Photo credit for photos 1: Anne Constance Photography

Hometown: Long Valley

By Steve Sears

When you speak to personal chef Natalie Lewis, you can tell – perhaps live, even – the beauty and satisfaction of her career.

It’s in her description of the food itself, the process of preparation, how it all started for her and has evolved into what her career is now. 

She describes the end result succinctly in one paragraph. “I love to be able to give,” she very happily says. “I think that’s probably one of my love languages: to give to other people and to make them happy. And I think, at the end of the day, that is what really fulfills me and my career in terms of creating something that is artistic and beautiful and fresh, and I put my all into it, and somebody at the end of the day can sit down and it makes them happy. I find fulfillment in that. And it’s just so true, you have to be passionate in this field.”

What Lewis, a personal chef of 14 years who has lived in Long Valley for about 6 years, unveils for her clients is the world of her unique, innovative cuisine. For some she goes into their homes and prepares their meals for the week, packing up the food, labeling it, and leaving it in the refrigerator with the heating instructions for them to repeat for the 7 days. For others, she does a little bit more of what is called private cheffing, where she prepares the food and sends it to them hot, on the spot, ready to eat.

Lewis has traveled extensively, buttressing her knowledge of food, educating herself in many cultures and cuisines. A Le Cordon Blue of Paris graduate in French Cuisine, Lewis didn’t want the knowledge and training to stop there. There was much more to discover, and she has much fortified her skills.

Lewis, who grew up in Ohio with three sisters – Jami, Courtney, and Sarah – had a very humble upbringing. “My family, they were all religious, and it was a very small country town outside of Cincinnati that nobody knows,” she says with a laugh. “My childhood was easy and quiet.” 

She and the world of cuisine both embraced each other at an early age. “I love the way that food is able to bring people together in a happy way and in a better way,” she says, “and I feel like nothing else is able to do it in the way the food can do it.”

It all started at home. She credits her dad (Keith) with the inspiration to become a chef. “My dad never cooked

professionally – he was working full time, and my mom (Beth) was home – but when he was off from work, he would cook for fun. He was the one that was always really very creative with food and coming up with very creative meals and things like that. So, he was a big influence on me in terms of wanting to pursue food.” Her father was a painter as well, and this encouraged his daughter in the artistic, creative side of culinary life, which ultimately has “fed” her career well. Lewis’s loving to eat (especially different types of foods) also played a role, perhaps a more prominent one according to her. “That really more so was my motivation to pursue cooking. I just loved to eat the food, and I would love to eat growing up and explore different cuisines. When I was younger, I had a friend who was Japanese, and they would take us to this one little Japanese restaurant that was within a several mile-radius, and I would eat the Miso soup, and they would introduce me to all of these really traditional Japanese foods. So even kind of tasting that and loving that and thinking like, ‘Wow! This is incredible, so different than just the normal family dinner!’ was what really inspired me from a young age to kind of want to explore different cuisines and try out different types of foods.”

Traveling was very important for her. “It was wanting to explore other cultures and the way other cultures ate,” she says. “When I was growing up, I was fortunate enough to travel to places out of the country. I went to Peru, I went to Japan, even before I went to college. I think that’s always been another passion of mine: to travel and to embrace other ways of life,” she says. “There’s so many cultures and food and things I’ve never heard of. I would love to continue to explore and I think being able to see how other people eat and how other people prepare things and what’s important to them and their cultures, it really expands not only your knowledge but your palate.” And all of the before-mentioned set her eyes on studying abroad. She had looked at schools in the United States which, in her words, “were great schools, but I just got excited about doing it in a different country, and there was the kind of cultural aspect of it as well. So that’s how I ended up in France.”

When in culinary school, she and her classmates would take trips to the market and pick out different types of ingredients to try in various dishes. “It changes your whole viewpoint on how you want to cook,” Lewis says, “and what you want to serve to people, and you want them to experience them in the same way. You tried something new and that excited you, and you want to excite them in the same way.”

Lewis, 38, in 2002 graduated from Le Cordon Bleu in Paris with a diploma in French cuisine, and some of her stops afterwards as a chef have included Jag’s Steak & Seafood House in Cincinnati, and in Charleston, South Carolina she worked for smaller eateries, a country club, and a catering company, as well as the coastal Old Village Post House tavern and inn, and then her next-to-final trek was to Napa Valley. 

But now she’s in Morris County, Lewis dealing with and cooking for the community. “I definitely have worked with a lot of local farms,” she says, “and I work with a local butcher by me that is excellent. I know exactly where the food is coming from. The same with the fishmonger; I have a trusted fishmonger that I work with.” And Lewis also takes advantage of the fertile Long Valley soil, she herself sowing and harvesting. “In terms of growing my own, occasionally I will grow in the summer things like small potted herbs, and I love growing like micro greens or things like edible flowers that I’ll use for garnishes.”

Lewis also has teamed up with best friend and photographer, Annie Herrmann, to form the chef\food styling photography team called FishEye Design (www.fish-eye-design.com). She explains. “Annie is my best friend,” Lewis says, “and starting several years ago she would take photographs for me and my personal chef website and portfolio. There’s a huge market for food photography and food styling in the area, and we just continue to do more and more, and now we have a food photography studio that we actually work out of.”

Lewis, who is married to her husband, Grant, for 10 years, and is a mom to two daughters, Ella and Hadley, says there is one dish that she loves to make that gets received overwhelmingly. “I would have to say there’s a duck breast recipe that I make often, and I’ll make that duck breast with a Bourbon honey glaze. My clients always love it, and it’s one of my favorites, too. So it’s a little bit of comfort, but it also is lighter and fresh and not as heavy.”

For Lewis, whose clients include Eli Manning and his wife, Abby, and their family, being a personal chef is advantageous to toiling daily in a restaurant. “There’s something about professional cheffing that’s different than the restaurant, in the sense that oftentimes I’m not making the same thing twice too often. For the most part, I’m always just getting whatever is available fresh and what I’m inspired by, which is a nice part of that as opposed to being in the restaurant where you’re kind of making the same thing over and over again.” 

The most rewarding part of Natalie Lewis’s life? The creation of something memorable.  “I feel like you can leave a lasting impression on somebody. And you know, I’ve had meals where I think that I still remember everything about it and everything that was on my plate. So, if you’re able to accomplish that, then I think that you’ve succeeded at your job.”

For more information about Chef Natalie Lewis, visit her website at www.chefnatalielewis.com.