"
One can not think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.

/  virginia woolf  /

Once in a Lifetime...

Coucou, c'est moi Lina! I am a professional cook, freelance chef and native Vancouverite who lives and works in the big, gritty and beautifully charming City of Light (also known as Paris!). I have a bi-monthly column in The Globe and Mail where I share recipes and stories alongside images that I style and photograph. I am also the founder of The Prep List, an evolving collection of curated playlists full of music to prep to.

I absolutely love exploring the rich and diverse culinary history this country has to offer by traveling and discovering traditional French recipes and ingredients. On the weekends, you will likely find me relaxing and cooking at home, seeking out the best places to eat noodles in Paris, or wandering a local market in search of all things fresh and seasonal.

Until mid-2017, I could regularly be found cooking and creating new eats from behind the stove in the tiny open kitchen at Pas de Loup. Since then, I have been devoting my time to refocusing and exploring...which basically means eating all the things, drinking all the natural wines and subsequently scheming up all the many different possibilities for what's next! 

This so-called 'eating and scheming' approach has managed to evolve into some pretty cool projects! As a freelance chef, travelling mostly between Canada and France, I now spend most of my time collaborating and creating authentic food-driven experiences wherever I land. My most recent culinary adventures have lead me to Arles, Singapore, Vietnam, Sweden, Naramata and back again.

There is lots of awesomeness on the horizon. Make sure to check out my Find Me Here page for more info on what I am currently getting up to!

How did I get here?

Although I grew up surrounded by beautiful fresh food, being fed gloriously delicious meals cooked by my naturally culinarily inclined parents and grandparents, I didn't always know that all things kitchen would eventually become my chosen profession. In fact, some would say I started out a little late in the game considering I completed a bachelor's degree in Fashion Design first.

It actually wasn't even until a couple years into the daily office grind as a women's running apparel designer at lululemon that I finally started to accept that I was spending way more of my time designing recipes than I was designing clothing. I made the best choice of my life the day I decided to put my tape measure and sewing machine aside in favour of a crisp white apron and a bag full of gloriously sharp knives! 

I attended the professional culinary program at the Northwest Culinary Academy in Vancouver because Chef Tony was one of the most authentic people I had ever met and because their 4-month intensive program was everything a young cook could ever need to confidently get started. There, I learned the basics: the history of cooking as an art and as a profession and the techniques I would need in order to forge my way into the industry. Since then, the trajectory has only been up; suffice to say I owe the foundation of my career to the experience I gained during my time there.

For a few years after that, I cooked my way around Vancouver before eventually deciding on a whim to buy a one-way ticket and move to Paris. I had never lived anywhere outside of Vancouver, so you better believe it was scary! I sold all of my things (which, I believed at the time, made up a huge part of my identity and were very hard to part with), packed my bags (there were two, and they were heavy!) and set off on a journey into the unknown - Paris! oui! oui! - where I have been living for more than 5 years now!

The road to becoming a chef isn't an easy one, but it certainly is the life I have chosen. I'd be lying if I said there haven't been struggles from the frustration, exhaustion and intense stress this job can inevitably bring along with it, but the fact of the matter is, I wouldn't trade all the endless cuts on my fingers for any other life - no matter how truly endless and annoying they are! 

It is the #lifeofacook for me and no other. I do hope you will follow along!

WANNA KNOW WHERE I'VE WORKED?

How do I work this?

Some of the incredible people I have worked for or collaborated with:

"
When I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and the warmth and the love of it and it is all one.

/  M.F.K. Fisher  /