ABOUT

The American Monarchist is a lover of all things food. I love food, the smell, the texture, and the way it can make memories come flooding back.  The site will hopefully be my swan song, my chance to bring amazing food to everyone.  After years of eating at restaurants from roadside dives to five-star major city fancy-schmancy.  I hope that my experiences will change the way you eat, what you eat, and most importantly WHERE you eat, around the world. 

 

For as long as I can remember I have been cooking; with my grandmothers, Pop-pop (my mother's father), aunts, great aunts, and great uncles, and lucky enough to have cooked with my great-grandmother when I was really young, okay made I was standing on the chair behind her watching, still counts in my book.  On my mother's side of the family, we had a strudel-making family get-together annually at my one great aunt's house and any other time we gathered the dining room table in whoever's home we were in was always full of each family member's made-from-scratch signature dish(es), all of which at some point or another I had carefully studied how they were made every time I had the chance.  Much the same went on when we gathered for the various Jewish holidays at my father's family's homes.  I was always right there from the moment I walked through the door, putting an apron on and asking what can I help cook?  Both sides of my family except for my one aunt cooked without written recipes, so stored in my brain, somehow, are family recipes that have now been passed down for unknown generations.  Some are from family friends so close that they are family more than friends that taught my one grandmother to cook as she did not have the traditional family life, most take for granted.  Growing up on the south shore of Nassau County, Long Island in the '80s and '90's afforded me access to experience foods that so many sometimes never experience. certainly had a major influence on what one of the chefs in culinary school said was an extraordinary palette, after I spot-on nailed the daily recreation of a dish that is now one of the staples on many of my menus. 

​

Through all my travels and my various paths through life until this point, the one constant in my life was cooking and food.  Cooking and feeding people was therapy for me, So whenever I needed to think about something or make a decision, I turned to the kitchen.  I can cook for one or two, but usually, I get in the groove, and then it's like I am cooking for the Allied Forces chasing Rommel through the desert. That usually ended up calling; yes I'm old enough that the first means of communication I used for most of my life was actually calling and speaking to someone; emailing, or in most recent times texting a bunch of people to figure out who was going to come to eat the ridiculous amounts of food I am in the middle of preparing.  Somehow where ever I am I feel the need to feed everyone.  

 

So during one of my career choices in my early adult life, I began feeling disillusioned with my current situation and I decided I wanted classical training as a cook. I was living in Ft. Lauderdale at the time and enrolled at Le Cordon Bleu in Miami. 

 

After moving back to New York, my career path as a cook was put on hold, but I never stopped cooking.  Food is memory for me.  Making dinner for my first real boyfriend's parents in my first house, going back on the road to show dogs, and making and preparing meals for the weekend to bring with me, meeting my first real love and all the meals I cooked to make him happy, all things I will think of every time I make certain dishes or eat certain foods.   

​

Throughout my life, I have been lucky enough to have eaten at some of the finest establishments throughout the Colonies (the United States, for all those who prefer to perpetrate high treason against the crown to this day).  As well as had some of the best food I have ever eaten from a roadside "dive", where the owner was originally from Brooklyn,  In my limited international travel, to Great Britain, I have also enjoyed food from Michelin Guide starred restaurants to vendors at borough/city/town markets.   

 

​