Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Kryssie Tinsay. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Hi Kryssie, thanks for joining us today. So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?
I was born and raised in the Philippines and moved to California at the age of 15. Ever since I can remember, I have always loved food. When I was a little kid, I would always be in the kitchen watching my mom, grandma or my aunts cook and I would always volunteer–actually, insist–to be their taste-tester. When I moved to the US, I was a junior in high school. All throughout high school, I was ashamed to let people know that I didn’t grow up in the states let alone coming from a 3rd world country. I felt alienated because I didn’t “fit in” with anyone and I ate “weird” foods. A boy from school once asked me if I ate rats because I’m from the Philippines.
When I graduated high school, college wasn’t really in the books for me. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to be–all I knew was that I didn’t want to be the stereotypical Filipino child and become a nurse. I started watching The Food Network and idolize some of the chefs featured. That’s when I decided to give culinary school a shot. I loved it. It wasn’t always easy but I looked forward to going to school and learning how to properly cook. I graduated with honors and quickly worked my way up in various professional kitchens.
Being a woman in a male-dominated industry meant I had to work twice as hard for the same pay, keep my emotions “in-check” and assert myself in a way that I won’t be taken advantage of or viewed as “soft.” I never really got to cook Filipino food since most people don’t really understand what Filipino food is. It’s a mix of all cultures–Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, American. So I just kept cooking what I was told to cook while working for a corporate-owned establishment. My passion for my craft started to slowly fade. I felt like I lost myself because I wasn’t honoring my roots. I wasn’t cooking what I really wanted to share to everyone which was my version of Filipino food. However, when I started doing pop-up dinners, my love for Filipino food reignited and that’s when I decided to share my culture and my story through my version of it.
Fast-forward 15 years later, I am now a freelance personal chef and have many clients some of which are in the entertainment industry. I almost always incorporate Filipino food into my clients’ menus because I want to share to everyone my love for it and the bright, fresh, complex, robust flavors it has. I do all of this for the love of Filipino food.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I was born and raised in the Philippines and in June of 2000, my mom, my sister and I moved to Orange County, CA at the age of 15 to be with my dad.
Cooking has always been a hobby of mine. When I was growing up, I would often watch my mom cook in the kitchen. Every summer, I would go to the grandparents’ farm and my grandma would welcome me by cooking all of my favorite dishes–grilled pork belly, chicken adobo, diniguan (a type of stew made with pork innards and pork blood), etc. My grandma would also ask me what I wanted for breakfast before I would go to bed. She would even ask me how I wanted my eggs cooked–hard-boiled, poached, scrambled or fried. These were some of my best memories of her! Not only was my grandmother as amazing cook, she was also an amazing hostess.
When I moved to the states, I had to completely start over, I also had to learn to pretty much fend for myself. I knew that if I didn’t like what was being served on the dinner table, that I could cook something I like for myself. I think that’s how I really got into cooking.
When I graduated high school in 2002, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life or what career I would take on. I was so indecisive. This was the year that the Food Network started to become popular and celebrity chefs were emerging. I thought it was so interesting to watch people cook on TV and all the premium ingredients at their disposal. My boyfriend, now my husband, suggested I should check out culinary schools in my area since I liked cooking so much. So I did.
In September of 2005, I enrolled at the Art Institute of CA – Orange County and in June of 2007, I received my Associate’s Degree in Culinary Arts. I immediately was able to find work as a line cook for Aramark at the Angel Stadium in Anaheim. It was insane! We would feed 600-1000 people on any given night in a matter of 5 hours! I worked at the Angel Stadium for about six months before getting another job as a banquet cook at a golf course in Tustin. I worked there as a banquet cook and eventually transitioned as a line cook.
In March of 2009, I got a job at the Hyatt Regency in Newport Beach as a line cook. I was the only female associate and I was also the only associate under the age of 30. This job was a complete 180 from my previous job at the golf course. It was a bit high end and we used premium ingredients. My sous chef was also someone close to my age so it was nice to be able to relate to him and share ideas. About six months after I started working at the Hyatt, I expressed to my Chef that I wanted to become a sous chef. He started to give me more and more responsibilities and ultimately promoted me to supervisor. In 2011, I was accepted to the Hyatt’s Culinary Corporate Management Training Program and was relocated in San Antonio, TX. I lived there for about a year and a half before moving back to CA at the Hyatt in Newport Beach in 2013.
