about renee


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Oh Hi!

This whole thing started in my kitchen on Laurel Street in San Francisco. At the time, I was a freelance food journalist who cooked, tasted, interviwed and experimented a lot. My two littles were (and still are) my primary taste testers. While I no longer live on Laurel Street, I’m still living that California life. It’s pricey, sure, but the food’s good.

Here’s what influences the dishes I create:

While my roots ground me to Alabama, I spent the first eight years of my life in Mexico. Maybe I'm really a southerner at heart, but my first word was "mas" and I would take a bowl of beans and rice over grits any day. When we moved to the states, my mother remarried to an Italian guy who grew up in Libya. Traditional pasta dishes and steak tacos with pico de gallo were weekly staples growing up (things that served me well in college).

I landed in the Bay Area by way of Washington D.C. after a year of traveling around the world. Shortly after declaring San Francisco home, I learned the ins and outs of the restaurant world when I landed a gig as a hospitality reporter. While it was wonderful to simply write about the world of food, I wanted to dig deeper. So, I took my research on all things culinary into the kitchen. Then I put up some serious change for culinary school and did a couple of (very brief) stints at some stellar restaurants in the city. I even took a job as the test kitchen manager of Sunbasket, an organic meal kit delivery company, where I actually got paid to write and taste recipes, as well as develop a few of my own. Finally, I turned back to freelancing.  I taught myself food photography, went to a couple of food blogger conferences, and just like that Laurel Street Kitchen was born!

My aim here is to build something beautiful and true, as well as share the hits that make it into our weekday repertoire. I hope you join me as I explore the world through my California kitchen with weekly recipes that are approachable and diverse, interviews with chefs that have taught me something, and the occasional culinary travel story to inspire more of it all.