of me and loved me. I was looking for resumes, for people who were like me and had the flashy profile. I realized that I looked for the wrong traits in other people, for my friends, for the people I filled my life with. Not only did I realize a lot of things about myself, but I also realized the people I was surrounding myself with were not maybe the healthiest people for me to be around, especially those from work. That was a complete one-eighty from basically starving and binging on food, which is where I was at, to cooking all the time and having to butcher cows. I got in, but because I was admitted so early I had a year before I actually started - so I decided to go to culinary school. At some point, I realized I just couldn't follow this career anymore, so I applied early decision to Columbia Business School. Food had always been a celebratory thing at home, but the minute I was in this new mindset, food became a really painful, frustrating, stressful experience. I always liked to eat I liked to travel to go eat with my family.
It was strange, because I grew up having a good relationship with food. I was really thin and constantly had problems with food. I wanted to be in the fashion industry, so I found a way to do consulting in fashion, which seemed very glamorous to my friends - but it was a disaster.
I was definitely one of those people: I went to business school undergrad I went right into consulting I was like, "I'm going to climb the corporate ladder." I was very career focused - maybe to a detriment … definitely to a detriment.
I started my career in management consulting right out of college, and I had no inkling that I was going to go into food. What led you down your path into the culinary arts?