Chef Makes Her Kitchen Feel Like Home

In the early 2000s, Debbie Bodal was working as the culinary coordinator at the Olive Farm, a Portland, Ore.-based business with a store in Bellevue Square. Her job was to book local chefs to teach in-store cooking classes using the company’s olive oil products.

In 2004, after a year-and-a-half of employment and many forged culinary connections, Bodal — a longtime Edmonds resident — was told that the Olive Farm would close the doors on its not-so-profitable Bellevue location by the end of the summer. The culinary coordinator had booked chefs through the fall.

“I thought to myself, 'I can do this,'” she recalled. “So I started looking around for spaces, and there weren’t any that worked for what I wanted, but my kitchen was set up to do classes. So I contacted all the chefs and I said, 'Would you be willing to host your class in my kitchen?' And most of them agreed.”

Six years later Bodal still hosts classes in her kitchen, some of which she teaches and some of which are taught by heavy-hitters in the local restaurant scene. The roster of past and present chefs includes Sabrina Tinsley, chef and co-owner of Osteria La Spiga in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, Bobby Moore from Woodinville’s Barking Frog, and Nick Musser, executive chef of downtown Seattle’s Icon Grill.

Classes consist of two types: demonstration and hands-on. At the end of each session participants sit together and share the freshly prepared meal. The palette of food varies, and Bodal has hosted a gamut of classes, from Thai food to barbecue.

“This is not a big sushi community,” Bodal said, laughing. “What I’ve found is that the Italian and French classes are popular, and anything Northwest, with fish and seafood.”

The Northwest selections may be popular here, but Bodal’s true passion lies in Southeast Asian cooking, and she leads small culinary tours to destinations such as Thailand, Vietnam and Bali. A mix of cooking, sightseeing and exploring the locales, the tours, like the cooking classes, are kept small, with eight to 10 people at most.

Even though the classes are taught by top-tier chefs, you don’t have to be at the top of your cooking game to join. Bodal says they are open to anyone, and she hopes in the future to attract more young participants. But for now, she’s just happy pursuing her passion of cooking and sharing that with other enthusiastic people.

“Originally I liked the excitement of people coming over,” she said. “I would set a nice table, and we would gather there to eat the meal. Now what I really like is meeting all the new people. I’ve met so many people that I probably wouldn’t have met if it weren’t for the classes. It’s wonderful!”  

For more information about the 2012 culinary tour in Vietnam, or to sign up for a class in Edmonds, visit A Chef’s Kitchen.