Natasha Daniels is a chef de partie at Providence in Los Angeles and a 2026-27 U.S. Regional Finalist in the S.Pellegrino Young Chef Academy Competition. Working under chef Michael Cimarusti, Daniels brings together fine-dining technique, a long relationship with American farms, and an abiding curiosity about where ingredients come from.
Daniels began working in restaurant kitchens in Ohio and continued her culinary training through a high school vocational program, serving as culinary class president for two years. She found both a sense of belonging and an outlet for her appetite for hard work. Cooking also gave her a way to contribute to a community and make people happy through food and hospitality.
Her point of view begins on farms rather than in dining rooms. Daniels developed a formative relationship with The Chef’s Garden and its Culinary Vegetable Institute in Huron, Ohio, first volunteering there and later working as a freelance chef at events, conferences, and workshops. Time spent with growers taught her to consider seasonality, provenance, and waste while treating vegetables as the center of a dish rather than a supporting element.
After earning a bachelor’s degree in culinary nutrition from Johnson & Wales University, Daniels joined RATIONAL USA and eventually became the youngest and first female chef on its national training team. She later entered the inaugural Master of Professional Studies in Culinary Arts program at the Culinary Institute of America on a full Dom Pérignon scholarship. During the program, she staged at Per Se, Californios, The Harbor House Inn, and Bell’s.
Daniels subsequently spent two years at The French Laundry, working across the line, culinary garden, cellar, and restaurant operations. Her other influences include SingleThread chef Kyle Connaughton, whom she met at The Chef’s Garden; Maine chef Justin Walker; Harbor House Inn chef Matthew Kammerer; and The Chef’s Garden’s Jamie Simpson and Farmer Lee Jones. Daniels credits them collectively, rather than any single mentor, with shaping her approach.
That approach is vegetable-forward, seasonal, and curious. It is grounded in whole-ingredient cooking and informed by the different regions where Daniels has lived and trained, including Ohio, New England, Napa Valley, and Los Angeles. Coastal traditions also play an important role. Daniels forages, clams, fishes, and uses crab snares, experiences that have strengthened her connection to ingredients and their environments.
Her competition dish, “The Whole Bird, The Whole Garden,” is a zero-waste interpretation of Michel Bras’s Gargouillou. It carries one chicken across four preparations, accompanied by vegetables and herbs intended to evoke the abundance and variation of a garden.
Chicken connects several stages of Daniels’s career. At The Chef’s Garden, she fed chickens, gathered warm eggs, and cleaned her first bird. At her first restaurant job, The Flying Fig in Cleveland, she prepared chicken crépinettes. For Daniels, the ingredient is humble and ubiquitous but capable of demonstrating serious technique when given sufficient attention.
The dish also builds upon “A Walk Through the Garden,” a preparation served at The Chef’s Garden that Daniels describes as another interpretation of Bras’s influential vegetable composition. Through her version, she hopes to honor the entire bird, show the range of the garden, and represent the farms, kitchens, and communities that have shaped her.
Daniels ultimately hopes to open her own restaurant and develop a group with one or two fine-dining flagships focused on sustainable gastronomy. Her ambition extends beyond environmental responsibility. She wants to create a model that also supports the growers, cooks, servers, and other workers whose labor makes a restaurant possible.
Natasha Daniels is one of 10 chefs competing in the 2026-27 S.Pellegrino Young Chef Academy U.S. Regional Final. Meet the other finalists vying for a place at the global Grand Finale.
