About Us
Chef Mary Ellen graduated at the top of her class with high honors from the “Le Cordon Bleu” program of the California School of Culinary Arts. She performed her internship at Los Angeles Times Food Section.
After culinary school Chef Mary Ellen started Personal Touch Gourmet, a boutique catering company specializing in small intimate parties. Along with catering requests, Chef Mary Ellen was asked to teach at cooking parties. This developed into teaching classes around the South Bay and Los Angeles.
Several years later a call from the Los Angeles Times beckoned her back into the test kitchen with the position of “recipe tester.” Her duties included sourcing, shopping, preparing, testing and editing the recipes published in the weekly Food Section. Over the course of her tenure, Chef Mary Ellen had the opportunity to write articles and develop many of her own recipes for publication, several winning “Top Ten Recipe of the Year Awards.”
In 2007, Chef Mary Ellen left the Times and expanded Personal Touch Gourmet services to include freelance recipe testing and food writing.
Look for her monthly column “Kitchen Tips for Recipe Success” in the South Bay’s “The Beach Reporter.”
