Making Dinner for You: Three Private Chefs Talk Menus, Inspiration, and Ingredients

Meet Amor Comida, Mint Culinary, and Nomi Kitchen

By Greg Tasker | Oct. 12, 2024

Personal chefs are not a new concept, but their popularity has been growing in recent years, as more and more of us seek to experience new flavors and cuisines. We also want to reap the bounty of seasonal fruits and vegetables, herbs, and other products so prevalent in our area, bringing farm to table right to your own home. 

To learn about the ins and outs of the business, we connected with three personal chefs making their marks on the diverse food landscape Up North. Their culinary paths vary and their techniques and interests differ, but they all have found home and a place for their culinary talents here in northern Michigan.

Amor Comida

Michelle Rodriguez’s connections to food and northern Michigan go all the way back to her childhood. As a young girl, she fished with her father on Lake Michigan, clipped herbs from the family garden, and foraged with her grandfather. 

Although her family steered her into a business career, she eventually gave up a marketing job to follow her natural path after an aha moment at a food festival in Atlanta. There, for the first time, she tasted etouffee. 

“It blew my mind,” she says about the Cajun and Creole dish. “The flavors blew me away and awakened my love for food. This just made my day.”

She approached the food truck owner and talked him into giving her a job that set her on her culinary path. She worked at one of the city’s best Mexican restaurants in Austin before moving onto Chicago, where she served as first line chef under the tutelage of Stephanie Izard, the executive chef and owner of the Girl & the Goat and other restaurants. (Izard holds Iron Chef and Bravo’s Top Chef honors.)

After several months in Chicago, Rodriguez returned to Michigan to be closer to her parents in Lake Ann. Her culinary journey continued with important stops at The Cooks’ House, Trattoria Stella, and Black Star Farms. Then she went out on her own. 

“I worked at all the best places up here I could work at in northern Michigan,” she says. “At a certain point I developed more confidence and I knew I wanted to cook my food, to feed the world my food.” 

These days, Rodriguez is a private chef and caterer. Her company is called Amor Comida, which means “love of food” in Spanish. Her menu is multi-cultural and reflects not only her experience but her global travels. From her trips, she brings back flavors that she finds  inspiring. 

Rodriguez says she shops local farmers markets for fresh ingredients, as well as Lakeview Hill Farm, Loma Farms, 9 Bean Rows, and Common Good. Much of her business comes from referrals from her connections to regional restaurants and local growers.

“I like to surprise people,” she says, adding she prefers to create a menu closer to the date of dinner to use the best of what’s available. “If you give a menu in advance, there’s always someone who is going to not like something and then the menu becomes complicated. I’ve had people who say ‘I hated butternut squash until I tried [your dish], and now I love it.’” 

Find Amor Comida on Instagram at @amor_comida or Facebook.com/amorcomida. 

Mint Culinary

As the name suggests, mint is a big part of the picture at Mint Culinary. The flavorful plant shows up in many courses of the meals husband-and-wife team Jonathan Boyd and Dana Falconberry prepare for their clients. 

It’s also the plant that sprouted the inspiration for their culinary endeavor, given its many health benefits and its role in their lives. 

“Mint is coursed through our menus with lots of different foods,” Falconberry says. “It’s versatile and can be found all over the world. Our combinations of food are inspiring but also nourishing. We’re mindful of every ingredient we use, where it comes from and how it affects us afterward.” 

The couple’s aim is to provide nutritious and delicious meals, procuring fresh berries and herbs from their own property in Peshawbestown in northern Leelanau County and also using seasonal ingredients and products from regional purveyors. They almost exclusively use Lost Lake Farm produce “because we love them so much,” Falconberry says. 

Other local growers and vendors include 9 Bean Rows in Suttons Bay, Oryana Community Co-op in Traverse City, and Cedar North in Cedar.

“We use local food from the beautiful food bounty to create an intimate experience for people,” Falconberry says. “Jonathan coined the term, ‘One conversation meals.’ It means we’re not doing large catering jobs. We’re interested in coming into people’s homes and providing an experience for them—one conversation around the table. It’s centered around food and everyone sharing together.”

Their menus for their bespoke private dining experiences vary, but Mediterranean and Middle Eastern are prominent themes. The couple, who relocated to northern Michigan from Texas, also are fond of Hispanic fare.  

The pair met while they were working at the same restaurant in Austin. After some time in Texas, Falconberry, who hails from Dearborn, began to hear the call of the forest and trees, and the couple relocated Up North during the pandemic. Their initial business foray was Roll Model, a vegan spring roll business that focused on nutritious food sourced as locally as possible. That focus expanded after Falconberry was diagnosed with breast cancer. At that time, they dove into healthy and local food and turned to food as medicine, setting the stage for Mint Culinary.  

“It all centers back to preventative health care,” says Boyd, who is also interested in health and nutrition coaching. “Through Mint we want to connect and improve health through food.” 

Find Mint Culinary at mint-culinary.com. 

Nomi Kitchen

Kulin Froelich’s culinary career began quite humbly, washing dishes for a Lebanese catering business in the Lansing area. 

Those beginnings were modest, but his culinary training includes stints at some of northern Michigan’s premier restaurants, including the now-closed but legendary Tapawingo that was owned by James Beard award-nominated Chef Harlan Peterson, Trattoria Stella in Traverse City, and Chandler’s in Petoskey.

Like many others during the pandemic, Froelich pivoted, leaving Chandler’s to begin a new culinary career by preparing meals for small events. Those small steps led to the creation of his own personal chef business, Nomi Kitchen.

Nomi Kitchen provides weekly prepared meals at client homes, in-home cooking lessons, and chef services for private events. Working along with Froelich is his wife, Ashley, who serves as director of events and services. She also has extensive experience in the food industry. 

Froelich, a graduate of the Great Lakes Culinary Institute in Traverse City, comes to the table with a repertoire of ethnic and classic dishes. He likes to use cooking methods from around the world while using locally grown and produced ingredients.

“I like to apply other cooking cultures and methods to what we have available locally,” says Froelich, who frequents local ethnic food markets to find spices and other ingredients for his one-of-a-kind meals. “We’re able to make excellent dishes with those ideas but with our local foods.”

Among his well-known dishes is a spicy potato and carrot-filled Samosa, filled with sweet peas, mint, scallion, and cilantro and served with a yellow pea dipping sauce. The savory South Asian pastry features local ingredients, including potatoes, garlic, and onions and fresh herbs from Bear Creek Organics, and carrots from Bluestem Farms.  

“This is an item we produce year-round and clients really enjoy them,” Froelich says. “We typically serve the samosas with raita or tamarind date chutney.” 

Froelich also loves to bake his own bread, often requested by clients. His favorites are naan and focaccia, but he also makes bagels, pretzels, and sandwich loaves “or anything else a client may desire,” he says. 

“I like to make a lot of bread,” he says. “It’s something fairly simple to do and you get a much nicer product when you make it yourself at home, as opposed to buying bread in a store. It’s just not the same.” 

Nomi Kitchen does a steady business year-round, but Froelich is especially busy during the summer months. “We do a lot of work with the Crooked Tree Arts Center [in Petoskey],” he says. “We’ve also done fundraiser dinners for various projects and a lot of our clients come through those events.” 

Find Nomi Kitchen at cooknomi.com.