Hello everyone and welcome to Girl-Chef Tastes! My name is Christina Larson. I am a former professional cook, executive sous chef, chef, and restaurant GM by trade. I am also a certified wine and spirits specialist within the state of Texas. I have spent the majority of my professional life working within the hospitality industry and have trained under some well-known names within the restaurants where I learned to cook professionally over the course of several years. I started my cooking adventure after fibbing to get a job as a chef within a lux bed and breakfast. The only prior experience I had was as a waitress at a family owned Italian restaurant. Before I knew it, I was rocking the kitchen, and guests were coming in to meet me! Lil ol me. Soon after, I found an article in an Austin paper about my cooking. I couldn’t believe it! I came back to the Houston area and began working as a line cook at Hotel Icon, where we could be found illegally curing meats out of an old Coca-Cola cooler we refurbished in the basement kitchen. Just kidding. Well, maybe I am and maybe I’m not. Who knows, right? Anyways, that was well over a decade ago, if indeed it happened. When I left Icon, I landed a gig closer to my house as a grill cook. I was rock on and worked with ex-cons and crazy drugheads that were absolutely amazing cooks and I wouldn’t have had it any other way. We were like a family. So, that was a wild-game steakhouse that specialized in gourmet cuisine. They were opening up a tavern. I asked for the menu, of course, I was laughed at, shown the menu and I declared it sucked and I could create a better one. I was given one week to do so. I completed it in 3 days and after a meeting of the masses, I was given the restaurant. I worked my normal grill job and as soon as I was off, I was at the shell of a building, diagramming the kitchen,writing the menu, writing the history of the building for the menu, doing research, interviewing, training, ordering, etc. I did not sleep at that time. Once the restaurant was a month from opening, I was able to leave my grill job to solely focus on the tavern. I worked 7 days a week from 6:30 am to 2:30 or 3am for 2 months straight until I finally got 3 hours off, then back to it for another month and a half until I got 1 day off. It was something crazy, divorces were happening, lots of crying and crazy stuff within all of us, but it was awesome and a magnificent experience. After I left the tavern, I found my picture in a few more articles and magazines, I wrote a few menus for restaurants and worked as an advisor for a few failing restaurants for a bit. Soon, I found myself on the line again, as an executive sous chef cooking for the secret service, pro ball players, and…lets just say, very well off people. After that experience of being at work at 3 am and leaving at 9 pm and well…it was a cool experience, but you dont get the satisfaction of seeing the plates come back empty. So, I left there and was hired on as a GM to run two restaurants simultaneously. One was sushi, which again, high class and the other was a touristy type of restaurant that had an amazing staff. I loved my crews at every restaurant. We were like family and thats what makes you or breaks you in the hospitality industry. Anywho, although I’m no longer doing the restaurant bit, I’m always super busy and still trying to push my creativity out on here so, if you see something you have a question about or some misspellings because I drank an extra glass of wine the night I was posting, shoot me a message! Hope you like my junk! 😁
Contact me at: girlcheftastes@gmail.com
Girl-Chef Tastes 