Twelve years in a restaurant. Now in your kitchen.

I ran a restaurant on the beach for twelve years. It taught me the thing you cannot learn any other way: how to hold a standard when the room is full, the tickets are stacked and nobody out front can tell that anything is happening.

What a restaurant does not give you is the table. You cook for a room of strangers, the plates go out, and you almost never see the part that matters — the people at the table knowing each other, the reason they came, the moment the conversation stops because everyone is eating.

So I sold the restaurant and took the kitchen with me. Now I cook in other people’s houses and in halls and gardens across South Surrey and White Rock, and I am there for the part I used to miss.

I take a small number of events a year, on purpose. It means the person you speak to, the person who writes your menu, and the person on the line on the day are all me. There is no team you have not met and no chef I have subcontracted to.

I still shop like a restaurant — the fish boats, the Cloverdale growers, the same suppliers I used for twelve years. That part has not changed and will not.

Fundraising dinners, community kitchens and a couple of organisations I have supported since the restaurant years. It is not a reason to hire me — it is just part of how the business runs.