JAMIE DOLAN
Owner, Chef & Planner
Chef Jamie specializes in healthy, seasonal and organic food inspired by the wild & magnificent bounty of Big Sur and Monterey County. Creating menus that are inspired by ingredients foraged in the wilds of Big Sur, grown on her Big Sur homestead or from the organic farm in neighboring Carmel, Serendipity Farms. She is seriously passionate about sustainable foods and especially eating organic using only grass fed meats and wild fish in season. She maintains a “Zero Waste” standard at every event she organizes, saving all food scraps by either composting them in her garden or feeding them to her chickens and ducks.
BACKGROUND
Following her training in Culinary Arts at the French Culinary Institute in NYC, Chef Jamie has worked in a variety of restaurants in New York and in California. Her work as head pastry chef for California’s Bay Area #1 Zagat rated Hotel Restaurant, Sierra Mar at the Post Ranch Inn, for 5 years, helped her to develop an extensive knowledge of pastry arts and wedding cake design. She attended San Francisco Baking Institute’s Custom Wedding Cake course. She discovered her love for catering when she began working with a local band promoter. Cooking for the musicians backstage and on tour in venues all across the state of California, Chef Jamie learned the fun way how to improvise to create a stellar meal to the stars by embracing seasonal, local, fresh produce. She then started doing weddings and fell in love with the planning process and cooking for such festive events such as weddings.
She has catered, planned and managed weddings, private parties, music festivals throughout Big Sur and up and down the coast of California. Joanna Newsom and Andy Samberg, Arcade Fire, Cat Power, Will Oldham, Fleet Foxes, Band of Horses, Bright Eyes, Silver Jews, Pegi Young, Gillian Welch, Jon Paul Jones and The Beach Boys are just a few of her notable clients.
Giving Back
In her spare time, Chef Jamie is also a certified ROP school teacher in Monterey County for Culinary Arts. She single handedly spearheaded a new ROP Culinary Arts class at Seaside High School, focusing on local, seasonal produce from the area’s rich farmlands. She also enjoys teaching occasional classes for elementary students throughout Monterey County the importance of eating healthy fruits and vegetables and how to cook a “4 course meal”, through a program called Project Helping Hands.
“Jarrard’s success is more directly the result of everything she taught herself, spending years learning French technique and recipes from classic cookbooks. She figured out at an early age how to create dessert menus inspired by embracing the seasonal and fresh produce from local growers, home gardens and farmers markets.”
