Silvia Bianco
Chef, Teacher, Writer
Most know me as Chef Silvia because I’ve been a professional chef since 1993 when I opened my former restaurant, Biscotti, in Ridgefield, CT. But what most do not know is that I’ve been writing since I was a teenager. I used my writing skills to communicate and stay connected to my former restaurant patrons in the form of a note I inserted into the restaurant menu each month for years, resulting in a series of essays known simply as, A Note from the Chef. I thought that if my customers were going to eat my food, they should know something about the person preparing it. The “notes” allowed me to nourish my patrons not only with good food, but with my musings on food and life that I found helpful and felt honored to share. They played an integral part of the community feel of the restaurant for almost 10 years. I brought the “notes” online in 2004 first as a part of a newsletter and later as a blog I continued to write through 2014 and then only occasionally until 2017 when I went onto other projects…but I’ve never stopped writing. Below is a link to the notes and below that, some of my favorite notes and other articles published on Medium.
Blogs
Articles
“Collectively we’ve had many chances to release the false beliefs, the old stories that built a world on the brink of destruction, but we chose not to, and now the time of subtlety is gone. Wakeup calls to great change are always disruptive, messy, chaotic and often horrific. Our history is littered with our sad stories. But …”
“With pizza there’s room for every taste and its crust is the perfect platform for self-expression. The conservative can sit at the same table with the progressive and neither cares or tries to talk the other out of enjoying their slice even if it’s different.”
13 Habits for a Peaceful Life I Learned in the Kitchen
“Most good cooks are masters of the art of reinvention. Why? We have to be. In the kitchen, we quickly learn to expect the unexpected so we also learn how to adapt and find another way. As it turns out, this is a good thing to know if you want to live a peaceful life. So this peaceful kitchen warrior can tell you this…”
The Real Reason We Need to Eat
“One day we noticed that the fog that once clouded our way began to lift and when it did, we rediscovered the joy, the healing, eating together brings. The nourishment that we crave, we soon learned, comes from preparing and sharing a meal even more than the food itself.
Eating, we realized, is Nature’s way of ensuring that we play together, tell our stories, listen, cry, and laugh with each other while we sit at the same table.”
“We are all on a journey out of the darkness of our own making. We’re seeped in a well of our misperceptions, struggling to make sense of a world that makes no sense, colored in shades of grey that define a life that can’t be defined in the absolute of black or white, but only by the light that shines on it.”
Book
Simply Sauté: Fast, Easy and Health Italian Cooking — All in One Pan
Sales/Landing Page
Tag Lines
Chef Silvia on Facebook: Food and Ideas Worth Chewing On
Chefsilvia.com: Cook, Eat Connect
Cooking/Health/Wellness
MindBodyGreen.com – Various articles and recipes
The Huffington Post – Various articles and recipes
Food411.com – Ask Chef Silvia (cooking advice)
Original Quotes
- “If it were possible to have a communal table big enough to seat everyone on the planet – in some limitless virtual piazza where we could all share a delicious, lovingly-prepared meal, a bit of heart-to-heart with our neighbor, and a whole lotta laughter – I think we would have world peace by the time we got to dessert.”
- “I am not the dancer but the dance and the laws of chaos, the laws of the world fade away and I am once again in harmony with the rhythm of creation.”
- “Let’s put aside past grievances for in Truth, they’re already gone and offer a gathering at our table…
Set with forgiveness, lit with joy and covered with gratitude.” - “We are limited, not by our abilities, but by our vision.”
