A Conversation with Personal Chef Jillian Fae

Welcome to the Chefs Without Restaurants podcast. I'm your host Chris Spear. On the show. I have conversations with culinary entrepreneurs and people in the food and beverage industry who took a different route. They're caterers, research chefs, personal chefs, cookbook authors, food truckers, farmers, cottage bakers and all sorts of culinary renegades. I my cell phone to the personal chef category as I started my own personal chef business perfect little bites 10 years ago. And while I started working in kitchens in the early 90s, I've literally never worked in a restaurant unless you count Boston Market. This is one of our meetup member episodes. These episodes are meant to highlight someone in the Chefs Without Restaurants community. Instead of a long form interview, we'll be doing a quick 10 to 15 minute show to learn about them and their business. And I throw a bunch of fun, sometimes wacky, rapid fire questions their way. This week. I have chef Jillian Fae. Her business is Jillian Fae Chef Services, which is based in Temecula, California. And a reminder that you can help support our podcast and the Chefs Without Restaurants community by donating through our Patreon. Monthly support starts at just $5 a month, go to patreon.com forward slash Chefs Without Restaurants to find exclusive recipes and see our tiered rewards. And now on with the show. Thanks so much and have a great week. Hey, Julian, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for coming on. Of course, happy to be here. So I have to say your food looks amazing. Like the food I see you posting on Instagram. I think I want to eat more than anyone else's food. It just looks phenomenal.

Thank you, thank you. I just tried to make it look as good as I possibly can with and I just use my phone camera for everything but just little tweaks here and there just to make it look appetizing.

I think that's one of the hard things. I was like getting into the whole food media and like shooting your own food, but you're doing a fantastic job. So it's working. Hopefully it's working as far as getting customers to book you for services.

Yeah, I think so. I didn't even ask people specifically say I found you on Instagram and therefore this looks great. Then we go from there. So

let's jump right in. Where are you located and what's your business?

So I am located out of Temecula, California. That is a like little Southern California Wine Country. It's about an hour north a little bit inland from San Diego. But I service everywhere from San Diego to LA areas depending on the size of the event and whatnot. And I just go by Jillian Fae Chef Services, and I offer all kinds of different event service.

For how many people

any size as long as there's a kitchen on site that is available for use. I consider all all events

so you do you'll do like a big 100 person wedding.

I will but typically I don't do you like large format buffets. I'll go as far as do like family style where you know nice big platters are being passed around through like multiple tables or whatnot. For plated plated is what what I enjoy and love the most but I'd say about 100 is good. my wheelhouse is probably about 30 people. I think that dinners for people for private dinners for too.

Yeah, me too. I really like that the it's a very different vibe than doing the cattle call of running everyone through a buffet line.

Right, right, right. When you're preparing everything fresh on site, that large format, buffets, style, it's more of like, up to large, large catering companies then one singular chef.

Yeah, most definitely pass those off to people. Well, what what's your cooking style and where do you find inspiration?

I am classically trained. So I've got the French technique, base. And then I also really inspired by travel most there's a lot of Mediterranean influence in my food, Spanish, Italian, that Greek are probably the three most. And then I'm also born and raised in Southern California. So if someone ever wants a Mexican inspired video, I'm 100%. Yes, that's right in my wheelhouse as well. So that's the thing with what we do, I think is that it can vary a lot. And like being able to be versatile.

Do you have kind of set menus for people to look at ahead of time? Or do you do more of a customized gig?

So I have like a sample menu, and then specific themed menus, that I can send people a couple on my website. But for the most part, I really tried the first thing I asked him a list of questions, you know, what do you enjoy eating? Do you like to travel? Is there any like types of cuisine that you enjoy? And then like, and obviously, What don't you like?

I don't think people think about what they don't like. That's one of the things I get into people tell me what they like they say they don't like anything, or that there's nothing they don't like. And then you send them a menu. And then they really think about like, Oh, I guess I forgot I told you I don't eat mushrooms. And I don't eat eggplant and I don't like Rob bell peppers. And it's, you know, it's really interesting.

It's hilarious, because it happens so much. But I don't like that it's really difficult for people who, especially people that don't think about food 100% 24 seven, like we most of us do. It's hard for them off the top of their head to be to think about those things. So it just does make me laugh because it happens all the time. And those are like the staples. So I don't like broccoli, mushrooms, eggplant.

Well, what's something you wish you knew before starting your business?

I kind of wish I would have grasped the advertising part of it a little bit more and how important social media was to the business, especially with a food based business. Everything is so visual. I think that that is really important. The importance of like your website took me a really long time to put my face on things as well. And now I've kind of embraced that been okay with it. I'm like, Alright, this is like going into people's homes or doing people's small weddings like I should probably show them who I am as well.

So how long have you been doing this now?

I'm going on about 11 years. Yeah, I started in my hometown. I'm from Orange County. And then about seven years ago, I moved out to Temecula. And it was probably the best move that I could have made because it's a wine country. There's Airbnb rental estates, like small weddings all the time. It's just been great. Event wise for me.

Did you started as a side hustle? Or were you like all in from the beginning,

I used to work for 10 years, I worked in a golf club, manufacturer, a golf club, manufacturing company, and research and development. And while I was there, I went back to school, I always have known that I wanted to cook for a living. Like my main goal was one day, people will pay me to cook for them. And so it's a simple goal. But it was easy to like set small goals forward from there. So yeah, from the side, it was a side hustle. And I started mostly with personal meal plans. But I from the beginning, I just knew that I wanted to do events. But it was a nice little stepping so that I use and I still do have some very loyal personal meal plan clients that I still look for on a weekly basis.

Yeah, I never got into that the meal plan thing was not something I wanted to do. I just do events, and I love it.

