A Fresh Start At Cooking Light: ICE Alum Katie Barreira

 

By Carly DeFilippo

 

While cooking in restaurant kitchens is time well spent for any culinary career, many ICE students enroll in our program with the goal to find a future in food outside of restaurant kitchens. Fusing her freelance writing experience with her culinary training, ICE alum Katie Barreira (Culinary Arts '07) has landed her dream job in food media, strategically building a career that includes both test kitchen and editorial experience at such magazines as Every Day with Rachael Ray and Cooking Light. 

Why did you choose ICE for your culinary education?
After graduating from Bucknell University with a BA in English, I worked on the line at La Morra, a fine dining Tuscan restaurant in Brookline, MA, while freelance writing for publications like the Boston Globe. So when it came to choosing a school, I liked that ICE supported food media as a culinary career path and encouraged me to use my externship as a springboard toward work in that part of the industry. And, as it turns out, the industry connections I made through my externship at Food & Wine magazine were instrumental in helping me break into food media.

 

Are there any professional accomplishments of which you are particularly proud?
When I started out in magazines, test kitchen and editorial work were viewed as two very separate entities, but it was important to me to be able to flex my muscles as both a cook and a writer. It took a good deal of perseverance to successfully pursue both, but doing so provided me with the most fulfilling and exciting work of my career.