Cultivating Community with Wellness Chef and Coach Kara Elise

/

Meet Kara Elise, a foodie who turned her passion for hosting into a full-time career that allows her to create joy by creating experiences for people around a table. She's curated moments and events for Darling Magazine, Alaska Airlines, Sorel Shoes, and more! Keep on reading and tune in below to get the behind-the-scenes with Kara as we enter her kitchen, where she offers creativity, art, and genuine community.

SHOW NOTES:

Kara got into cooking and food because she loved creating spaces that facilitated nourishment and connection. Food was a great modality to do that (2:00.)

She started her company to bring people together in a connective space. She loves the intuition that comes with preparing food, taking the ingredients in a kitchen and making something magical with it (4:15.)

This created two themes in her work life, first the importance of creating connection around food and two learning how to be intuitive and playful to make art out of food (5:03).

She loves working with brands at retreats because clients are completely taken out of their comfort zone and she can be part of the new environment. This allows Kara to come in, as a chef, and create a comfortable and inviting experience with food (5:20.)

“My vision is for people to feel free in the kitchen. I think the kitchen should be fun, playful, and intuitive. ”
— Kara Dykert

Kara’s book, Toast, offers simple and intuitive meal recipes. Accessible recipes are very important to Kara because they are the starting point for learning kitchen intuition (9:00.)

The biggest universal tip for bringing people together, according to Kara, is a table question. The way it works is you ask the question and then every single person at the table goes around and answers it. By asking the same question around the table it allows everyone to equally voice their own part of their story (13:15.)

She likes using table questions outside of the social space and brings it to the corporate space to help clients connect with their teams on a more intimate level (16:00.)

Kara believes that to pay it forward it’s important to first connect with ourselves: know who they are, be grounded, and operate from a place of self-compassion and self-love. She also has been hosting live cooking classes everyday on Instagram (17:20.)

What’s Next for Kara? She has been building an online course called Hosting with Heart which is a six-part series that teaches viewers how to host well. In addition to her series, she’s still working on her podcast with her finance and filming a pilot for a TV show called What’s in your Kitchen, where she teaches viewers how to use ingredients you have in your kitchen and in life to create something magical and nourishing (19:30.)

Thank you readers, to tuning into the Brava Podcast. If you like the show please leave a review on iTunes! 

What from our conversation inspired you today? What do you hope to hear next? Tweet or message us on Instagram @BravaPodcast to tell us what you want to hear, even if it’s your own story!