Meet Sophie.

The kitchen was always home.

Sophie started working in kitchens very young — the kitchen was part of her upbringing long before it became her profession. Raised by two award-winning professional chefs, she grew up living and breathing the craft, absorbing the standards, the pace, and the discipline of professional cooking from the very beginning.

Over the past twelve years she has worked across every major discipline — Head Chef, Head Butcher, Head Pastry Chef — and has staged in professional kitchens around the world, training internationally and bringing that breadth of experience to every table she sets.

Summit County, and why it matters.

Summit County draws millions of visitors each year — most staying in well-appointed vacation rentals with full kitchens. These are sophisticated guests with discerning palates — celebrating something, treating themselves, or entertaining a group. They have the appetite for a genuinely exceptional dining experience and want something that matches where they're staying.

La Petite Chef is the answer to that. Sophie arrives fully equipped and handles everything from start to finish — so all you have to do is sit down, pour a glass of wine, and enjoy the kind of dinner that turns a good trip into an unforgettable one.

The art of butchering.

Sophie has always loved the actual craft of butchery: the precision, the knife work, the puzzle of breaking something whole into something useful. That love started in commercial shops, doing the volume work that builds real fundamentals. Now it's going toward game.

Processing game for hunters is a different kind of challenge than commercial work, and a more interesting one. No two animals come in the same way. A deer that ranged hilly terrain carries different muscle than one that didn't, fat sits differently depending on diet and season, and every carcass tells you something about the life it lived before you even make the first cut. That means really knowing anatomy, not just where the cuts are, but why a shoulder wants hours of low heat while a backstrap wants almost none, and what a hunter is going to want to do with their meat once it's in their kitchen.

That's the part Sophie is most excited about: taking a hunter's animal and turning it into cuts they'll actually be excited to cook. Getting creative with what each piece can become, making sure nothing goes to waste, and handling every animal with the same care and respect it took to bring it home.

The tallow chapter.

Working in professional kitchens gave Sophie a deep appreciation for clean, simple ingredients — and a curiosity about what that philosophy could look like beyond the plate. She'd read about traditional skincare, about what people used before the modern beauty industry took over, and decided to try it for herself.

Tallow is remarkably compatible with human skin — rich in fat-soluble vitamins, deeply nourishing, and free from the synthetic fillers and preservatives that fill most commercial moisturizers. She started making small batches for friends and family, and they kept asking for more.

La Petite Chef Tallow Goods is the natural extension of everything Sophie believes about food: clean ingredients, thoughtful sourcing, and the understanding that simple is often better.