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Our Chefs

aj-dediego.jpg Chef AJ DeDiego

AJ DeDiego is an Atlanta based dessert business owner. He sells custom cakes and other desserts to a variety of customers, as well as wholesale baked goods for 5 different businesses around the city of Atlanta. Over the last few years, AJ has published a cookbook, launched an online store selling handmade dessert mixes and fresh baked goods for nationwide shipping, been featured in a number of online articles, and he's appeared as a contestant on Food Network's Halloween Baking Championship. AJ loves teaching others to bake and decorate cakes, and does so by posting recipe videos across his social media as well as in person classes.

 

  

 

don-hackett-melissa-pelkey-hass.jpeg Sommelier Don Hackett

Sommelier Don Hackett is a certified wine specialist who has been educating consumers for years all over Georgia. Don is also a former Decatur Cook's & Sherlocks manager and has been teaching with us for over 20 years.

 

 

 

 

gloria-smiley.jpeg Chef Gloria Smiley

Gloria Smiley is no stranger to Cook's Warehouse. She has been sous chef for Diane Wilkinson for more years than both of them care to count or can remember. She began her culinary career as a student of Diane's, and has taken classes at Cordon Bleu and LaVarenne in Paris; and with Lydie Marshall in Nyons, France. She is an independent food stylist for print and film and some of her most memorable clients include Julia Child, Jean George Vongerichten, Daniel Boulud, and yes, Richard Simmons. She is also a member of Les Dames d'Escoffier, IACP and AIWF.

 

 

 

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 Chef Melissa Pelkey-Hass

Melissa has used her culinary skills to compete in cooking and recipe competitions locally and nationwide. Her craft has earned over 320 State Fair Blue Ribbons, 160 Red Ribbons and titles of Spam Champion, Fleishman's Yeast Baking Champion, Hidden Valley Ranch Recipe Winner, and the Chicago Cutlery's "The Cut" Sandwich National Grand Champion to name a few. Melissa has had over 100 recipes published in national publications such as "Taste of Home", "Southern Living", Epicurious.com, and "Healthy Cooking" books and magazines and was recently featured on the cover of Taste of Home for her Gruyere & Egg Burger, deemed best burger in the country.

Melissa created her blog, The Front Porch Gourmet, to give her friends, family and readers a place to talk food, feel at home and share a little Southern humor. She shares all types of recipes from Mama's Southern Fried Chicken to an elaborate Beef Wellington. Melissa has also recently partnered with another blogger to create the Drink.Dine.Do blogsite focusing on gourmet food, luxury travel and lifestyle.

 

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 Chefs Melissa Pelkey-Hass & Paul Zang

Melissa has used her culinary skills to compete in cooking and recipe competitions locally and nationwide. Her craft has earned over 320 State Fair Blue Ribbons, 160 Red Ribbons and titles of Spam Champion, Fleishman's Yeast Baking Champion, Hidden Valley Ranch Recipe Winner, and the Chicago Cutlery's "The Cut" Sandwich National Grand Champion to name a few. Melissa has had over 100 recipes published in national publications such as "Taste of Home", "Southern Living", Epicurious.com, and "Healthy Cooking" books and magazines and was recently featured on the cover of Taste of Home for her Gruyere & Egg Burger, deemed best burger in the country.

An avid lover of cooking and baking, Paul is no stranger to the kitchen. After college, Paul spent 3 years working in a high-end restaurant in Boston run by a James Beard award winning chef. In 2008, Paul decided to make the transition to the housewares industry and settled in Atlanta, his hometown. Paul has spent the past 12 years managing gourmet retail stores and cooking schools in the Metro-Atlanta area, the last five of which have been at The Cook's Warehouse Midtown location. When he's not at the store, Paul enjoys gardening and spending time with his Pomeranian, Thomas. 

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 Chef Michelle Pellegri

Michelle Pellegri has been a pastry chef and culinary educator since 2004, and is the owner of Roswell Baking Company, a cottage-licensed home baking business. Leaving the corporate world behind, she shifted gears and decided to turn her passion baking and creativity into a new career. She graduated from the culinary program at Chattahoochee Technical College in Marietta, GA and rounded out her education with a transformative culinary internship in France at Ecole de Cuisine La Varenne, under the supervision of Anne Willan.

