I was balancing martini glasses on a tray at a private dining club in Palm Beach County before I was even old enough to drink. In 2001, I moved to New York City with a suitcase and stars in my eyes. Fresh off the plane, I hustled my way behind a bar on the Lower East Side with a paperback bartender’s guide. I slung drinks from Brooklyn to the Upper West Side in a range of venues: Local dives, fancy cocktail bars, and dance clubs during the reign of the Cosmo and Thug Passion.
From sampling wine at the base of Mt. Vesuvius to sipping sake at the base of Mt. Fuji, I’ve built on my love of craft beverages through a combination of travel and serious study. Currently residing in the Hudson Valley, surrounded by fields of hops and countless fantastic breweries, cideries, and distilleries, it’s easy to pick up something delicious and enjoy it in the sun by a waterfall or on a farm. Cold glass in hand, sitting by baby goats, roaming chickens, and a barn full of casks and tanks, who wouldn’t be inspired? I began with a simple course through Cicerone.org, and the more I learned, the more knowledge I craved. So, I set my sights on other beverage certifications. I enrolled at the International Wine Center in NYC for WSET Wine Level 2, then hopped on a plane to Napa Valley Wine Academy for WSET Wine Level 3. After studying among the vines of my native state, I enrolled in sake courses and packed a bag for Japan. My wild hairs run deep, and my education has just begun.
My multimillion-dollar cafè group began with a steak knife duct taped to a broomstick. In 2012, business partner Denise Plowman and I took a gamble on each other and our dreams. We emptied our savings accounts, maxed out our credit cards, and DIYed a tiny storefront in Ridgewood Queens into Norma’s Corner Shoppe. What was once a hand-built counter with a couple of cake stands and an exterior made bare by sawing down the old awning with that above mentioned steak knife, is now a bustling neighborhood staple with lines out the door 7 days a week. In 2015, we rolled the dice again and opened Julia’s a few blocks away. After successfully navigating the pandemic with both Norma’s and Julia’s, we felt ready to attempt growth again. Norma’s Corner Shoppe expanded into the Hudson Valley in 2022 with our largest store to date.
Since opening our cafès have been featured on The Cooking Channel, The Food Network, and NY1 and have been written up in Eater, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Time Out New York, Edible Queens, New York Magazine, and many more.
I can pull sugar, temper chocolate, and build a wedding cake, but my favorite pastry is a classic chocolate chip cookie. If caught at the perfect temperature, still cooling from the oven, gooey, and riding that racy line of almost under-baked, a chocolate chip cookie can be transcendent. In 2005, I was desperately seeking the comfort of a cookie. I found myself housebound with a complicated pregnancy, looking for a hug at the bottom of a mixing bowl. I filled my home and heart with the smell of melted butter and browning sugar until my family held a sweet intervention. They sat me down and begged me not to channel my grief and workaholic tendencies into piles of baked goods. I relented in the best way I knew how: I opened an online cookie store.
In a style that I am now recognizing as truly on brand for myself, I followed that initial baking curiosity right to pastry school at The French Culinary Institute. After graduating with honors while caring for my medically delicate first son still in diapers, and eight months pregnant with my second son, I continued to run my mail order cookie company out of a sub-basement studio apartment in the Lower East Side.
Boxes of orders piled to the ceiling, multiple daily runs to the post office while pushing a stroller, and a few contractions led to a momentary burst of sanity. I shut down my store long enough to give birth and get a day job helping run the biggest bakery department in the world of a major not-to-be named natural grocery chain. I spent the next several years learning from the corporate model how to balance margin reports, manage labor budgets, and juggle production and staff schedules. It was an invaluable experience, but I kept my little cookie company’s license tucked in my back pocket, waiting for the day I was brave enough to venture out on my own.
The first time I imagined owning a cafe, I was a scruffy seven-year-old living in a garage in Santa Cruz, CA. I thought that if I could scrape together enough money to buy potatoes and orange juice, I could turn my whole life around. I have visceral memories of stealing buttered toast from the bus bin at a local diner that my friend Sunshine’s mother worked at by Boulder Creek. It was cold and chewy, and to my aching belly, it was heaven. That discarded white bread was the beginning of my love affair with simple food and the seed of a dream that lay dormant until I became a mother myself.
Potatoes, butter, and bread are still my favorite vessels for delivering unexpected punches of flavor that inspire a smile or satisfied sigh. My style of cooking is somewhere between a classically trained pastry chef and a self-taught home cook, mixing technique with instincts and personal preference.
Countless recipes, three successful fast casual restaurants, and a Food Network Chopped championship under my belt, yet I can’t help but balk at the title Chef. Whether it’s the simplicity of my style of cooking, imposter syndrome, or delighted disbelief is yet to be determined. Sometimes, during a busy brunch service with our ticket rail full, I’ll turn to the person working the line with me, giggle, and ask, “Doesn’t this feel like we’re playing restaurant?” To this day, being a chef still feels like dress-up.
My first adult job was as a licensed private investigator in Florida during the late 90s. It was not as glamorous as it sounds. After moving on from surveilling, I bought and sold exotic wood wholesale for many years before jumping on a plane to New York. In between bartending gigs, I studied acting and improv and made comedy shorts with my friends for festivals. I also had the privilege of working in the Art Department on several major film and television productions for directors like Steven Speilberg and Shawn Levy. The handful of times that I have been able to marry my passion for media and food by appearing on shows or contributing articles have been incredibly satisfying. I look forward to more of these experiences in the future!