Gale Gand

Recognized in 2001 as Outstanding Pastry Chef of the Year by The James Beard Foundation and Bon Appetit magazine and in 1994 as one of Food & Wine’s Top Ten Best New Chefs, executive pastry chef Gale Gand was schooled at La Varenne in Paris. Today, she is executive pastry chef and partner for TRU, the renowned four-star Mobil, five-diamond AAA, Relais & Chateaux Relais-Gourmand restaurant she opened in 1999 with culinary partner chef Rick Tramonto.

A native of Deerfield, Ill., Gand is an accomplished cookbook author with six titles to her credit. Her most recent cookbook is “Chocolate and Vanilla”, released in late 2006, she is currently working on her next cookbook about brunch, due for release in April 2009. Gand is the host of the long-running Food Network’s “Sweet Dreams,” and has two shows currently in production, “The Heirloom Recipe Project” for PBS and “The Answered Chef”, an online educational cooking series at www.AnswersTV.com.  She has appeared on Martha Stewart and this year judged Bravo's hit series "Top Chef."

Prior to conceiving TRU’s highly acclaimed dessert and cheese program, Gand began her career at the Strathallen Hotel in Rochester, NY, then later worked at The Gotham Bar & Grill and Jam’s in New York City. She moved to Chicago and worked at Carlos’, Pump Room, Bella Luna and Bice. Gand then worked abroad in England at the five-star hotel Stapleford Park. Upon returning to Chicago in 1993, she was pastry chef at Charlie Trotter’s and then with Tramonto opened Trio, Brasserie T and in 1999, TRU.

A lifelong root beer aficionado, Gand has her own root beer company and also produces a vanilla cream soda. A supporter of sustainable agriculture, eating locally and the environmental movement, Gand is a member of the National Restaurant Association's Conserve Initiative Action Council and forages annually for local ramps and mushrooms with her son for her restaurants. She is involved in many community causes, including Art Smith’s foundation, Common Threads, which teaches children racial and cultural diversity through the culinary arts and teaches pastry and baking after school to children at her son's middle school.

Gale is married to an environmentalist, Jimmy Seidita, has a son, Gio, and twins, Ella Nora and Ruby Grace.  For more information on Gand, visit www.galegand.com.