Today we’d like to introduce you to Joanna Wallace.
Hi Joanna, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I started back in 2012 after a first life crisis. I was 22, lost and trying to find myself right after college. A week after graduating, I decided to do something drastic and leave my hometown, Barcelona – Spain – and move to Berlin. I tried to blend in, learn the language and adapt to the cold winters. It was very lonely, so I started baking, all day everyday. I quickly realized that I had made a big mistake spending the last 4 years pursuing a Bachelors degree in Advertising, and decided to pursue my true passion, cooking.
Being immersed amongst the early plant-based revolution in Berlin shaped my baking and that’s where I started to find my voice as an artist. I have struggled with gut issues and food sensitivities all my life, but looooove eating… So, I thought, there has to be an alternative, a healthier way to get all that decadence without it hurting your body, but I was wrong.
It was impossible to find, any healthier alternative seemed to be boring, dry, lack flavor and looked very unappetizing. That’s were my mission was born: to make the perfect dessert that had it all. It has to be healthy and nutritionally good for you first and foremost. Second, has to taste delicious and be decadent. Third, it also need to be aesthetically pleasing, as we mostly eat with our eyes.
The seed was planted back then, but little did I know I would have to go through many changes, turmoil and life lessons before fully embracing my new found purpose. I started by staging at a Michelin starred restaurant where I worked insane unpaid hours and was ridiculed for my mission, while I was juggling making my new cakes and selling them to a couple cafes. I had a very positive response and was getting a lot of orders, so in 2014 I decided it was time to go to Culinary School to make them better. After graduating, I quickly got hired to be a Culinary Instructor by controversial Celebrity Chef Matthew Kenney.
With a full time job and a need for change, I couldn’t keep up with my business, so I stopped, sold everything I had built for the last 5 years and left to Australia. I did some pop up dinners over there but I wasn’t finding anything steady, so work took me back to Barcelona where I helped open a vegan culinary school. In 2017, when the Matthew Kenney vegan empire collapsed, I was lost again and got a proposal to consult for a culinary school opening in Dubai, so I left.
After a while in Dubai, I got another opportunity to support this culinary influencer in London, so I left again. The 2 years I was in London, I helped create another vegan culinary school, a food documentary and a recipe book in English and Spanish published by Penguin Randomhouse. I run myself to the ground, working non stop and didn’t get any credit for any of it, so I decided to quit and move back home to recover from burnout.
It’s 2019, I’m back at my mum’s and felt lost again thinking I had wasted the last 11 years not doing what I wanted to do. So I decided to go back to Australia with the little money I had saved up and try again. I just decided to make a quick stop in LA to visit friends on my way there… and one week after landing in LA, COVID hit. My visa for Australia got cancelled and once again, all my plans were scrambled. My only option was to go back to my mum’s couch or to start over here.
I had $300 in my account and I was stuck alone in another continent during a global pandemic. It had always been my dream to live in LA, but I never thought it would be possible. With a little creativity and lots of determination I fought really hard to stay and make it happen. I went through the hardest 4 years of my life as an immigrant in this country, including couch surfing off the grid at a pig farm without electricity or water. I was blessed to meet amazing people that gave me a place to stay while I figured it out . I took every job I could to survive, working my way up from the bottom. I started as a PA folding chairs and getting the crew’s lunch orders to working at a really cool meditation start up, to becoming the Personal Assistant to some pretty big names.
Flash forward to 2023, I hadn’t even set foot in a kitchen for 4 years. I was so exhausted, overworked and burnt out trying to survive in this city with 7 jobs that I totally gave up on my dream. Through some life changing therapeutic work, I was able to reconnect with my creativity and had the opportunity to get back in the kitchen. And of course, by changing careers again I had to start over from the bottom.
Since last September, I have been grinding really hard in the catering scene, working double shifts, coming home and little by little reimagining and working on my dream. I made my original menu from Berlin but revisited recipes and sizes and made them into a smaller and lighter bites. It started with one little photoshoot in my partner’s friend home studio and my inspiration came back. I dived right back in and redid my branding and website from scratch myself.
Today, one year later, KOMETA is reborn. I just wrapped up my 2nd event yesterday which was a fundraiser for the Harris & Walz campaign and have quite a few orders in line to be fulfilled! I also have another couple of really cool events happening before the end of the year. Between this and my job, leading catering events for Curtis Stone, my hands are full! I can only say I’m super excited with everything that is happening and very proud for not giving up.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I make healthy desserts, that are good for you, taste delicious and that evoke unfamiliar distant landscapes. I’ve been told that my desserts are very unique looking and taste really amazing. They are plant based, raw, gluten free, paleo, refined sugar free, soy free, organic and infused with probiotics for added health benefits and better digestion. There is nothing artificial in them, it’s all natural colors and flavors from whole fruits, nuts, seeds and superfoods. That’s the hard part, to make all of that and still make it healthy for you, for the planet and to make it taste good, its definitely a challenge!
I wanted to go back to the source and to the raw materials from our planet, reimagining the dessert world as we know it. I like to push boundaries with food and challenge your perception of what desserts should be and can be. In my search for that, I started to think of what other worldly and alien ingredients and desserts would taste like, far away from today’s ultra processed and unhealthy food paradigm we live in.
This is why I choose the name KOMETA, which is Spanish for Comet. It has a beautiful meaning that ties up with what I do perfectly. – KOMETA – Cosmic fragments from the distant edges of our solar system that hold raw materials of its birth — icy gases, ancient rocks and stardust. These frozen time capsules offer a rare glimpse into the universe’s deep past and secrets of life’s origins.
I’m most proud of being able to bring it all together and watch people indulge in my desserts and be able to give that experience without the guilt or heaviness that usually comes with sugary processed desserts. That’s what makes it all worth it for me.
Who else deserves credit in your story?
Of course! I want to thank foremost my amazing and most supportive partner I could ever wish for. He challenges me to be better everyday and really encourages me to push through, specially when I’m at the end of my rope. He is a creative in the film industry and also a foodie, so I love being able to be create together and bounce ideas of one another. I love you Steve! Also a huge thank you to Cory Popp, he’s a super talented photographer and captured my desserts amazingly!
I also want to mention a big thank you to my mentor Caroline. She adopted me during COVID when I got stuck here and made all of this possible. She saw my potential and believed in me when no one else did.
I have immense appreciation for both of them and everyone else that helped me along my journey, I would not be here today doing this if it wasn’t for them.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.kometa.la
- Instagram: @kometa.la
Image Credits
Cory Popp
