Amazing flavor is an amazing human who has perfected their craft. Welcome to flavors known behind the scenes. Look at new flavors and the chefs pastry chefs and bartenders. Who create them with your hosts emmanuel. You can easily distinguish my guest new crowd with our spikey platinum blonde hair. It's her creativity and drive. That defines her as a chef. Pastry chefs tv pistol ut author and foot constant my guest today is elizabeth faulkner and this episode sixty three of the flavors unknown podcast with his abbott faulkner. We go over more than twenty years of her car. Year from season. Cake in san francisco to crescendo. In brooklyn we talk about creative process a recent trip to china and about her view about the future of the industry. I am your host emmanuel laroche. I o beating of food industry for more than twenty years both in europe in the us and every other week. Our interview chefs spitzer chefs end. Mix from around the country before we start time favor to ask. We posted a survey in though show description at flavors unknown that we would love to have your feedback on your liking. What we can do better about their show. It takes a few minutes so tell us what you think. And if you do you can be one of the three winner of a rifle and get a seventy five dollar amazon gift card. So thank you in advance for your input high chef. How are you. i'm great. how are you. I'm very good and welcome to flavors known. I'm really excited to have you on the show today. I'm so i'm actually very excited to talk to you. As well you know all we love virtual arenas these days so embassy had a conversation about food and travel whatever. Exactly yeah the grades you have done. Some things involve across like the years. So you have open several restaurants you debbie into a lot of. I'm in a company to show that cooking competition should have been James be a finalist in five as a history shifts are or banana you have presidents off. The wc are the women chefs and restore suddenly feel the president. Now war ashley. It's kind of it's a. It's a good story. I was a member early member of limited rush towards when he started thirty years ago. Because one of the i former bosses one of my former chef was one of the founders and of course i knew all those women who started that organization is because they weren't getting enough attention for the amazing work that they were already doing thirty years ago in the industry and they just getting as much recognition as their male colleagues. And so i've been a member all these years. And then i became the president in two thousand fifteen and i was brought back on later and then coincidentally almost perfect. I guess we're full. Circle is that we had a meeting right before the pandemic hit us in new york and we decided that we time to wind up business that we're in a good black positive cash flow space but we found that the last five years honestly were very hard very challenging to raise money for the organization because in fact there are just so many nonprofits and there are a lot more a lot more focus on women in the industry in the last few years since the metoo movement so we just kind of decided you know i think out what the founders initially had started we had had run its course and we decided that it would be our best interest in the best interest of women going into business going forward to actually wind down and look at other organizations to support in the way. This is a good sign. I think than for women in the industry correct. Yeah that i think so because and also like you know. It's all volunteer board of directors. And you know. I had a really great board of directors very you know. A bunch of superstars from tiffany as on to amanda cohen to karen kuna wicks and kelly fields and just so many amazing people. Sorry sunny just from all over the place and we were all just in the last couple of years getting pulled more and more into other events and other a lot of the nonprofits have been focusing on women in the industry which is meaning. But then we've been asked to do all the dinners all the events so we cannot run organization where we have to ask ourselves to do more and more like we always wanna to do more but like it just seemed like there were already so many different groups and representation happening that we felt like it would be better to put our energy and some of these newer ones or basically put our heads together and then we started collaborating with the beard foundation too. So i mean. I have a lot of hope for the future of where we're going with foodstuff digital. Yeah so you know with everything. That's i've mentioned before an interesting the the ucr and then you'll passion as well for martial arts you know. Where do you find the your your driveway. Your drive coming from you know. I think it's kind of just my nature. I somebody who group in a very artistic family. And then. When i was in college i ended up finishing francisco art institute in studying experimental art experimental installations and then simultaneously was working at williams sonoma at the original store in san francisco. And and so. I kind of both you know was honing a sort of desire to to look at different mediums in different ways and falling in love with the food revolution of california. That was happening all around me in the late eighties. So when i when i started cooking i really committed myself to learning so much of crap in the tradition in the foundations of cooking in fine dining through some great chefs from toronto. To tracy deja dan. I was focused on patriot. Because i kind of excelled at it really fast. Even though i never wanted to be a pastry chef on. I just kind of like. That's how i started and then when i opened up my own places i i kind of liked the idea of you know eventually i was like i've got open a bakery but i'm certainly not gonna make you know carrot cake with martha pen ferrets. I wanted everything to be. So i had come from plated food. You know so. I wanted to cates peachy super special textures and flavors and when the facts away i when i met you think two thousand eight wear the owner of the citizen right story on time so i had citizen cake for fifteen years in the night opened up. A little. Satellite cafe called citizen cupcake for four years. And then i had another restaurant called orson. That was very modern and edgy. So a chance your question. I think that i've always liked to sort of understand the basis of an economy culture or language around food and then also see what else. I can take it so i. I've been doing that for so many years now or i might have done. I might very classic traditional food. Sometimes but i also love the modernism and the changing things up. Not just for the five eight but just to kind of play with people's perception so full story coming full circle is like.