Michelle is a native Atlantan and first-generation Italian-America. She grew up in a household that valued fresh baked bread and focaccia, made homemade pasta, and grew vegetables; all of which instilled an appreciation for cooking and eating really great food. Michelle's professional pastry experience includes stints at Bacchanalia, Star Provisions, Rainwater, and Varasano's Pizzeria. She teaches baking and cooking classes all around Atlanta and if she could bake one thing, everyday for the rest of her life, it would be croissants.

 

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 Chef Naina Bhedwar

Naina Bhedwar is an entirely self-taught chef whose passion for food and cooking began when she was barely knee high, mother and grandmothers kitchens. Hailing from two distinct and vibrant Indian communities, the Parsis (originally of Persia) and the Punjabis of India's North, Naina has had the further privilege of living in all four corners of India as well as abroad in Australia, the UK and now, Atlanta. Each home brought with it new and delicious culinary and cultural experiences, allowing a faceted and multilayered love of food to emerge and take a steadfast hold.

Kesar Kitchen, LLC (Kesar is the Hindi term for Saffron ~ Naina's favored spice) offers exciting and interesting ways to present the endlessly varied and incredibly interesting food of India. Naina also offers Persian / Iranian dishes, as a salute to her ancestry, as well as other cuisines from the Near East.

 

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 Chefs Nancy Waldeck & Crystal Leach

Healthy Chef Partyologist Nancy Waldeck is a culinary educator and innovator. She teaches in a variety of corporate settings like Google, Norfolk Southern, Florida Blue, Calphalon and Piedmont Hospitals, plus a number of respected culinary schools like Atlanta's own Cooks Warehouse. A media veteran, several times a month she enjoys sharing creative tips and techniques about healthy cooking on NBC TV's Atlanta and Company show.  Nothing makes cookbook author Nancy happier than sharing the treasures of explorations with others, so she hosts carefully curated wine and culinary trips around the world for small groups of curious guests.

After almost 20 years in the corporate world, Crystal realized that what was once a weekend pursuit and avocation had become increasingly important to her - so she decided to take the leap and focus on her passion for baking and pastry. In 2013, she completed an intensive Pastry Arts Course at L'Ecole National Superieure de Patisserie near Lyons, France followed by an internship in a pastry shop in Paris. 

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 Chefs Nancy Waldeck & Renee Jackson

Healthy Chef Partyologist Nancy Waldeck is a culinary educator and innovator. She teaches in a variety of corporate settings like Google, Norfolk Southern, Florida Blue, Calphalon and Piedmont Hospitals, plus a number of respected culinary schools like Atlanta's own Cooks Warehouse. A media veteran, several times a month she enjoys sharing creative tips and techniques about healthy cooking on NBC TV's Atlanta and Company show.  Nothing makes cookbook author Nancy happier than sharing the treasures of explorations with others, so she hosts carefully curated wine and culinary trips around the world for small groups of curious guests.

Renée Jackson is a passionate cooking instructor with a particular love for baking. Although she is not classically trained, Renée has honed her skills through years of dedicated practice and experimentation in her own kitchen. Her culinary journey began as a hobby shared with just friends and family, but her talent and enthusiasm quickly turned it into a thriving side venture - Mad Macs. Renée’s approachable teaching style and creative recipes have made her a favorite among students of all levels. She believes that anyone can learn to cook and bake delicious food with the right guidance and a bit of passion. Join Renée in her classes to discover the joy of cooking and baking.

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 Chef Nealey Thompson

Nealey Dozier Thompson's career started in Los Angeles, first as a wedding planner to the stars until culinary school called her name. She has worked as a recipe developer and food writer for over a decade and as a full-time culinary instructor for five years. You can find her work published in Southern Living, O, the Oprah Magazine, and Redbook, in addition to The Kitchn and Cooking Channel.

 

 

  

 

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 Chefs Nealey Thompson & Paul Zang

Nealey Dozier Thompson's career started in Los Angeles, first as a wedding planner to the stars until culinary school called her name. She has worked as a recipe developer and food writer for over a decade and as a full-time culinary instructor for five years. You can find her work published in Southern Living, O, the Oprah Magazine, and Redbook, in addition to The Kitchn and Cooking Channel.

