BY JASMINE SABADOSA | FEBRUARY 7, 2019, 1:11 AM
Alex Guarnaschelli, BC ’91, ended her wedding engagement from a pay phone while in France in order to pursue her career in the culinary arts. Years later, she was prepared to jump into the “Iron Chef” competition two days after giving birth, but producers wouldn’t let her. She eventually competed on the show and won the title of Iron Chef.

The Food Network celebrity chef shared her story with a full audience of mostly women in the Diana Center Event Oval on Tuesday, Feb. 5. During the event, organized as part of Barnard Student Life’s Arts Week initiative, Guarnaschelli discussed her time spent at Barnard and her serendipitous acquaintance with the culinary arts with humor and candor. She gave students life advice through personal and intimate anecdotes as well as witty commentary.

Guarnaschelli was raised in midtown New York as the only child of two Italian academics, both of whom had earned doctorates from Yale. Her mother was a cookbook editor, so Guarnaschelli grew up reading manuscripts on Egyptian food “while on the bowl,” which is to say she read many cookbooks in the bathroom during her upbringing. Her parents also covertly exposed her to the practice of judging another’s cooking, as she often played mediator between her mother and father’s home-cooked meals.

Read the full article here: Celebrity Chef Alex Guarnaschelli, BC ’91, serves up some life lessons