About Chef Patty

When Patty went off to college in the late ‘80’s her dream at the time was to be a successful businesswoman in NYC.  She pursued that dream for 5 years after college until one day, she woke up with the shingles.  Her doctor told her that she needed to re-evaluate what she was doing and after some careful soul-searching, she realized that her dream job had been staring at her since she was a young girl.  She wanted to go to the Culinary Institute of America! So she packed her bags, cashed in her 401K, and headed up to Hyde Park to start her new journey in the food world.  She hasn’t looked back. 

 

She moved to Italy for a year after she graduated and came back to her first professional job working in a fast-paced, highly regarded Italian restaurant called BaBBo.  She worked there for 3 years, climbing her way to sous chef until she knew it was time to change course.  BaBBo is also where she met her now-husband Andy. Patty started working for a NYC-based caterer where she learned how to cook for hundreds of people all at once. 

 

After she got married, she continued to work as the right-hand person for the caterer and soon discovered that she was pregnant with her first child.  She knew that she had to find a job that was conducive to putting her baby to bed at night.  She landed her first “gig” as a private chef for a young couple.  She’d cook twice per week for them, cooking enough food to last the entire week.  She knew she was on to something and then an opportunity fell into her lap – a full-time private chef in someone’s home in CT.  She needed the work and fulfillment – she had just had her second baby. 

 

Six years later, she had had enough.  She freelanced at food magazines and tested recipes for multiple cookbooks.  She started to realize that the “gig economy” was something she could sink her teeth into, given that she had two small kids at home and a husband who continued to work late hours in the restaurant business.  Patty has carved herself a little business of her own.  She cooks for families on a weekly basis, and is also able to cater parties for various clients both in Manhattan as well as Westchester and Connecticut.