From early on my association with food meant culture. As a kid in Elizabeth, New Jersey if I wasn’t eating rice and beans at home I was taking the train to the West Village for pizza on 9th Street and 6th Avenue. At my friend Brigitte’s I ate Portuguese, sampling snails and the delicious clam, pork and fried potatoes dish, at Valerie’s house I learned Italian, chicken parmesan and eggplant, at Aileen’s Cuban picadillo and the hallways of my builing were often pungent with Indian masala. One of my earliest dining experience memories was going out to dinner every Friday. After my mom got out of work we’d go to Spirito’s. Still serving American Italian to this day I remember sitting at the bar with my mom because the dining room of the restaurant was always packed. Frank, the owner who was also the bartender new us by name and would greet me with a bottomless Shirley Temple. Every week Frank would serve us the veal cutlet and the melt in your mouth ravioli. The thing that impressed me most at Spirto’s was the walk to the women’s bathroom through the large white tiled kitchen. I was so intrigued by the fast pace within and how all the cooks were so focused among the apparent chaos. The memories of the energy of Spirito’s kitchen could very well be why I opened a restaurant some 25 years later.
My creativity in the kitchen was put to the test early on. I was 19 and the tenso at a Zen Buddhist center in California. I was responsible for feeding 30 people three meals a day. All the ingredients were donated by the Los Angeles produce market so I had to make a balanced offering of what was available. It was also there that I learned the simplistic qualities of Japanese cooking. Training at the Academy of Culinary Arts I learned classical French cuisine and worked various positions in an array of different style restaurants.
Later, I became interested in Macrobiotic cooking. I learned a great deal about it training under private macrobiotic chefs who created meals for clients who prioritized health sustaining food. Today I am the chef and owner of Paloma located in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. I named the restaurant after my daughter who cuts the gnocchi, preps asparagus and tastes the chocolate cake batter to make sure it is sweet enough.
