Tell us about how you started Frank’s House.

Frank's House is my home away from home. Literally. It is also an event space built for food-forward gatherings, chef dinners, and the kind of evenings that feel more like someone's living room than a venue. The space is named after my father Frank, who bought this building in his 30s. When my husband and I took over the parlor floor, we had one goal: let the original details do the talking. We restored all the original walnut, opened up the kitchen, and created something that actually feels like a chef's space because it is. Frank's is my second act in the event space world. My first space was more of an exploratory toe dip, a chance to figure out what I was doing and what I wanted it to feel like. When that building sold, I was just hitting my stride. So I kept going. Same intimacy, same brownstone energy, more intention.

 

"Frank's exists as the antidote to all of that. A space where a chef can actually

 breathe, flex their skills, and cook for their guests in an environment that

 matches the quality of the food they are putting on the plate."

 

What do you love most about the enormous community of chefs you have built through Franks and your video series, Campers?

Gathering with love and intention sounds sappy until you have spent time in a professional kitchen. Harsh, hot, loud, and sometimes worse. Frank's exists as the antidote to all of that. A space where a chef can actually breathe, flex their skills, and cook for their guests in an environment that matches the quality of the food they are putting on the plate. The energy in the room when that alignment happens is something else entirely.

Campers is different but rooted in the same belief. It is my podcast, and it exists for one reason: chefs and food people deserve their flowers. Restaurants get the press. Famous names get the profiles. But there are kitchens all over this country filled with incredibly talented people doing remarkable work that nobody is writing about. Campers is for them. The horror stories, the mentors who changed everything, the obsessions, the craft. All of it. On the record.

Where did the name Campers come from?

Campers is an industry term. A camper is a guest who has, technically speaking, overstayed their welcome. The meal is done, the check has been presented, and somehow another bottle of wine has appeared. In Europe this is not just tolerated, it is encouraged. In America it is a coin flip depending on who is running the room.

The term stuck with me from my time on the line. Our POS system had a button labeled "camper" and every time I looked up at whatever table was flagged, the same thing was happening. Wine flowing, heads together, a conversation that clearly had no interest in ending. Nobody was ready to leave and nobody wanted them to. That is the image I kept coming back to when I started this podcast.

 

 

"That feeling of a table that has found its rhythm and just needs a little more time.

 That is what Campers is built around."

 

 

How did Campers come about? What is your process in deciding on who guest stars on your episodes? 

Campers is a marriage of the two things I have loved my entire life: food and people. I always assumed I was meant to cook and serve, that the kitchen was my permanent home. But the more I grow, the more I realize my relationship with food is bigger and more flexible than that. As long as I am orbiting around it in some form, I am exactly where I am supposed to be.

What Campers has given me is something I did not fully anticipate. Every guest brings a story, a process, a moment of kitchen chaos or profound mentorship that I walk away thinking about for days. It has filled me up in a way that is hard to explain unless you have experienced it.

There is no real formula for who comes on the show. Some guests I have been quietly fan-girling over for years, reaching out months in advance just hoping they say yes. And then there are the other ones, my favorites. A dinner somewhere, food so good it stops me mid-bite, and by the end of the meal I am asking to meet the chef. Those conversations, still buzzing from the food, still standing near the kitchen, are where some of the best episodes have started.

   

"I always assumed I was meant to cook and serve, that the kitchen was my

 permanent home. But the more I grow, the more I realize my relationship with food

is bigger and more flexible than that."

 

      

What has informed your lifelong interest in feeding the people around you?

Food. Gathering. The joy of putting the right people in the same room and letting a good meal do the rest. It is not something I had to figure out. It has always just been in me.

How does your neighborhood of Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, influence your life? What have you learned from the community?

Clinton Hill has been mine for a long time. I went to Pratt, which planted me here at 18, and I never really left. Nine years in Clinton Hill, three in Prospect Heights, then straight back. The neighborhood kept pulling me home.

There is something about walking these blocks, running them, sitting in them, eating in them, that has never gotten old. The community here is real in a way that is hard to articulate until you have lived it. I would love to say the neighborhood shaped me, but I think it is more of a give and take. I pour into this place because it deserves it, and in return it gives me something I can only describe as a Brooklyn storybook. Most days it still feels like that. It's now been 14 years of living here and I still pinch myself.

What’s on the horizon for you?

Motherhood has quietly opened up a new path for me, and I am following it. I have a two year old named Mars, and the way I think about food has completely expanded. I still feed myself and my clients, but now I am equally obsessed with what goes on her plate, how she responds to it, and how early I can introduce her to the full, delicious, overwhelming world of food.

That obsession led me somewhere I did not plan. Food and motherhood started blending together in my work the same way they blend together in my actual life, and out of that came Latching On. Three panels and a marketplace, all centered on mama and baby and feeding.

 

"Motherhood has quietly opened up a new path for me, and I am following it."