Bernadette Machard de Gramont
Writer and Photographer in West Hollywood, CA, United States
Instead of applesauce, juice boxes, and Cheerios, 5-year-old Bernadette regularly enjoyed prito & sinangag (fried fish and garlic rice) for breakfast. Watching her mom knead dough for steamed pork buns and roll mountains of lumpia for parties, eating fruit straight off her grandfather's trees, wandering into the kitchen of her family's restaurant, picking out live crab with her Dad, and discovering the myriad of Asian foods at her fingertips as a kid in Honolulu, food became her passport to the world. There was no such thing as "kid's food" and "grown-up's food" - there was just...food.
A college friend taught her about Thomas Keller and the Zagat Guide, sparking Bernadette's interest in gastronomy. She moved to San Francisco in 2001, where she dove headfirst into a whole new set of foods: Indian curries, injera bread, pizza Napolitana, Shanghainese soup dumplings, carne asada tacos, freshly shucked Hog Island Oysters.
After working in entertainment and fashion and exploring the interior design industry, she changed fields in 2009 and fell in love with French food and wine. Her passion for cooking, eating, traveling, and culinary anthropology evolved into a writing career.
Bernadette has since written for Food & Wine, Wine Enthusiast, Business Insider, TheKitchn, All Recipes, Apartment Therapy, Food52, The Spruce Eats, The Quality Edit, MyFitnessPal.com, Williams-Sonoma, Wine.com, Thermomix USA Healthline.com, Gogobot, TripCreator, Matador Network, Made Local Magazine, Tastemade, and Vinfolio. View her writing portfolio here.