7 minute read
Top of Her Game: An Interview with Sasha Grumman
TOP OF HER GAME
An Interview with SASHA GRUMMAN
By Debra Devine'81 Lee
Harbor Day alumna, Sasha Grumman'02, is also a recent alumna of the Bravo television program Top Chef. Since the show wrapped, she has been busy growing her focaccia business into a national brand. Recently, she took some time out to talk to us about her journey from HDS to the French Culinary Institute to Top Chef.
D: What inspired you to become a chef?
S: My inspiration to become a chef came at a young age. I grew up in a large Italian family, so we were always cooking together—grandma, great-grandma, and mom. All the ladies in the house, strong personalities—some of us had red hair—so I followed that tradition of strong women in the kitchen. It was definitely family but also Emeril Lagasse. He was my hero. I would watch his show morning and night. When I was five years old, I ran downstairs and told my mom how to cook a turkey on Thanksgiving—I was that kid. I didn’t really decide to go into cooking until after I graduated from college. I was coaching field hockey at Newport Harbor—I played field hockey in college—while I was trying to figure out what I was going to do, and I was cooking a lot. My sister and my dad said, “You’re kind of good at this. Maybe you should look into going to culinary school.” I decided to go to a culinary school that took me to Italy and connected my Italian grandmother to my future in the culinary arts. It was an awesome full circle moment for me.
D: How did you come to be on Top Chef? S: A few of my past chefs have been on Top Chef and Top Chef Masters, and when you’re done filming that season, they ask you for recommendations. So my past chefs had put my name in the hat to be part of the show this year and it just happened to work out.
D: I’m sure you had some preconceived ideas about what being
on the show would be like. Was there anything about the experience that surprised you?
S: Everything was exciting and surprising. It’s an experience unlike any other. I was very excited to just get there and start cooking and filming the show, but I think the biggest surprise was the community of chefs and producers. There are 200 people that are producing the show, that are making it happen, and seeing it come to life is pure magic. I have a new family of chefs, but also a new family of producers and casting people. There are so many people from Top Chef that care and check in. I didn’t expect for my family to grow by a hundred people. It’s been such a wonderful support network which, if anybody out there wants to go on the show, you need the support network. It’s really, really, hard—it’ll be one of the hardest things you’ll ever do, but I’d do it again in a heartbeat.
LEFT: SAMANTHA, AMANDA, SASHA AND THEIR MOTHER, JAN, AT GRANDPARENTS’ DAY RIGHT: SASHA WITH HER GRANDPARENTS AT HDS GRANDPARENTS’ DAY
D: If you could cook for anyone—living or dead—who would it be,
and what would you cook?
S: This is probably an overused answer, but I don’t care because I love it—I would probably cook for Anthony Bourdain. I mean, what a hoot, what a riot! You know it would be fun. I don’t know what we would cook, but it would be wacky and crazy to just get in the kitchen and say, “What do we have? Let’s make something. Let’s cook together and eat together!” Hopefully in some tropical place far away and do something really fun. Him being the host of a travel show, Parts Unknown—if I could go back to my eighth- grade yearbook and answer, “Where do you see yourself in 20 years?” I’d say, “Hosting a show just like Anthony Bourdain.”
D: Who knows, that might happen.
S: Anything is possible!
D: What advice would you give your eighth grade Harbor Day
student self?
S: Find what you love and lean into it. Don’t worry about what everybody else does. Worry about what makes you happy. I feel like there was a lot of, “Maybe I’ll go to law school and be a lawyer like my dad,” or something like that. And maybe you get a little clouded by what you’re raised in. But even at five, I knew I loved cooking. Follow those passions. If you love painting, if you love running—find those things that inspire you and stick to them.
D: So now that Top Chef has wrapped, what’s next for you?
S: Right now, I’m really focused on my business. I started a bread business. I’m in farmer’s markets every Sunday but the goal is to go national, to get into supermarkets. Not putting the cart before the horse, but the end goal is thinking about the future for the first time in my career. I’m usually so stuck in my job, head down, focused on the moment, and getting the job done. But now I really want to focus on the future and the five-year plan and ten-year plan and how I want to live my life. So first I’m going to travel around and hang out with people from the show. We’re going to cook together—it’ll be a blast, and that will go into the fall—doing special dinners, teaching cooking classes, and meeting people at farmer’s markets. My main goal is just to be happy right now—happy in my career. n
— SASHA GRUMMAN
A BRIEF BIO OF SASHA
Sasha Grumman was raised in a large Sicilian family where food was the center of attention. She always naturally gravitated towards the kitchen. After graduating from Kenyon College, she decided to follow her passion and enroll in the French Culinary Institute in New York, where she spent her last three months of school at ALMA culinary school in Parma, Italy. After staging at the Michelin-starred Giuda Ballerino in Rome, she graduated at the top of her class and moved to San Francisco to work at Delfina Restaurant.
While in San Francisco, she worked at Delfina, Hard Water with Top Chef Alum Melissa Perfit, Aziza with Chef Mourad Lahlou, Cockscomb with Top Chef Masters Alum Chris Cosentino, and Aatxe with Chef Ryan Pollnow. After honing her skills in the Bay Area, she moved to Los Angeles and started hosting her own pop ups. Hosting her own dinners elevated her confidence and helped her find her culinary point of view. Soon after, Top Chef Alum Bruce Kalman hired her as his Chef de Cuisine for Union in Pasadena. She took the helm and was given freedom to create menus and step into her own as a leader in the kitchen. She traveled the country with Chef Kalman, from food & wine festivals to special dinners, where her skills at networking began to pay off. Though thriving at Union, she decided to move to Austin, Texas, after falling in love with the city.
In Austin, she landed a job as Chef de Cuisine at the highly regarded Launderette where Mediterranean flavors inspired her. At Launderette, she was able to keep innovating and building on her technique and drive. After a successful time there, she was then presented with an opportunity to take her career to the next level as the Executive Chef of Rosalie Italian Soul at the C. Baldwin Hotel in Houston, Texas. In early 2020, Sasha was named a Rising Star by CultureMap Houston.
Though Rosalie has been closed the past year, Ms. Grumman has stayed busy! She has worked for the Southern Smoke Foundation vetting applications and managing cases. She has also worked with the World Central Kitchen as an on-the-ground lead operator for activations such as Chefs for the Polls and she also helped organize meal and water distributions during the Texas freeze in early 2021.
During the pandemic, Ms. Grumman started a focaccia business and began selling goods at Houston farmers markets in April 2021. She also landed a spot on the cast of the latest season of Top Chef that filmed in Portland in late 2020 and aired on April 1st.
INSTAGRAM: @THEFIERCECHEF & @SASHAS_FOCACCIA
