by Restauranteur of Arizona, December 2010

Heidi Lee is the Founder of www.intothesoup.com, a food and travel media company.  A self proclaimed party girl and world traveler, we thought that her fun personality and unpretentious approach would make her the perfect person to start this feature. We met at a local restaurant. Heidi arrived in a leather jacket, jeans, and boots and ordered a Chardonnay. It was 11am:

R: So, Heidi, you are the first cover girl for our new feature “Who’s Cooking Now?”

H: Wow, that’s nice, thanks. You guys ROCK!

R: How long have you been a Chef?

H: First of all, I don’t really call myself that. I’ve had the privilege to work with and meet so many great Chefs, that I don’t put myself in that category.  I’m just a really good cook with a few great assets and a nice smile. I’ve cooked professionally off and on for 20 years and aside from the last 3 years with Into the Soup, I did start a cooking school for kids in 2004, but just as we got going, we had the chance to move to Singapore. 

 

R: Singapore! How was that experience?

H: Absolutely amazing. Singapore has such a huge confluence of cuisine that you could eat there every day for a year and try something new. Wouldn’t recommend all of it, but there’s usually some sort of decent sauce.

R: Did you work as a “really good cook” there?

H: Actually, I spent a lot of my time taking cooking classes and experimenting with all the different ingredients they had. We travelled a lot, too; Thailand, Indonesia, Bali, New Zealand, and Malaysia. It was a nice ‘not working’ time for me. Rare!

R: So, where did you start cooking professionally?

H: As a galley slave on charter boats in the Caribbean. I escaped from corporate America for a time. I was sitting in a bar in St. Thomas – all my best stories start in a bar, by the way – and a boat captain offered me a job as a stewardess for a week. The day before we left, the Chef stormed out and Captain asked me if I knew how to cook…. I lied. The next four years were the experience of a life-time.

R: I bet you had some pretty interesting characters on those boats.

H: You’re tellin’ me. These people came from every walk of life imaginable and you were ‘on’ 24/7.  I remember one cruise in particular when we had a multi-millionaire and his family on board, he was pretty cool, but his wife was a trip. She wouldn’t come out of her cabin unless she was completely made up for the day. I would bring her breakfast to her, and she would hide in the head until I’d set everything up and left. All she ever ate for dinner were broiled scallops. No butter, no oil.  Didn’t do a lot of improvisational cuisine on that boat.

R: Where did you go from there?

H: Oh, lots of places. I sailed across the Atlantic on a 72 foot Swan. That was awesome!  We sailed into the Mediterranean where I fell off a bar stool in Majorca and broke my arm.  From there I went to England, cooked there and the Isle of Wight to save some cash to go to Africa for a few months. Came back to the States and followed a boy to Northern Michigan where I worked sauté in a 4 start restaurant, then slung hash in Bellingham, Washington.

R: Interesting. So, has all this traveling helped your cooking?

H: Absolutely!  It’s amazing what you learn not only eating, but cooking in another country, or another region of this country for that matter. It opens your eyes and your palate to all sorts of different ‘flavor friends’.™  If you look behind the dining room door,  you find some pretty interesting folks and more likely than not, they’re willing to share with you.

R: What is Into the Soup?

H: We’re a Food and Travel Media Company that brings people entertaining and educational experiences. Not only do we have the website, we interact with people through social media like Facebook and Twitter and my weekly radio show. We want to increase awareness of Chefs and Chef driven restaurants and support them in any way we can. 

R: How is the business doing?

H: It’s going great!!  We have over 1,500 members and fans on the site and have had over 50,000 page views in just a few months. We have great content and are getting other contributors involved, too. In fact, we just launched our “Wine and Spirits” section and are looking forward to some neat stuff from there!

R: So if people wanted to contact you about doing a Chef Spotlight video or anything else, what would they do?

H: They can go to the site at www.intothesoup.com or email me at heidi@intothesoup.com. If you’ve got something you want to share, we’d love to hear about it.  You don’t have to be a personality; you just have to have one.

R: Thanks Heidi, it has been great talking with you. Anything else you’d like to add?

H: Thanks. This was really fun!  I guess I’d just ask people out there to remember those Mom and Pop spots, the restaurants that have a person behind that dining room door putting all of their effort into good food and a great experience for you.  Keep the culinary arts alive and stop by for dinner some time.