I’m Simona Zambetti, a cook specialized in gourmet vegan cuisine.
I offer Home Chef and Personal Chef services, thanks to which you can live unique taste experiences in the intimacy of your own home or the chosen location.
I love the food research, the creative act in the realization of a dish, the study of every detail: I want to accompany you on a sensory journey thanks to which you will be able to immerse in a world of flavors, smells and colors created to satisfy the most demanding palates.
I help restaurants to develop 100% vegetable menus through a personalized consulting service.
I also collaborate with the culinary School Funny Veg Academy of Milan, as a teacher of ethnic cuisine.
CULINARY BACKGROUNDS
I have acquired a vegan cuisine degree at the Italian Food Academy – Milan – under the supervision of Chef Davide Larise.
I took professional courses at FunnyVeg Academy with Chef Simone Salvini and Luca Andrè. I am also attending Food Future Institute – Los Angeles – an online professionalizing program created by Chef Matthew Kenney.
MY STORY
If someone ever told me I would have become vegan, I would have laughed.
I have never been a devourer of meat or fish, but of eggs and dairy products yes, although I am strongly intolerant to the latter. The thought of removing them from my diet never crossed my mind until four years ago.
At that time I was going through a rather tumultuous personal moment; I did not feel at peace with myself or with the world around me and, as in the most classic of clichés, the discomfort poured into the food. I lost my taste for life and meals.
I simply stopped eating by finding myself sucked into a negative vortex for many months that had transformed me into the shadow of myself, both physically and mentally.
Thankfully nothing is permanent, so when I got to the point of getting back on my feet I began to gradually reintroduce all the animal products that I liked the most, with the consequent discovery of not being able to bear any consistency and any smell anymore.
“And now what do I eat?!”, I asked myself.
My journey into the vegan world began this way, with a simple question which, however, contained in itself a story that had a great meaning to me: mine.
I did a lot of researches to find out what nutrients I needed to stay healthy. I experimented with recipes finding everything extremely tasty and I gained weight and my smile back.
To be honest, I thought it would have been a transitory moment, but what happened instead was that I fell in love with vegan food to the point of marrying this life philosophy with all my heart, without feeling any lack of the previous one.
Before this transition, I had never thought about which is my impact on the environment, about what happens to the food chain animals, about the quality of the food I fed on.
I found that I could change things by simply starting from myself, taking care of myself and trying to respect our planet, animals included, in an active way that I had never experienced before
Then one day I decided to further deepen my knowledge by becoming a professional Chef and by atteding cooking classes all around the world during my travels.
Thanks to my personal experience I realized that cooking for others is the most direct and effective way to show that a plantbased diet is much more than tofu and unseasoned salad and that despite what it may appereantly seem, it is rich in creativity, taste, beauty and sustainability.
