About Me

Rachel is a lover to all things food and beverage. She is a transplant to Austin, Texas from New Jersey via way of New York City. She moved in hopes to find a way out of the restaurant business to be an edgy, indie musicmaker but instead found herself in Austin wanting to become a fancy food femme.

After making the decision to leave for Austin in 2010, she began work at FINO Restaurant Patio & Bar. Her work at Fino included being a host, server, head trainer, and bartender as well as some back office and website work. It was also here that she gained her passion for wine and craft cocktails. 

In 2012, Rachel worked as a spirits representative for Virtuoso Selections selling unique, boutique, and craft-oriented spirits including the portfolios of Caribbean Spirits, Haus Alpenz, Combier, Leopold Bros., Bittermens, and Siembra Azul among others. She represented these brands at the 2012 San Antonio Cocktail Conference and has worked closely with importers, distillers, and suppliers. Rachel has also spent time bartending and cocktailing at such bars in Austin, Texas as Midnight Cowboy, Contigo Austin, and Weather Up Austin. 

In 2012, Rachel began working with Genuine Article, a bookkeeping and hospitality consulting company headed up by Brian Stubbs. Along with bookkeeping, she assists with concept development and has written and copyedited press releases, proposals, and business plans for multiple up-and-coming bars and restaurants.

In 2013, she took a job as a bartender on the opening staff Top Chef winner, Paul Qui’s flagship restaurant, Qui. There, she takes care of menu development, liquor, beer, and wine inventory, as well as education and training manuals on the beverage end. Her cocktails have been featured in the Austin-American Statesman and Whole Food’s Dark Rye online magazine. She is also a Certified Sommelier with the Court of Master Sommeliers.

She has been a contributing cocktail and food writer at Tasted Menu and Human Being Curious as well keeping up with her own spirits-focused blog which has been recommended by Find.Eat.Drink as a website to read. 

Her obsessions have ranged through organic food movements, Farm Aid, vegetarianism, raw food, offal, baking, canning and jam-making, international cuisine, Italian home cooking, tea picking, Anthony Bourdain, vintage cocktails, food photography, and most recently, coffee and Old World wines.