I’ve spent most of my life in kitchens, but today my work looks a little different. As a chef working in performance nutrition for professional athletes, no two days ever look the same.
I’ve been in kitchens since I was a teenager and running them since my 20s. Over the years, I’ve worked in fine dining, island resorts, catering, teaching cooking classes, you name it. One of the coolest things about working in food is how many different directions your career can take if you stay curious.
Today, my work sits at the intersection of food, performance, and applied nutrition, but it didn’t start there. Like most careers in the kitchen, it evolved one experience at a time.
A Career Built on Curiosity in the Kitchen
Before performance nutrition was even on my radar, I was focused on mastering the fundamentals: technique, sourcing, and the rhythm of a professional kitchen. Fine dining taught me precision. Resorts taught me scale. Catering and teaching reminded me that food is ultimately about people.
Looking back, every one of those experiences laid the groundwork for where I would eventually land, even though I couldn’t see it at the time.
One of the best parts about working in food is that there’s rarely a straight line. If you stay open to learning, the path expands in ways you don’t expect.
The Moment Everything Changed
The moment that truly shifted my career happened in 2013, the first time I cooked for a professional sports team, the Washington Capitals.
I remember standing there and having this huge lightbulb moment: I was the bridge between the hard work of farmers, ranchers, and fishermen and the performance of athletes on the ice.
I couldn’t think of a cooler place to be than between the farm and the field. Or in this case, the farm and the ice.
That’s when I fell in love with performance nutrition, even though I didn’t yet have a name for it. It’s also what eventually led us to start SuperFd Performance Nutrition in 2015.
What Performance Nutrition for Athletes Really Looks Like Behind the Scenes
When people hear “performance nutrition,” they often think about strict diets or trends. In reality, it’s about understanding how ingredients, timing, and preparation support recovery, focus, and long-term performance over a season.
When I started feeding professional athletes, I wasn’t just cooking. I was working elbow to elbow with strength coaches, sports dietitians, athletic trainers, and team doctors, all of us focused on one goal: raising the level of performance for the athletes we served.
For someone who had spent decades in kitchens, that collaboration was electric.
I always joke, “I’m just here to scramble the eggs,” but the truth is that food was playing a critical role in supporting some of the best athletes in the world. Being part of a multidisciplinary team, all rowing in the same direction, changed how I saw the role of a chef entirely.
When Personal Health Changes Your Cooking Philosophy
A few years earlier, I had started dealing with my own gut issues: gluten, yeast, digestive problems. It forced me to really study ingredients and understand what food was doing inside my body.
That personal curiosity turned into a deeper understanding of nutrition. It also prepared me to have better conversations with the registered dietitians and medical staff I would soon be working alongside.
Instead of thinking only about flavor or presentation, I began looking at food through the lens of function and structure, asking how each ingredient contributed to how someone felt and performed.
From Sports Performance to Culinary Medicine
More than a decade later, I’m still feeding professional athletes like the LA Kings. Still coordinating with sports dietitians. Still putting food on planes and into arenas. Still learning.
Recently, I’ve been studying under Michael Fenster, MD, and diving deeper into the field of culinary medicine. His perspective on food as information resonates deeply with me because my entire career has been rooted in applied food science, using the chemistry and structure of food to produce better outcomes.
Culinary medicine gives me a new lens to view the work I’ve been doing all along, connecting the art of cooking with the science of health and performance.
Still Learning, Still Feeding, Still Growing
What excites me most today is continuing to grow and helping raise the level of the people around me while I do it.
No two days ever look the same. Some start in a kitchen, some on a plane, some in conversations with athletes, doctors, or farmers. But the purpose stays consistent: using food to support performance, connection, and long-term well-being.
That’s what gets me out of bed every morning. That’s what fuels SuperFd.
Interested in how this philosophy comes to life?
Discover how SuperFd supports elite athletes through performance-focused food.