Chef/Author/Artist/Activist

 

Celebrated chef, Elizabeth Falkner was born in San Francisco, grew up in Los Angeles and moved and worked her way up in kitchens in San Francisco in the 1990’s and owned and ran several restaurants through 2014. 

 

Today she does recipe development and consults for numerous products and brands and lives in Brooklyn, New York. One of her current projects is helping to define responsible and culturally diverse cuisines with Yale Hospitality. She speaks and emcees at many events around the country focusing on food waste issues, health and wellness, and emphasizing the importance of creativity and sustainability.

 

She relentlessly cooks for charity events and food festivals all over. Falkner does both savory and sweet, traditional and modern. She is an advocate for people and chefs to think more like athletes and “stay fit to cook”. After playing soccer for 28 years, she picked up sword fighting fitness and martial arts, yoga, pilates and running distance races. She ran the NY Marathon in 2016 for Team For Kids. In May 2019 Falkner rode 300 miles in Chefs Cycle for No Kid Hungry and raised money for kids in need across the country and will do it again in Bend, Oregon summer 2020. 

 

Cooking competitions are a favorite “sport” for Chef Falkner. She has appeared on over 40 of the television cooking competition programs on Food Network, Cooking Channel, and Bravo, NBC, as well as made appearances on many other shows. She was the runner up in The Next Iron Chef, Super Chefs. She has appeared in many food magazines, and has received multiple awards, as well as a nomination for a James Beard Award (2005).

 

Falkner is a long time member and on the board of directors who served as the president of Women Chefs & Restaurateurs from April 2014 to April 2015 and was re-elected president in 2019 through 2020.

 

A graduate from San Francisco Art Institute with a BFA in film, Falkner has produced two short films with food themes in 2018; “Food Games-Sustainability” which she also hosted, and a documented performance piece called “Croquembouche Samurai” she performed at SoHo House in NYC.

 

Current Projects:

Director of Culinary Innovation-Yale Hospitality at Yale University

Behave, Better For You Candy-Chief Formula Maker

Celebrity Chef/Speaker/Advisory Council-Compass Group

Brand Ambassador-Emmi Cheeses from Switzerland

President-Board of Directors, Women Chefs & Restaurateurs

Women’s Leadership Council-James Beard Foundation