Who is The Experimental Gourmand?

The Experimental Gourmand was created by Kathy Blake in 2005 to share her love of cooking and recipes, exploring the food markets of New York City and on her travels, and venturing out to local events to check out the latest tastes and trends. Here she relates stories of growing up in Virginia with her many siblings, tales of living in England, Italy, and France, and the kitchen tips and recipes that she's gathered along the way. Classically-trained in French culinary techniques, she has many years' worth of experience in food and beverage menu and recipe development, events planning, and hospitality operations, having worked in restaurants, high-end large-volume catering companies as well as in multi-unit enterprises, both on the production and on the management sides. She has amassed a range of industry expertise and insights via this hybrid culinary/operations/technology background to bring to your business development, food and beverage menu, and content writing and editing projects.

Contact me via the form on the bottom of this page to start the conversation on how we might be able to work together.

Click on the Culinary Consulting; Hospitality Operations; and Writing, Editing, Proofreading links below for samples of my work for clients and companies.

Culinary Consulting

Tap into my culinary background from working in NYC restaurants and at high-end catering companies, having created hundreds of recipes and lots of food and drink menus of many shapes and sizes.

Recipe Writing & Editing
Recipe R&D, Cookbook Testing
Menu Creation & Development
Specialty Recipes for Food Brands

Hospitality Operations

Reach out to me if you are looking to organize and streamline your on-line recipe management and operations. I have worked with the following SaaS programs and written SOPs, user guides, and employee training materials.

CaterXpert
MarginEdge
CrunchTime

Writing, Editing, Proofreading

Leverage my writing and editing skills for your cookbooks, website, and menu projects. For many years, I covered the NYC food events scene on this website and had articles and photos appear in several publications.

Cookbook Recipe Testing and Editing
Menu Editing and Proofreading
Website Proofreading and Editing

Please use the form below to get in contact with me

Check out my Instagram feed to see my latest culinary and life adventures