My story begins in 1984 in my hometown of Chicago Illinois, a food-obsessed city with a big culinary personality. As a kid, I wasn’t running home after school to kick around a ball or check out the latest video game, I was running into the kitchen to help my mom put dinner on the table! What I would learn later in life is these countless days spent watching her sprinkle a little bit of this and mixing in a little bit of that into delicious dishes my family and I relished in together is what inevitably started my drive to become a chef.