Food Secrets Revealed: Real Ingredients, Real Food
We recently celebrated Mother's Day and before that, Women's History Month. But at Luke's Local, we recognize the strength, creativity, and multitasking magic of women every day – not just during designated celebrations. As Executive Chef of the Fox Den, Luke's Local's in-house kitchen and commissary, I've found that my experiences as a mother and as a chef constantly inform each other.
Let's talk about the multitasking we as women do. It’s assumed that we just do it all. We have all the time in the world and I feel like my brain is constantly just on go mode, and it's just never ending. This reality – the constant juggling and problem-solving – shapes not just how I manage my kitchen team, but the very food we create for you.
I want to share what we’re actually putting into our prepared foods. When I took over our sandwich program, one of the first things we changed was switching to all house-made condiments. Not just because it sounds fancy on a label, but because it genuinely transforms the flavor. A spicy pickled spread where we're actually pickling the vegetables ourselves, then blending them, tastes wildly different from something that comes in a plastic tub with preservatives.
This approach comes from my time as Executive Chef at A16, where I learned the importance of regional Italian cooking and ingredient integrity. During my years there, I had the opportunity to travel throughout Southern Italy – from Puglia to Campania to Sardegna – studying how each region's cuisine reflected its local ingredients. When you've tasted a tomato picked that morning in Campania, you understand why Italian cooking is about letting quality ingredients speak for themselves.
Do you want to know where our beloved Luke's Local chocolate chip cookies came from? They were born when I was a mom at home during COVID. I was baking too much and my family couldn't eat all those chocolate chip cookies. So I would ball up the dough and put it in a container in my freezer, then take portions out and bake them as we needed them. When I started working here, I thought, "Oh, I bet others would enjoy that too." This is how real food develops – from actual needs and experiences, not from focus groups or artificial market research.
Take our sushi program as another example. I'll be honest – I don't even stop to look at sushi in most grocery stores. The fish often has food coloring to make it look artificially vibrant, and both the rice and pickled ginger typically contain corn syrup. Plus, so much of California-style sushi has become these massive, heavy rolls loaded with cream cheese and mayo that barely resemble their Japanese inspiration.
We saw this as an opportunity to do something radically different. I've been to Japan several times and deeply appreciate the sushi style that uses few ingredients and lets the fish and rice quality shine. Our California Roll has real snow crab, Meyer lemon juice, avocado, and Luke's Extra Virgin Olive Oil. It's definitely not traditional Japanese, but it respects the ingredients while celebrating our local California bounty – without the artificial shortcuts. We make sushi we actually want to eat ourselves.
We work with local purveyors for all our produce, and our meat can be traced directly to the farm. The chorizo in our burritos? That's Heritage pork from Newman Farm. Those sweet mandarins? Wild River Murcotts. The flour in our cookies? Locally milled by Giusto. It's a simple philosophy: We won't make it if we won't eat it ourselves.
This approach to food – honest, transparent, rooted in real experiences – reflects our broader values about building community through shared meals. When you take home one of our prepared dishes, you're not just getting dinner; you're getting food made with the same care I'd put into cooking for my own family.