While working at the Hyatt around 2015, I met up with a former schoolmate in the Philippines in LA. She was doing popup dinners and happened to need my help. So we met up in LA and I helped her with a Filipino popup brunch she was hosting. That’s when I realized, I wanted to also start doing popup dinners. It was so fun and the fact that I have complete creative control over my menu and concept was really enticing to me. I came across a platform called Eat Feastly and was able to utilize them up until 2018 when they went out of business.
Eat Feastly had two venues in LA. One at the Arts District and one in Venice. My concept was “modern Filipino” cuisine and for the entire 2016, I sold out every single popup dinner I hosted. It was 20 dinners total. It was so gratifying to be able to share myself to a wide range of diners thru my vision of what “modern” Filipino food was to me. I also started to dabble a little bit of baking while I was hosting these dinners. It started with Pandesal – a Filipino dinner roll eaten for breakfast or snack. I served it at every popup. My pandesal recipe didn’t start out perfect but it got better and better each time. When I was finally able to get the recipe down, I started making ube pandesal. Ube is a purple yam that is very popular in the Philippines and is used mostly in desserts. After a year or tweaking my pandesal recipe, I was able to make it perfect and consistent and I moved on to making cookies, desserts and cakes. I would sell my baked goods on the side for some extra cash but never really thought much about baking full-time.
In 2017, I left the Hyatt and joined the Hilton Costa Mesa team as a banquet chef. The property wasn’t as busy as the Hyatt so it gave me plenty of opportunity to give more attention to Kitchen 1726. In January of 2020, I was promoted from the restaurant sous chef to the executive sous chef. When the Covid19 hit, I was furloughed from March of 2020 until September of 2021.
This was actually when my business really started to take off. I’m not sure when exactly when it happened but the week after I lost my job, I was slowly getting messages and phone calls inquiring about my baked goods, meal prep, etc. It got to the point where I wasn’t even getting any sleep because all I would do is cook, bake and deliver.
2021 is when I decided to break-away from corporate America and really put forth all of my focus in Kitchen 1726. I have many clients that hire me for meal preps, company events, private dinners…I also partner up with Orange Coast Magazine with a couple of their yearly events such as Best of and Whiskey Social. I also have a few high profile clients in the entertainment industry and have been featured in a magazine spread for Orange City Lifestyle–a north Orange County Local Magazine that targets affluent areas of Orange County.
What I am most proud of is being able to share Filipino cuisine through my perspective with my clients and have it be welcomed. Filipino food is so much more than just your typical pancit, adobo and lumpia and I’m very grateful that I have the ability to share my vision to my audience.
Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?
I have had Instagram and Facebook since 2011 and I slowly built my audience through posting relevant content and by being relatable. I also post a lot of food photos and videos and my travel adventures. I maintain my social media by posting consistently and relevant to my brand.
My advice to anyone who is starting to build their social media audience is consistency. Keep posting and keep your audience curious of what you’re doing. I look at it this way, social media is my appetizer–I post on my stories about my dinner events, post photos and videos on my timeline and eventually they will get curious enough that they would want to hire me and that’s when I take that opportunity to blow their minds and form a relationship with them.
What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?
My side hustle absolutely became my full time business. I started doing popup dinners while I was a sous chef at the Hyatt in Newport Beach in 2016. My dinners were at $35 per person for 4-courses and because it became popular and people started to look forward to attending, I was able to more than double my price. I wanted to share my version of Filipino food to not only my fellow Filipinos but to non-Filipinos as well. I couldn’t bake to save my life when I was starting and I was terrible at giving speeches. By doing popup dinners and having strangers attend and actually enjoy your food was what really pushed me to become a personal chef. I love engaging with my clients/dinner guests.
Some of my key milestones are receiving recognition by Orange Coast Magazine for having one of the best ube treats in 2020, one of the best pandan treats in 2021, I was also featured on their magazine as a business owner that thrived during covid. I also did an editorial spread for Orange City Lifestyle magazine which will be coming out in November 2023 for their Thanksgiving issue. Meeting some of my favorite artists and actors and actually cooking for them is also something I am very proud of. I feel like this is my American dream, to be able to share my food to everyone and have the platform to do so.
Contact Info:
- Website: kitchen1726.com
- Instagram: @chefkryssie.eats | @kitchen.1726
Image Credits
Steven Suarez of New Age Productions Madison Truscan