Bio
Vicky is known for her open-minded, approachable style, and her love of Mediterranean food and travel.
Originally qualified as an interior designer in the hospitality sector, cooking has gradually become the centre of Vicky’s working life. Over the years, her career has taken many forms - working as UK catering manager for a bar chain, renovating and managing a gastropub in the City (London); freelance cheffing for catering companies; cooking as a live-in chef on a shooting estate; heading-up her own online preserves business, and then subsequently running a vegetarian café and a deli in Yorkshire.
Early journeys as a child sparked a lifelong love of travel and new cultures. Vicky’s parents worked hard in order to spend family holidays on road trips and camping expeditions across England and Europe.
As a student, she discovered Interrailing. While her peers backpacked around Australia and Thailand, she continued her European adventures sleeping on overnight trains and in hostels through France and Italy. Vicky then worked for several seasons at a cookery school in Umbria, where she gained her foundation knowledge of Mediterranean food, local ingredients and the pleasure of hosting. In 2001, she visited the Ionian island of Corfu for the first time and fell instantly in love with it’s Venetian history and landscape, the blue, blue sea, the Greeks and, of course, the food.
Her work now is a happy mix of private cheffing, event catering, retreats, supper clubs and cooking workshops, dividing her time between the UK and Corfu. She has a grown-up daughter, a sister and two nieces who all also love to travel.
About Vicky’s
“My dream is to build a friendly community for women seeking connection and help through food, travel, gentle exercise and authentic British and Mediterranean cultural experiences.
I’m a self-taught chef, traveller, designer, partner and empty-nest mother. Vicky’s exists to honour my journey, achievements and experiences in order to benefit others. For me the path here has been far from conventional. I’ve had many careers (sometimes by choice, sometimes through necessity) but I have always felt happiest and grounded by cooking, travelling, or best of all, doing both together.
My mum was an NHS doctor and didn’t have a lot of time to do the wholesome, domestic stuff my friends’ mums did. However, she was very good at gardening, grew vegetables and especially loved tomatoes, so I have a particular affinity with plants, herbs and the outdoors.
Mum died in 2013 from ovarian cancer, and didn’t live long enough to do all the cooking and travelling she had planned in her retirement - in my late 50’s I’m doing it for her. Her ashes are scattered in a bay on Corfu, the island she also loved.
I’m not rich, and cooking doesn’t make me rich, but I am successful in that I have a great team behind me and many happy clients. I would love to guide you along memorable food and travel experiences, and to form meaningful partnerships through my catering work. Ultimately, my hope is that we can create genuine, lasting connections and a true sense of kinship.”
