COOKS' ALLIANCE
The Slow Food Cooks’ Alliance is a network uniting cooks across the country to support local producers, influence policy and awaken eaters to the rich food cultures and biodiversity of our planet.
Cooks’ Alliance members continually strive to implement the values of Slow Food in their restaurant or establishment by procuring and highlighting Ark of Taste ingredients on menus, cooking for chapter events and focusing on the ethical and environmentally friendly practices in their restaurants.
We learn from and support each other in transforming and leveraging their kitchens and menus to change the food system for the better. The Cooks’ Alliance engages diners, producers, and restaurateurs in the Slow Food USA network.
Join the Cooks' Alliance.
Make the commitment to cook good, clean and fair food in your kitchen. Applications are accepted on a rolling basis and reviewed seasonally.
Connect
To give cooks an opportunity to learn from each other and support each other to change their workplace and food system for the better.
Support
To strengthen direct relationships between producers and cooks, with the result of collaboration, friendship, and solidarity.
Network
To develop the Slow Food network by bringing diners, producers, and restaurateurs into the network.
Engage
To support Slow Food events and campaigns locally, regionally, nationally, and globally.
If you have questions, comments or ideas about the Slow Food USA Cooks’ Alliance, please contact us!
The Slow Food USA Cooks' Alliance
To scroll through this directory of Cooks’ Alliance members,
hover your cursor over friendly faces you see and scroll!
The Slow Food USA Cooks' Alliance LEADERSHIP Committee
The Cooks’ Alliance Leadership Committee is a group of chefs, cooks, restaurateurs, mixologists and small business owners focused on building up and engaging the Slow Food Cooks’ Alliance in the USA.
“I believe that food should taste like food, be sustainable and accessible to all people, regardless of race or gender. I have used my platform as a chef, culinary educator and cookbook author to share my cooking style and philosophy with those beliefs strongly represented.”
— Jennifer Hill Booker, Bauhaus Biergarten and Hour Resident Gourmet
“I’ve been a Slow Food member for many years. We believe in supporting the community, the environment, and the local food system.”
— Kurt D’Aurizio, Bella’s Bakehouse, Asheville, NC
Dynamic and outspoken Michelin Star chef Drew Deckman continually strives to run a zero kilometer, sustainable community based restaurant with a kitchen that is completely outside and is solely fueled by wood and natural elements, and where the majority of ingredients come from the ranch or nearby sea.
His food is a combination of intricately composed plates and rustic elegant dishes. The guiding force of chef Drew is sustainability. At his restaurant, he is 100 percent committed to the advancement of responsible and renewable local farming, fishing and ranching – from planting, harvesting, transporting, preparing and recycling.
Deckman earned his culinary skills under Gastro-master chef Paul Bocuse and Jacques Maximin, and mentoring by star teacher and author Madeleine Kamman.
He has been a chef throughout Europe and earned a Michelín Star in Reinstorf, Germany. 12 years ago, Deckman chose a large pine tree in the middle of a ranch and vineyard, in a remote valley in Baja California, Mexico to put down his roots raising a beautiful family.
In 2022 Deckman’s in El Mogor participates in the list of 50 Best LATAM. “Past and future”.
Fernando Divina is managing partner of divinAmerica, llc whose mission is to cultivate the foodway and lifeway of the Americas. Divina is an award-winning author, restaurateur, grocer, chef and consultant. He founded and conceptualized several acclaimed restaurants and hospitality businesses based on local procurement and the tenets of biodiversity and fairness.
Divina co-authored the internationally celebrated cookbook, Foods of the Americas: Native Recipes and Traditions (Ten Speed Pr., 2004), produced in association with the Smithsonian Institution, which received the James Beard Foundation Award for Excellence. Divina was nominated for the 2000 Slow Food Award for his work to advance and include the indigenous foods and cuisines of the Americas. Divina practices his craft, forages for food and plants his seed among the alluvial soils and forests of the Cascadia Region.
Kären Jurgensen is the lead Chef Instructor and founder of sustainability curriculum at Seattle Culinary Academy, where she received the “Lifetime Learner Award” in 2018. Kären has been a member of Slow Food since 1997, sits on the board of The Good Meat Project, is the Global Initiatives chair for Les Dames de Escoffier, and a member of numerous professional organizations.
Kären was the founding president of the Seattle chapter of Chefs Collaborative, and honored with their National Sustainer Award in 2012. Alice Water’s Edible Schoolyard Project named her an “edible education hero” in October 2012.
Summers find Kären at Quillisascut Cheese Company’s Farm School teaching farm to table immersion courses and philosophy to professional chefs, culinary students and agricultural professionals. She is the co-author of Rethinking the Kitchen: the sustainable kitchen handbook and Chefs on the Farm cookbook.
