Since she was young, her family could create magic on the dinner table from paltry ingredients. The biggest feast was on Thanksgiving, when all her family gathered and shared their best dishes. That tradition continued even when she grew up and moved away from home, as she would spend hours on the phone with her mother to discuss their menus and recipes.

Fast forward to current times, Chef VanTrece is still working on menus and recipes—only now they are in the context of a restaurant group. For her, it is an exercise to balance her sensibility and creativity. She follows some basic rules, such as seasonality, ingredient combination, pricing, and needs of various diets such as vegans, vegetarians, pescatarians, gluten-free, and others for an inclusive menu. After that, “comes the time for fun. This is when I really get to utilize all my knowledge from living, traveling, and reading to create something a little different but still familiar,” she says. “This is how I put a little of myself and my story in each dish.”

Having been trained in classical French cooking techniques, she could have focused on any cuisine. However, she decided to focus on the dishes at the heart of her upbringing. As she traveled to different places, she also realized that the soul of a country is defined by the soul of its cuisine. With that in mind, she wants to celebrate the food that tells those age-old stories.