Elizabeth Falkner

Chef Elizabeth Falkner is a world recognized, award-winning chef and continues to be a leader and pioneer in food, culinary, film and other media.

Elizabeth worked her way up in restaurants in the 1990s in the San Francisco Bay Area, and then opened Citizen Cake in 1997, a multiple award-winning patisserie and restaurant she owned and operated for 15 years, followed by Orson in 2008. She worked in San Francisco for over 20 years before moving to New York in 2012. Today she cooks on a regular basis for Rosie O’Donnell and family and she works on recipe development with multiple brands and clients. She continues to cook at events and food and wine festivals all over.

For Elizabeth, cooking competitions have been a favorite “sport”. She has competed in multiple culinary competitions including Food Network’s Tournament of Champions (seasons 1-4), Iron Chef America and Next Iron Chef, Super Chefs, in which she was a finalist and runner up. She has been a three-time competitor on Food Network Challenge, as well as a contestant on Bravo’s Top Chef Masters. In addition to competing, Elizabeth has appeared as a judge on several episodes on the Top Chef series on Bravo network, multiple shows in the Food Network, and on Unique Sweets and Unique Eats on the Cooking Channel and Food Network, Canada. She has appeared on many national television shows such as Martha Stewart, Cooking with Ming Tsai, Tyler’s Ultimate, Rachel Ray, and multiple morning shows and segments as well as other media channels. Elizabeth embraces the different traditions, styles and seasons in the west coast and east coast and everything between. She cooks both savory and sweet, traditional and modern.

She is an advocate for people and chefs to think more like athletes and “stay fit to cook.” She played league soccer for 28 years, and does Jungshin and Iaido, both being forms of sword fighting fitness and martial arts. She also practices yoga on a regular basis, does cross fit, pilates, has run dozens of half marathons and the NY Marathon in 2016, and more recently her focus is on cycling and tennis.

Elizabeth was nominated for a James Beard Award for Outstanding Pastry Chef (2005). Her first cookbook, Demolition Desserts (2007) was a finalist for IACP’s Julia Child Best First Cookbook award in 2008. Cooking Off the Clock, her second book, was released August 2012, both Ten Speed Press.

She was a long-time member, on the board of directors, and served as the president of Women Chefs & Restaurateurs from April 2014 to April 2015 and 2019-2020. She is also on the board of trustees of the James Beard Foundation. Elizabeth is an author of two cookbooks, who cooks, speaks and teaches all over the world. In 2022 she completed a documentary called, “Sorry We’re Closed”, which won Best Documentary Feature at Pasadena Film Festival 2023 and is available on AppleTV and Amazon Prime and other steaming platforms.