Born in Lebanon, Tara Khattar recognized her passion for food and cooking from an early age, when she spent hours on end in the kitchen experimenting with local products.
Influenced by Lebanese flavors and spices, Khattar joined the Beirut’s Restaurant Chez Sophie, where she was trained enough for her to be encouraged to start her project.
The Lebanese chef founded and managed a gastronomic sandwich shop, where she designed the menu and her custom-made outdoor kitchen.
After years of working and gaining the needed experience, Khattar was accepted to enroll at the renowned culinary Institut Paul Bocuse in Lyon, France.
However, her eagerness to be taught by celebrated chefs did not end there. She kept working hard to the point that she was trained by Jacques Chibois at La Bastide Saint-Antoine, where she gained more skills in bread and pastry making.
She also secured an internship at L’Atelier de Joel Robuchon Saint-Germain in Paris. A few months later, the two Michelin-starred institutions hired her full-time.
Tara Khattar did not want to stop her growing career, so she then enrolled at New York University to pursue her Master’s degree in Food Studies.
Since then, she has been living and working in New York, where she consults for restaurants and caters for boutique events, private dinners, and wedding events in the United States, and creates sophisticated dishes complimented by a Lebanese touch.
In addition to a career filled with success, Tara was also a contestant at Top Chef France and a two-time Chopped champion on Food Network.
Tara Khattar’s success further grew with the publishing of her cookbook “Liban: Une Histoire de Cuisine Familiale, d’Amour et de Partage” (Lebanon: A Story of Family Cooking, Love and Sharing), where she features 100 recipes as a tribute to her grandmothers.
