Every partnership has an origin story. Ours starts more than a decade ago and three thousand miles away, at a food event at Paradise Farms in Miami.
“Sam, we need to hire her”
Chantelle was finishing culinary school at Johnson & Wales. Keith was cooking at BLT Steak on Miami Beach under chef Sam Gorenstein. We ended up working the same event at Paradise Farms — and by the end of it, Keith knew what he had to do. He went back to his kitchen and told Sam: we need to hire her.
Chantelle came on at BLT Steak, and somewhere between the sauté station and service, we became best friends. That friendship turned out to be the most important ingredient either of us ever found in a kitchen.
Earth N Us Farm and Love and Vegetables
When Chantelle moved to Earth N Us Farm — a five-acre urban farm tucked into Miami’s Little Haiti — the next chapter started. Together we launched Love and Vegetables, a pay-what-you-can pop-up café with one mission: to feed as many people as possible, regardless of means, with healthy, farm-fresh food.
Nobody was turned away. The honor system ran the till. The Biscayne Times put us on the cover asking “What would you pay for gourmet vegan?” — and Keith went on to speak at the One World Everybody Eats Foundation summit about the pay-what-you-can model. Meanwhile his day job was sourcing produce for James Beard Award winner Michael Schwartz, who put it this way:
Keith was very creative and passionate. He was always interested in using the freshest ingredients, many of which he foraged himself locally.
Michael Schwartz, Biscayne Times
Chantelle carried the same thread through Miami’s Urban Oasis Project, promoting food sovereignty and community empowerment, then west to San Francisco’s Nopa and its temple of organic, seasonal cooking.
Landing in Mendocino
Years later, we’ve both landed in the place that feels like the point of it all: Mendocino County, where the farms are minutes from the table and the fog does half the seasoning. Chantelle leads the kitchen. Keith cooks his own events and produces the gatherings. And the old Love and Vegetables ethos is still here — you can see it in the sliding-scale tickets at our community dinners, like the sold-out Sunday Supper on a Monday at Caspar Community Center.
Fifteen years of shared kitchens, one farm in Little Haiti, a pop-up that taught us everybody eats, and now one long table on the Mendocino Coast. That’s Mendocino Chef. We’d love to cook for you — tell us about your event, or catch us at the next pop-up with Caspar Bread & Wine.