An avid lover of cooking and baking, Paul is no stranger to the kitchen. After college, Paul spent 3 years working in a high-end restaurant in Boston run by a James Beard award winning chef. In 2008, Paul decided to make the transition to the housewares industry and settled in Atlanta, his hometown. Paul has spent the past 12 years managing gourmet retail stores and cooking schools in the Metro-Atlanta area, the last five of which have been at The Cook's Warehouse Midtown location. When he's not at the store, Paul enjoys gardening and spending time with his Pomeranian, Thomas.

 

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 Chef Za

Chef Za is a founder, cookbook author, and content creator based in Atlanta, Georgia. She combines her zesty personality with her love for travel and fresh ingredients to curate fun and memorable culinary experiences that drive impact. Eager to translate her love for cooking into a business, she founded Zaza’s Kitchen in 2018 as an undergraduate student at Spelman College. Upon researching how to address food-related health disparities as a doctoral student, she pivoted into becoming a full time chef and entrepreneur. Through Zaza's Kitchen, she offers cooking classes, recipe development, content creation, and private dining/catering services. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology, a Food and Nutrition Teacher Certificate from Columbia University, and a Masters of Italian Regional Cuisine from the Italian Culinary Institute in Calabria, Italy. You can learn more about Zaza’s Kitchen by following @zazaskitchen on Instagram and TikTok or by visiting www.zazaskitchen.com.

 

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 Chef Paul Zang

An avid lover of cooking and baking, Paul is no stranger to the kitchen. After college, Paul spent 3 years working in a high-end restaurant in Boston run by a James Beard award winning chef. In 2008, Paul decided to make the transition to the housewares industry and settled in Atlanta, his hometown. Paul has spent the past 12 years managing gourmet retail stores and cooking schools in the Metro-Atlanta area, the last five of which have been at The Cook's Warehouse Midtown location. When he's not at the store, Paul enjoys gardening and spending time with his Pomeranian, Thomas. 

 

  

 

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 Chef Sunisa Somnuek

Growing up in Thailand Sunisa was surrounded with family who loved to cook and she always found time to help with her mom's catering business.  This taught her a lot about how to cook exceptional Thai food.  Sunisa would go onto to study at Kasetsart University and earned a bachelor's degree in Agricultural Chemistry.  Also she would earn an MBA in Marketing from Ramkhamhang University.   After finishing school she worked in marketing for a major cell phone company in Thailand.  However being satisfied with her career, Sunisa's real passion was to travel the world and try different cultural foods while learning how to cook all of them.  This passion would lead her to Atlanta in 2006.  While spending the last nine years in Atlanta, Sunisa  always love to cook Thai food at her home by using her family recipes and always found a way to cook Thai food that tasted like her home country while substituting some of the ingredients that could not be found in America.  These discoveries lead her to write the blog modern Thai Food.blogspot.com .  After beginning her blog, she started her cooking class at Bradford at Bishop before eventually finding her way to The Cook's Warehouse.  During that time period Sunisa also served as a personal events personal chef.  She has also started blogging about her life as a mom, chef & wife at Mama After 10

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 Chef Thomas Numprasong

Chef Thomas Numprasong started his Culinary journey as a dishwasher in a bagel shop in 1994 and worked his way up to the Executive Pastry Chef position at Canoe in Atlanta in 2008. He attended Johnson & Wales University in both Charleston SC and Providence RI and graduated Summa Cum Laude with a Bachelors of Science in Baking & Pastry Arts. During this time he also attended Culinary School in Southeast Asia at Suan Dusit University in Bangkok Thailand and At-Sunrice Global Chef Academy in Singapore.

He has been a Chocolatier since 2005 after he trained with Swiss, German, and French Chef's at JWU. He has worked for the Four Seasons Hotels, Foxwoods Casinos, Concentrics Restaurant Group, Circa 1886 at the Wentworth Mansion, the Spiced Pear at the Chanler House, and taught Baking & Pastry at Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts for 6 years.

Today he has his own business known as Temo Foods which specializes in private dinner parties, weekly meal preps, cooking classes, and chocolate confections.