Give me 48 hours notice and I will have a sumptuous selection of dishes on your dining table. My seasonal offerings using only the best products (locally sourced as much as possible) are delivered in disposable containers with clear directions on heating and serving. The results are a delicious and beautiful table for you and your guests to enjoy without the fuss. Please see my current offerings by clicking the button below or shoot me an email at [email protected] for more guidance.
I've been creating all manner of events for over 15 years now - for supper clubs at my kitchen atelier in Beirut, as the special guest chef at pop up dinners in restaurants, as the caterer for events like the Empire Cinemas #wearecollette women's rights event, restaurant menu unveiling events, boutique stores' open houses, and more private events than I can count. My clients have included ambassadors, socialites, members of the Jordanian royal family, and fellow chefs!
In Amman I'm hosting a series of seasonal pop-up dinners at various gorgeous venues throughout the Capital. Interested in having me host a dinner at your site? Get in touch and let's talk about what we might work on together. Culinary demos and classes are part of my repertoire so please follow me on Instgram or sign up for my newsletter to get the latest on what's on the menu.
Over the years I've worked in a variety of venues demonstrating recipes, talking about the seasonality and sourcing of food, touted brands, and made special appearances. As a confident public speaker I like to stress the importance of eating locally and seasonally and have also been a huge champion of the Middle East and its delicious food culture. In 2019 I was the Middle East Food Ambassador aboard the MSS Amsterdam cruise ship from Mumbai to Aqaba where I gave cooking demonstrations and a spice market tour during our stop in Oman. In February 2019, I appeared as a Guest Judge on MBC's Top Chef Middle East for the quarterfinals episode.
"On behalf of everyone onboard the MS Amsterdam, I personally would like to congratulate you on a job well done!! The travellers were delighted by your appearance as Guest Chef, and captivated not only by your professional presentations, delicious meals and the Middle Eastern food culture you showcased, but also by your unique personality. We are truly thankful for your time and dedication, and for your great attitude and efforts towards our initiative Port to Table. With your help this program is a huge success."
In 2019 alone I created the menus for three successful new restaurants in the Middle East: Green Junkie, a healthy food delivery concept in Beirut. Daimeh, an all-day cafe as part of Her Majesty Queen Rania’s Jordan River Foundation in Amman. And Super Vega, a seasonally, environmentally savvy, farm-to-table restaurant, also in Beirut. In all three I took the concept suggested to me and created an entire menu and recipes around that brief. I helped with staffing, chef training, kitchen layout and design, sourced suppliers, and got the concepts off the ground. In 2020 I re-worked the menus at Ayla in Aqaba, Jordan for their B012 Beach Club and Golf Club Restaurant. And in 2021 helped finalize and finesse the salads and bowls for Beirut’s Good For You, a functional, healthy ingredient-driven concept.
"Sally is the wonderful chef who created our menu for Supervega from its inception in 2019 until she left Lebanon in 2021. She created dishes inspired from the Levantine culture, using local and seasonal ingredients, and infused them with her touch. The result is an original, hearty and delicious feast. Her professionalism and generosity, her openness and love of culture, her joyful and positive attitude all contributed to make working with Sally true bliss."
As a graduate of Columbia University's School of the Arts, writing is my second love. Writing about culture, food, travel, people and where those things intersect is an integral part of what I do on my blog and for publications. For Empowering Women Through Cooking Lebanon I authored an entire section of the book that profiled various female culinary entrepreneurs in Lebanon. Mint Basil Market worked with me in its early stages to do online video recipe demonstrations using their healthy products and I was a contributor to their website creating recipes for their emerging market. I've created recipes for a variety of food publications, mostly revolving around healthy, seasonal food. While I lived in London I was Travel & Leisure Magazine's "foodie around town" contributing to their site on the latest London trends and openings and also did a series of videos for NBC's Today Show with recipes for the holidays and spots on foraging and local food events.
"Sally has been incredible to work with! She managed our Empowering Women Through Cooking cookbook in Lebanon. She is not only a very talented chef, but amazing in dealing with contributors and collaborators, and her amazing visual taste has allowed us to have one of the most stunning cookbooks in our series worldwide. We would work with Sally over and over and over again and anyone who gets to work with her is blessed."
I threw my first dinner party in the fourth grade. I sent invitations to my family and sat them down for three courses at the dinner table. As the daughter of a foreign correspondent, I travelled around the world and watched my mother work miracles in tiny rental kitchens from Moscow to Ankara to London. Perched on the tall blue kitchen stool that followed us around the globe, I will never forget watching her prepare hors d'oeuvres and cocktails for 100 in our two bedroom Soviet apartment, and elegant dinners for dissidents and diplomats. It's also where I learned that conversations about food were an entree into what might be an otherwise closed culture.
Thinking I'd be a journalist like my father, I received my MFA in Creative Non-Fiction Writing at Columbia University's School of the Arts in New York, but decided my heart was really in the kitchen. My chef's training was at the French Culinary Institute where I received a Grand Diplome in Culinary Arts in 2005. I gained experience in some of America’s most prestigious kitchens before moving to London where I worked as a private chef and contributed to NBC’s Today Show and Travel & Leisure Magazine.
During the five years I spent in Beirut I had a kitchen atelier, The Pantry Beirut, out of which I taught classes, hosted supper clubs, catered, and basically hosted all manner of culinary events. I was also the founding consultant chef for Green Junkie which features healthy-ish, from-scratch food, and Super Vega, an all-day cafe showcasing farm-to-table, Mediterranean comfort food. If you’re in Amman, Jordan you can try my twist on traditional Middle Eastern Food on the menu I created for Her Majesty Queen Rania’s Jordan River Foundation's restaurant Daimeh. I’ve also been a Middle Eastern Food Ambassador aboard the MSS Amsterdam cruise ship and was a guest judge in the 2019 quarter-finals of MBC’s Top Chef Middle East.
Most recently, I was Project Manager of Empowering Women through Cooking Lebanon, a cookbook which includes the recipes and stories of 52 wonderfully accomplished women from all walks of life around the country. It’s an initiative founded by Seven Circles in Amman with a portion of the proceeds going to the World Food Program, Lebanon.