Languages: Fluent in English, fair amount of "menu" in German, French and Italian.

Interests:

I am a semi-retired veteran chef with 30+ years professional fine dining experience. My sweetie Tom and I accidentally moved to New Orleans after coming here on an extended holiday in 2014 in order to escape the harsh winter of Vermont. We fell in love with the city and returned that spring, packed up our belongings and moved her permanently. In addition to my culinary experience, I am also a fine artist and former art gallery owner, and our style reflects my history. The house is full of art, my own and others and everything I do is a reflection of my sense of aesthetics. Of course as soon as we arrived, I was eager to take on the local flavors and make them my own. My mother's family is from the Chesapeake Bay and Baltimore areas of Maryland, and we are no strangers to seafood - particularly shellfish and mollusks. I even won a Washington Post Crab Cake contest years ago. Professionally, I've worked for star chefs and movie stars respectively. The restaurants on my resume often saw even more celebrities in their dining rooms - I couldn't even begin to name all of them but I will say that Julia Child (bless her soul) sampled my desserts and was said to like them very much (Sadly, I didn't get to meet her personally). Speaking of Julia, my philosophy is in keeping with her own. Use only the finest and freshest ingredients available and prepare them carefully and you can't go wrong. Also, you really can't have too much butter! But we save our butter gluttony for special occasions of course! Lastly, I've taught culinary classes, am an avid vegetable gardener and having lived in Europe for three years and as an enthusiastic world traveler, I have taken my many experiences and gathered them into a cornucopia of experience to share with my guests. Let me show you New Orleans through your sense of taste and place. At our home, you can enjoy an authentic tour of creole flavor in a real New Orleans home with your own private chef. Who wouldn't want this?