The impossible dream? Not for Chef Pat Day, owner/founder of Lady Black Tie Personal Chef Service who has made it her career goal to defy the odds when it comes to the kitchen. The dream she lives on a daily basis is improving upon the distinctive, gourmet and soulful flavors of her talented family’s cuisine while also catering to the eclectic and sophisticated palate of Houston’s social elite – done in low fat, cholesterol cutting extravaganzas. All of this while bringing a carnival to the taste buds without loosening any notches on the belt buckle.

“I love to see the look on my client’s faces when I tell them what they’re eating is actually healthy!” laughs Chef Pat who traded the short summers and long, brutal Michigan (Grand Rapids) winters for the warmer, southern climbs of Houston, Texas in college and hasn’t looked back since. “As a chef I know I’m flexible in what I can cook, whether it’s Asian, Mediterranean, or Caribbean. But a lot of the food I was raised on, even if it is gourmet, is a challenge simply because a higher fat and cholesterol content is considered part and parcel of the way it should be prepared. Now I feel I have my healthier low fat versions down to a fine art. It means my clients can literally have their cake and eat it too!”

As with most higher echelon chefs, Chef Pat’s formative years were spent around great food and great recipes.

“I guess I was spoiled by my mother’s cooking” says Chef Pat, who also credits her grandmother and great grandmother as important influences. “She used to work at the Peninsula Club in Grand Rapids and learned how to cook gourmet food, which of course, she would try out on us. I loved it but my brother and sister hated it.”

Her Godparents in Chicago, with whom she spent summer vacations also proved a pivotal influence. “My Godparents work for the Florshimes family who own the department stores and my Godmother prepared food for both them and the Neimen Marcus families, which obviously says a lot about her cooking. She introduced me to a wide variety of different dishes from Asian to Chicago Italian. She was also an excellent baker. It all rubbed off on me. I loved to be in the kitchen. Even when I was nine or ten I remember cutting out recipes from magazines.”

So obvious was her love affair with all things culinary that Chef Pat’s aunts, both high end chefs with their own catering businesses, wasted no time in recruiting their niece to help out.

“They both made good money. One aunt, who worked for President Gerald Ford did extremely well. People would literally fight over them to cater their events. They instilled discipline in me, in an almost military way” Chef Pat recalls. “It amazed me how quickly and efficiently they worked. A real turning point for me was when they let me go on my own at sixteen and help they prepare certain dishes.”

Despite her burgeoning culinary ability, pursuing a full time career in the business didn’t seem like a viable option to the teenage Pat who opted to study biology in college. While working in the medical profession, she began to garner a fierce reputation for herself as a chef par excellence in Houston area as she catered upscale dinner parties, Christmas events, wedding receptions and bridal showers. As word spread, Chef Pat found herself at a career crossroads. Should she trade a steady paycheck for her life’s passion and go it alone as a personal chef? She resisted the urge until what she describes as a ‘spiritual’ experience at four o’clock one morning while at work, swung the pendulum in the opposite direction.

“Once I gave in to it I realized that I was doing what I was born to do.”

Now something of a fixture in Houston, Lady Black Tie Personal Chef Service is the first name on people’s lists when it comes to catering and personal cheffing. 

“The dinner parties, receptions and larger events are fun” says Pat, “but it’s also very enjoyable to cater a romantic dinner for two. It gives me a chance to show that southern hospitality and allows the clients to relax and enjoy a really good meal without the hassle of having to book a table and go to a restaurant.”

Asked what attracts her to working as a personal chef in Houston, Chef Pat’s response is immediate.

“The diversity. I mean you’d think that being down south people would only be into certain types of food but all my clients are different. It’s quite a cosmopolitan city so people’s tastes reflect that. One day I could be cooking Thai, the next baby back barbeque ribs, the next Italian and so on. There are no limits which is what I love. The only thing I try to maintain is that whatever I make is healthy and that seems to suit my clients perfectly.

Lady Black Tie Personal Chef Service is as flexible in its scheduling as it is eclectic in its dishes, whether it be dinner parties, holiday meals or monthly/biweekly/weekly visits where freshly prepared food can be frozen for short periods of time. Home cooking instruction is also a one of a kind experience, whether it be for a group of friends prior to a dinner party, advanced cooks hoping to sharpen their skills or teenagers in need of essential survival dishes before flying the coup for college.”

“When you think personal chef most people think of wealthy, affluent people. That no longer needs to be the case” says Pat. “Sure a lot of rich people do hire me but the fact that I can prepare a lot of food and freeze it for a month in a way that preserves the freshness, means it can really be cost efficient. It seems in a hectic lifestyle the first thing to suffer is a person’s diet which should of course be the last. That no longer needs to be the case.”

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