Meet The Chefs
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Over 30 years experience as a private chef, caterer, Chef Elisa has built her career and reputation serving celebrities and catering events. Over the years her clientele has included, Dan Marino, Tommy Lee Jones, Indigo Girls, hockey player Chris Grattin and many South Florida professional athletes. Chef Elisa grew up in South Florida, a graduate of FIU and Hialeah Miami Lakes High. |
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“I fell in love with food and recognized my gift when I was 12 years old. My remarkable mother found and hired a private tutor for me when I was just 14. Once a week for over 2 years, I learned how to cook something wonderful.” Her Tutor, a CIA grad who dabbled in catering herself, shared her knowledge and a many great recipes including Lump Crab Meat Mousse, which Chef Elisa still serves today. Her experiences with her tutor culminated when Elisa catered her first big party, a wedding for 75 guests, finger food buffet- drop off. “It was a shot gun wedding and the fact that I was 16 and unlicensed didn’t really matter. My price was right, the food was great, the pressure was awesome and I was hooked for life”. Chef Elisa continued as a private chef, catering dinner parties for her neighbors in Miami Lakes through her high school and early college years. |
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She left cooking for a while to pursue her career in broadcast news during the early 80’s and 90’s. She worked at local television stations WSVN, WCIX (Now WFOR), WPLG and KMOL and NBC Network in San Antonio Texas. Chef Elisa returned to her first love of Culinary Arts and decided to begin her own business. First there was In Home Gourmet a private chef style business, which grew into Chef Elisa’s Catering. On her return to South Florida from Texas she also taught home cooking classes she named Power Cooking, 7 meals in 3 hours and she was featured in the Weston Gazette in 2001. 2003 and 204, Chef Elisa used her broadcast news skills to do several cooking segments in NBC 6. |
For the past seven years Chef Elisa has been a donating Celebrity Chef for the Ann Storck Center at the Hard Rock Seminole, Hollywood, Florida. Her private nutrition work has inspired her new company Wholesome Meal.
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Paul Kahan grew up in Arlington, Virginia and at an early age began cooking meals for his family. Through these early efforts in making simple scrambled eggs and perfecting his mother’s tuna salad recipe, Paul’s interest in the culinary arts was born. Paul graduated from Washington-Lee High School in 2004 and then majored in political science at Towson University earning a Bachelors Degree in 2008. During his time in college, Paul regularly cooked for his friends and roommates. He received positive feedback on his cooking and recipes from his friends and this encouragement plus watching the Food Network regularly inspired Paul to consider pursuing the culinary arts as a career. |
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In order to pursue this passion for cooking, Chef Paul enrolled at The International Culinary School at the Art Institute in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He understood that to become a successful chef he would have to master the fundamentals of cooking. His training at the Institute was complemented by work during school as a sauté chef at Smith and Jones owned by the renowned South Florida chef Johnny Vinczencz.
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Applying what he had learned at both the Institute and his work with Johnny Vinczencz, Paul grew as a restaurant chef but then expanded his repertoire by taking a job as a catering chef with Hugh’s Culinary. Paul began cooking for parties as large as four thousand guests and serving up to several dozen different menu items in a constrained amount of time. His passion for cooking blossomed and it became clear to him that cooking for the masses was both personally and professionally satisfying. Eight months and dozens of parties later, Chef Paul was introduced to Chef Elisa Eliot through a contact at The International Culinary School. |
While still working for Hugh’s, Paul worked several parties with Elisa and was extremely impressed with her work ethic and culinary talent.
He saw the opportunity and the potential to expand Chef Elisa’s existing catering and personal cooking business and to help develop her product line, which includes gluten free, organic, and vegan oriented wholesome foods.
Paul and Elisa immediately recognized the personal and professional synergies in joining forces, and thus a business partnership was formed. The goal of this exciting combination of talents is provide South Florida and ultimately the entire country with simple, sensible, and satisfying meals and foods.
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