Meet Chef Linda Johnsen, Owner and Chef of the ever-popular Filomena’s in Costa Mesa. Chef Linda purchased the restaurant in 2009 when the real estate market tanked (her primary career at the time), and she’s never looked back. Click to learn more about Chef Johnsen and …
- What an Easy Bake Oven means early in your cooking carer.
- Being homeless as a single woman.
- Why she added an Italian Market to her restaurant a year ago, and what she’s learned from the experience.
Author’s Note: After 30 years of interviewing and marketing some of the most iconic individuals in the world, I still find chefs to be some of the most unique human creatures on our planet. Every time I interview a chef, I learn something amazing about him or her. These people live with a passion and authenticity that drives them beyond what most of us do or realize in our day.
And, when these chefs talk about their passion for non-profit Illumination Foundation’s OC Chef’s Table, the largest single-evening gathering of chefs in Orange County (and, now, L.A. chefs, too) to help raise funds to forever break the cycle of homelessness in families and children, it’s even more intriguing to me.
It’s been one of my greatest pleasures interviewing these people in what I call a fast-moving, quick read series, “Five for Five” series – 5 Questions in 5 Minutes