Growing up, I spent a lot of time with my friends and family in West Monroe, Louisiana, which is how I was engulfed in Louisiana culture. The culture there is so welcoming, and everything is about food. When I think about family I think about food because the only time my family got together was for supper every night and the holidays.

I was the only one in my family that my grandma (who is from Louisiana) let come into the kitchen because I took it seriously and asked a lot of questions. As I got older, my brothers couldn’t cook so they would rely on me to cook dinner every night since my mom was a single working mom. We didn’t have a lot, so I would take things I could find and turn them into casseroles or meals. It wasn’t anything extravagant, but the emotion of watching people eat my food and where is took them is what stuck with me.

Once I turned 15, I got my first job at a Waffle House. I was a hostess, and then moved on to a server, but they told me I couldn’t cook until I turned 18. They day I turned 18, I asked to work the grill but they wouldn’t let me. So I quit, packed my bags, and moved to Baton Rouge all on my own to go to culinary school. One and a half years later, I graduated with my associates in baking and pastries, and moved back to Indy.

Once I was back in Indy, I worked at a mom and pop cafe in Carmel as a baker, and then the owner got me an opportunity to be a pastry chef at The Conrad. After a few years, I left the corporate life and worked a few more kitchen jobs before moving to Cholita, and now The Quarter.

I haven’t found a place here in Indy where I can get real cajun food. The first time I cooked in The Quarter’s kitchen, it smelled like home and I knew this was where I was supposed to be. It reconnected me to my roots and reminded me of where I ate from. My goal is to elevate the tastes from my home to make it something that everyone can enjoy.