When I was 4 years old, I was a very early riser. I’d wake my parents up at the crack of dawn, not-so-patiently awaiting breakfast so I could begin my day. My parents had both retired from their professional careers and transitioned to running their own business out of our house, almost assuredly with the ability to sleep longer in mind. They encouraged me to go back to sleep, and I simply could not do it. Coincidentally, or perhaps by some divine fate, we watched the cooking channel as a family before bed as our wind down routine. One morning, I worked up the courage to make myself a microwaved egg frittata for breakfast, determined to become fully independent and start living on my own schedule. And just like that, a young aspiring chef was born. As I grew older, I began to help more in the kitchen, learning the kitchen basics and beginning to hone my knife skills and understanding of flavors.
When I was 12, I was selected to compete in a cooking competition series called Man Vs Child: Chef Showdown. Having access to so many new luxury ingredients allowed me to practice and experiment more than I ever could before, and I met so many incredible chefs. I spent countless hours watching cooking videos, learning new techniques and drawing inspiration from the marvelously diverse world of food. By the time the pilot and first season were filmed, I was 14 years old. One of the chefs I had competed against offered me a job at his restaurant, and I started from the very bottom of the totem pole in his fine dining Mexican spot. Simultaneously, I was accepted into a performing arts school in Santa Ana, CA called the Orange County School of the Arts. I joined the Culinary Arts and Hospitality Conservatory to start my formal training and get the refined culinary education I needed to begin my journey of becoming a chef. The same year, I also began hosting a series of pop up dining events, attempting to expand my skills as a leader and future chef.
During the summer before my sophomore year of high school, while filming a second season of Man Vs Child, I began working with Chef Pascal Olhats at his fine dining French restaurants in Orange County. He is a well-known local chef, celebrated for recreating authentic French flavors from his hometown in Normandy. After about a year, Pascal sent me to Rouen, Normandy to cook at the Michelin-rated restaurant La Couronne, which was his first restaurant job and is the oldest restaurant in France. I spent a month as an apprentice there and had an opportunity to cook at a Michelin-starred restaurant in town called L’Odas. I spent many years working with Pascal, working my way up the kitchen ladder
and learning the subtle intricacies of classic French cuisine. While I worked with Pascal I assisted with countless private events and weddings, and we competed in multiple competitions together. We remain very good friends and have cooked together many times in recent years.
My junior year of high school I was chosen to compete on the Rachael Ray Show in a segment they called “Cook Your Way To Culinary School.” I was flown to NYC and competed against 3 other high school students for a chance to win the grand prize fund to help pay for the next phase of education. While I was in New York, I began to develop my love for the city and the mind-blowing food culture there. Though I did not win the grand prize, I was awarded $5,000, a massive set of Rachael’s cookware and some incredible memories.
After graduating highschool with 4 incredible years of culinary school and restaurant training under my belt, along with a California State Seal of Biliteracy in French, I prepared for my move to the Big Apple! I figured, just like Sinatra, if I could make it there, I could make it anywhere!
I was admitted into the Pfozheimer Honors College at Pace University in Manhattan to major in Entrepreneurship. After accepting all the grants and financial aid I could, along with draining the college fund my parents and I had been building from their investments and my contributions from my restaurant and acting jobs, I was ready to start college. I focused on my studies for the first semester, and lived off what little I had left in my savings account. I returned to California for the summer and worked at Pascal’s brunch restaurant to save enough for my next college semester.
Funds were indeed tight, and I decided to move out of the dorms and into an apartment with two of my friends to help save money. I was determined to figure life out for myself, and did not want to ask my parents for any additional support. My roommates were in a similar financial situation, so naturally we had to enter a period of what we now call “survival mode.” We organized our funds so the three of us could buy beds for our one bedroom apartment, and spent a week furnishing our tiny space with whatever we could find left out on the city streets. While we adjusted to apartment life and our new class schedules, we began formulating a plan for long term survival in the city. I discovered that meat and produce on the school’s salad bar were, on average, much cheaper by weight than the groceries at the local market. Since we had almost zero dollars in the bank, we decided to use our prepaid cafeteria cards to purchase our “groceries.” I struck up a particularly optimal deal with my roommates… I cook and they clean! We were all studying some form of business, and had our class schedules
organized so we could have most of our meals together. The allure of struggling city life soon wore off, and we all decided to get jobs so we could start affording some of the finer things in life. I started driving valet at the renowned River Cafe
in Brooklyn, awaiting a kitchen position opening. After just a few weeks, one of the hot line cooks requested many months off for paternity leave, and I was upgraded from valet to a line cook…but not before being carefully vetted! I was given no advanced notice, and showed up to work in a full suit, expecting to park lamborghinis for the day. During my trial, chef said “go make me a salsify puree, bring me a deli of finely brunoised tomato concasse, and go filet any fish in the walk in.” The trials did not stop there. I passed with flying colors and, according to him, had showcased “a high level of experience and professionalism.” I continued working at the River Cafe until they furloughed the staff as a result of the pandemic. The entire city closed down quite quickly, so I moved back to California.
Since there were few restaurants open at full capacity, and the work I could get at Pascal’s became limited as he was looking to sell the restaurant and move on to other projects, I transitioned to private chef work. Soon after I began doing private dinners, my high school girlfriend’s mother’s best friend decided to charter a yacht for her husband’s birthday, and they asked me to be their chef. After a successful first yacht charter, the broker offered for me to become one of his go-to chefs, as quality chefs are apparently limited here on the west coast. The following week, I booked a three day trip to Catalina, and ended up having, what was at the time, the busiest summer of my life. When the yacht season began to wind down, I was asked to help move one of the yachts from Los Angeles to Cabo, Mexico. This was straight out of a Below Deck textbook, and while you’ll have to watch my socials to watch the whole story, let’s just say that everything imaginable that could have gone wrong, did in fact go wrong. It was the most wild week of my life, and I was absolutely hooked on the world of yacht cheffing, and have not looked back.
Just a few short years later, after hundreds of private catering events, competitions, corporate parties, weddings and so much more, I was chosen to be the chef on Parsifal III, a 52m luxury sailing yacht for charter in the Mediterranean. It is also temporarily the set for the hit TV series Below Deck Sailing Yacht, which I had the pleasure of participating in. This was one of the most challenging job opportunities I’ve ever accepted, but it was incredibly fun and rewarding. I made many lifelong friends and will cherish the memories made forever. Follow along to watch my journey as a young chef, as I grow and
develop, travel the world, and experience life through culture and food. It is a pleasure to be connected with you, and I hope you can find some joy or inspiration through food, travel and culture as I have. Cheers!