About

Thanks for coming to Up Chef Creek.

I am Ori, a NYC-based chef , caterer and educator. A huge part of my cooking inspiration comes from traveling extensively and always studying the local fare. I return home with a stockpile of  recipes, techniques and ideas. My process is to take my notes and streamline them into easy to follow, successful recipes that anyone can recreate for a little out-of-town flavor. This is what I teach in many of my classes.

Cooking for private clients and families gives me the opportunity to create menus of all shapes and sizes featuring every different type of cuisine; Mediterranean, Mid-Eastern, South East Asian, Mexican, and lots of vibrant ‘American’. I studied culinary arts at The Natural Gourmet Institute for Food and Health (2005) and my food philosophy is good quality food equals good quality life and I find this to be true wherever I go in the world. I’m sticking to it.

Writing, food styling, making art and creating cocktails are also part of my endeavors.

The name ‘Up Chef Creek’ came up in a deal I made with myself: ‘the next name you think of will be IT even if it is ridiculous’ so I just went with it. I think it’s a halfway amusing name because in cooking following a recipe is not the most difficult part. But finding yourself in a bind, having to rescue a recipe when something goes wrong, now that is where ingenuity and terror and terror-inspired ingenuity step in. Plus, it sounds adventurous (in a steak-house sort of way).

On this site you will find the following:

• recipes: things to cook
• healthy/superfoods: enthusiastic rants about a food’s health benefits
• little extras: sauces, side notes, bells, whistles…
• musings/reviews: thoughts and opinions, often in the form of love letters
• idolatry: things I like (people, places, products, etc.)
• video/tutorials: the newest feature of the site, things that teach and explain… one cook to another
• visual art/paintings: a current series of still-life food paintings and drawings. To see other artwork, visit ocosentino.com

RECIPE INDEX: provides the site’s recipe at a glance and links to them

RESTAURANT LIST: chef approved places to eat

CV: my resume in detail.

To contact me, please leave a comment anywhere on upchefcreek.com or email me at: omcooking@gmail.com