Today we’d like to introduce you to Isabella Gambuto.
Isabella, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I was born and raised in my father’s Italian restaurant in New York City. I kind of fell into the business after graduating college in 2009 during the last once in a lifetime recession and finding a barren job market. I quickly fell in love with the restaurant industry and took over the family business when we moved locations in 2011. I was just 24 years old, running a busy restaurant in Times Square with over two dozen employees. I had no idea what I was doing and had to pretty much teach myself as I went how to run a modern restaurant. After less than four years, I was diagnosed with endometriosis, a uterine disease that causes chronic pain and infertility. After receiving excision surgery, I was inspired by my doctor to change my diet to help manage my health and future fertility.
I transitioned to an anti-inflammatory diet and it changed my life – I realized I could manage my pain and wanted to help other people do the same. My father and I sold the restaurant in 2018 and I went to culinary school in Berkeley that focused on nutrition and eating for health. I started my catering in meal prepping business in NYC in 2019 and moved all my operations to Los Angeles this past March. I am currently focused on meal prep delivery where I create tailor made menus for my clients based on their individual tastes and dietary preferences. Beyond that, I share healthy, often anti-inflammatory recipes on my website and social media and hope to one day write a cookbook!
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
There are always obstacles in running your own business. Getting started and finding clients is always a huge hurdle to get over. But I found sharing my work on social media has lead to potential clients and new business. If people see what you’re doing and they like what they see, they are much more likely to want to work with you. And of course, the current pandemic has been a big hit to business. Before the pandemic, I had a similar meal prep business where I cooked in my client’s homes. I also had a catering portion of my business, where I would cater small events as well as create elaborate grazing boards, sometimes up to 6 feet long, for events of all sizes. Catering was a great boon to my business, especially when I got to work with corporate clients, as it paid very well and allowed me to network! Alas, many of the smaller and corporate events I used to do are no longer happening.
And grazing boards of shared foods are definitely not Covid friendly! But you adjust, you have to! I transitioned my meal prep business into a no contact delivery service – this way I can still work directly with clients without having to expose myself or my clients to anything. I have put events on hold for now and that’s okay! I’m using this extra time to work on some passion projects I’ve been wanting to do for years. I have upped my Instagram presence, sharing more recipes and kitchen tips; I’m working with a local LA design studio, Silk, to do a big rebrand; I’m also working on launching a Youtube channel and writing a cookbook proposal.
We’d love to hear more about your work and what you are currently focused on. What else should we know?
I am a Certified Natural Chef, which means I have been trained not only in the classic culinary arts but also how to cook for people with specific illnesses and dietary restrictions. My meal prep delivery service caters to people with chronic illnesses and/or serious dietary restrictions. My clients love food but find it difficult to navigate their new normal so that’s where I come in! I like to say I make delicious food that just happens to be good for you! I take my client’s individual needs and wants into account and create custom menus delivered to their door each week! I know a lot of chefs turn their noses up at dietary restrictions but I find it to be a really fun creative challenge. Some of my clients are vegan, some are paleo, some count macros but they all want to eat for their ideal health and I am here to help them!
What sets me apart from other meal delivery services is everything I prepare is tailor made for my client’s individual needs and tastes. I am not sharing a weekly menu that my clients can pick and choose from. Instead, when I first start working with a client, I find out not only what their dietary restrictions are but what their preferences are! What foods they crave, including dishes that may not be considered healthy. Then I send weekly customized menus to each clients, which they can tweak any way they want, my aim is to please! Most other meal delivery services only offer a small menu each week for customers to choose from and do not offer substitutions. I also only use organic produce, grass fed and sustainably raised meat, dairy, fish and poultry.
What is your best childhood memory?
When I was a kid, I loved visiting my Grandmother in Florida. My grandmother is British and has had four children in four different countries on three different continents! She is a writer and former gallery owner who has traveled the world. As a child, her home felt more like a museum than a condo in Bradenton, the walls full of her incredible art collection and display cases packed with treasures from all over the world we were actually allowed to touch! When we were very young, she would take us to Ana Maria Island, a barrier island with beautiful white sand beaches, to search for sand dollars and shells. But my favorite thing was to “hunt” for coquinas. Coquinas are tiny clams, about the size of your pinky nails, that live just under the shoreline where the waves hit the sand.
To find them all you do is sit at the shoreline and dig shallow holes, within seconds dozens of tiny coquinas will poke out of the sand and you quickly pluck them up! It was exhilarating and ridiculously easy. We would always go hunting coquinas with the goal to make a soup, but as you can imagine, if you’re making anything with a clam that’s the size of your pinky nail, you would need thousands to actually have enough. So we would sit in the sand for hours, collecting tiny clams determined to have enough to make soup. And every single time, we wouldn’t even fill one sand pale up so as the sun began to set we invariably threw them all back into the ocean. As you probably guessed, we never actually made coquina soup. But boy did we love trying to. It was always about the experience and never about the outcome.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.isabellagambuto.com
- Phone: 9176969069
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: @isabellagambuto
Image Credit:
Photo of Isabella by Ana Gambuto @anagambuto; All other photos taken by Isabella Gambuto @isabellagambuto
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