Ryan Ross is based in Bow, WA where she works as a private chef and consultant and lives with her fiancé Casey Rigney. Ryan is from Warrenton, VA where she grew up drinking green juices in her mother’s health food store, the Natural Marketplace. She studied dance at Hollins College and performed in several dance companies while attending the Natural Gourmet Institute in New York City. There, she mastered health-supportive cuisine and became an accredited chef.
In New York, Ross served for three years as the chef of the Penington Friends House, a multigenerational, multicultural community in Union Square. There she prepared regular dinners for 30-something housemates from all walks of life, in a family-style setting. She then made her way to Nicaragua’s Little Corn Island, where she served as chef and consultant for the opening of the Yemaya Island Hideaway & Spa. There she designed menus catering to specialty diets, cleanses and spa services, and hired and trained local chefs in plant-based cooking. Being on an island, using local ingredients was crucial so she worked with a permaculturist to create a sustainable garden that supplied the hotel with its food.
Ryan then made her way to the Pacific Northwest, which she now calls home. She serves as a private chef for clients from Seattle to Vancouver, and puts on a fantastic dinner party. You can often find her hosting Supper Corps, a recurring community dining experience she created to celebrate cooking creatively, support local business, and foster community. The dinners, which seat up to 40 people, are often in unlikely places, be it a barn or a butcher shop, and the staff is a rotating mix of food lovers, artists and talented locals.