About
Hi! I’m Kat Phipps, a Portland, Oregon based food and travel writer and photographer. I grew up in the Pacific northwest surrounded by amazing farms and vineyards throughout the Willamette Valley. I often picked fruits and vegetables at these farms for use in my recipes and in the dishes I made as a private chef and caterer. I also spent several years working as a tour guide, taking visitors to some of the best restaurants in the Pacific northwest. It was through these experiences that I developed a passion for discovering restaurants that use locally sourced ingredients, which I seek to highlight on my blog.
Over the years I found myself recreating many of the dishes I had on my travels back in my home kitchen, cooking my way through hundreds of recipes, honing my skills as a recipe developer, food stylist and photographer. I also wrote down stories about those dishes and what inspired me to make them, which I’ll be sharing on my blog as well.
On my blog you’ll also find that I have a serious love for tea and spend a lot of time on my journeys exploring tearooms all over the world. Last year I visited some of the top tearooms in the U.K. and in New York City. I had the opportunity to interact with many wonderful people at these tearooms, including servers, chefs and other guests, which really made for a memorable experience.
Though much of my travel revolves around food, I also spend a lot of time visiting places of historical importance and finding fun activities to do as well. Whether it is a “Meal of a Lifetime” experience at a 500 hundred year old olive mill in Southern Italy or a decadent afternoon tea at the Dorchester Hotel in London, I love exploring new countries, discovering new food traditions and meeting new people. It’s through these connections with people that I gain the most satisfaction from my travels.
Whether I’m sharing my own recipes or my experiences dining at restaurants at home or abroad, I love introducing people to unique cuisines that they may not yet know about. I also love putting my travel planning skills to use by creating travel guides on my blog that will hopefully inspire you to travel to some place new.
I look forward to sharing with you my journeys abroad and my fabulous food discoveries, and also to sharing some stories of the remarkable people I meet along the way. I hope you’ll join me as I explore the world and its colorful menagerie of food, people and culture.
I started my first job as a private chef when I was just fourteen years old, preparing food for a friend’s family once a week after school.
I speak fluent Japanese, having studied it in high school and majored in it in college.
I worked as a tour guide for three years in college, taking exchange students from all over the world to fun places throughout the Pacific northwest.
I spent two years teaching English in Japan, one year in Kanazawa and the second year in Tokyo. I also studied Japanese cooking and tea ceremony while there and spent time exploring the restaurants where I lived.
I spent three weeks backpacking in Thailand, from Northern Thailand to the southern islands, creating my own travel itinerary for the trip.
In 2009 I started baking business, baking thousands of cakes for weddings and other events.
In 2011 I started a catering business where I worked as a private chef and also taught cooking classes.
In 2015, inspired by the eclectic cuisine of one of my favorite chefs, Yotam Ottolenghi, I started cooking, styling and photographing different dishes, testing hundreds of recipes and creating a portfolio of my own food photography.
In 2016 I went on a two-week trip to Italy, creating a special travel itinerary from Rome down to the “Heel of the Boot.” I visited some of the best restaurants in Southern Italy where I interviewed the chefs and learned about the history of Italian cuisine, specifically the “Cucina Povera” of Puglia.
In the spring of 2019 I traveled to the U.K., fulfilling my long held dream of visiting tearooms from London up to the Scottish highlands, taking hundreds of photos and writing reviews which I will use to create a guide to tearooms in the U.K. on my blog.
In the summer of 2019 I took a trip to New York City to explore the city’s tea shops, breakfast places and Italian restaurants.
One of my dreams for the future is to travel around the coastline of the U.K., visiting tearooms and farm to table restaurants.
I’d like to use my talents for entertaining and connecting with people to start a YouTube channel where I will interview chefs, artisans and locals around the world about food in a fun and entertaining way, really diving into the history, food and culture of a destination.