And that was my, my plan. And it still is my plan to eventually drop. I first need them their kids getting into college, and then that's when I'll stop, you know. And I it was happening a lot faster until the last year hit. And then I was like, well, I only have those personal plans. So let's hold on to those. I became very valuable to them too. At that point. I believe going out there and shopping and securing ingredients and stuff.

Do you have a favorite cookbook? Oh, no. No. Do you have any that you love? Are you a cookbook reader or not at all.

I do love cookbooks. I'm not much of a baker. So with the one brave chart came out I snatched that up right away because recipes I don't really I work off of technique and knowledge more than recipes, but I always need baking recipes obviously. So that one was a newer one that I liked. I had a Thomas, the French Laundry cookbook, Busan and now I have French Laundry per se that just gives me inspiration for little techniques and things that I can do for more elevated like fine dining. experiences, but it's across the board. I mean, I love dog currents, pickles, pigs and whiskey. I believe it's called. Yeah, yep, I have that one. Yeah, I have a wide array because you never know when someone you know, when you want might want to do a southern thing with you?

Oh, absolutely. If there's anyone you could start with for a day, who would that be?

A good question. I guess it would have to be in this probably a boring answer, but it would probably have to be Thomas Keller, just being from California. And just looking after that.

Boring. I mean, he's, he's iconic, right? Like, who wouldn't want to do that? You don't have to pick some like cutting edge new shaft. I mean, I think we could all learn from Thomas Keller and that would be an amazing experience.

Another one is I'm really, really huge. Anthony Bourdain fan. However, he didn't really consider himself as a as a chef, especially towards the end. I mean, as the toward the end, he was like, Well, I'm no longer you know, a chef, but he's the one and I know, I'm not alone here again. That just like inspired me to travel, like based on food. So I guess maybe he'd be a better travel buddy at that.

Oh, that'd be amazing. I loved when he had the cooks tour show on Food Network, like, almost 20 years ago. Like That was fantastic. And, you know, that was the first time I'd seen a lot of those places, even on TV as far as like the food goes. So yeah, definitely inspiring.

Yeah, definitely inspired a lot of places that I visited. Even here in the state,

where your Instagram bio says you're a punk rock lover. So who are you listening to?

My favorite band band is no fix. I'm kind of more of a there's probably a lot of punk rock listeners that, you know, might roll their eyes that kind of more of a little bit more mainstream Bad Religion.

The descendents I was supposed to see Bad Religion with alkaline trio this past year. And it's one of the shows that got next due to COVID I think I had five shows I was going to see Bikini Kill was one of them. And I had all these shows I was super excited to go to and now I just have ticket stubs for shows that never happened that hopefully are going to make it back on the roster. But nothing I wanted to go to has been rescheduled yet. So

Oh, really? So are you Big Bad Religion fan? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. They just released the book.

Oh, really? I didn't know that. Have to check that out. Do what you want. called. Very cool. Yeah, I'm always I'm always down to read stuff, like and I find. I find music so inspiring as well. I think, you know, being in the culinary field. It's an arts thing. And I draw inspiration from music and art and all kinds of things like that. So I'm always listening to music when I'm cooking. Like, if, if I'm not in like a customer's house, if I'm cooking somewhere else, it's hard to like, listen to some punk when I'm cooking in a customer's home.

I work with the same people a lot of times, they'll almost always ask me, Hey, you want some music? And they're like, what do you like? I like all kinds of music. I'm also very like, open so about like your eyes. Just punk rock is a genre that I like, kind of lean toward a lot, especially like live shows. But my servers are my kitchen helpful. Kind of snicker because they know I won't answer them correctly. Because I'm not gonna make them play. No effect. You know what I mean? It's just not something that like they're gonna hear, like some of the lyrics and it was like, but yeah, I definitely if I'm having like, if I'm alone or cooking in my kitchen, there's always music.

Me too. I've worked in some places where they had like a no music in the kitchen policy. And I'm just not like not down with that. I just, I can't work in a quiet kitchen. I'm sure Thomas Keller's kitchens. A no radio kitchen. Yeah, I would assume so. Definitely. Well, you can only have one pizza or tacos. What's it gonna be? tacos? Yeah, me too. I think I don't know.

I mean, if I'm home tacos if I'm in Italy, pizza. Okay, sure. Maybe? I don't know New York has some pretty good tacos, too. So that one's hard. But I said tacos, so I have to own it.

If you had to describe yourself as a flavor, what would that be? Hold? I mean, definitely not. Definitely not bitter. You mean like one of the five. Take it however you want. It could be a specific flavor, like a strawberry flavor. Or it could be like salty. Yeah, you like a spicy pickle? so spicy pickle or bold? Well, I mean, bold is good. I say I like cooking big bold flavors.

Yeah, but like that could literally mean any like that fold in such a way that it uses a lot of sites or is it bold in such a way that it's a whole lot of, you know, delicious beef that.

So you're gonna think about this tonight. You're gonna think about I know. Well, what's a great place to find you and your business online? Where can we send people?

My website is the easiest way. The contact form is right there. It's Jillianfae.com. And then I have most active on Instagram.

awesome. We'll put that in the show notes and send people your way. And hopefully they will hire you to cook them some delicious food. Thanks so much for coming on the show. I'm really glad you did this. I hope you had a good time.

Of course I did. Thank you

Thanks to all of our Chefs Without Restaurants listeners. As always, you can find us at Chefs Without Restaurants com and .org, and on all social media platforms. Thanks so much, and have a great day. Thanks for listening to the Chefs Without Restaurants podcast. And if you're interested in being a guest on the show, or sponsoring the show, please let us know. We can be reached at ChefsWithoutRestaurants@gmail.com Thanks so much.