Tenure: Raised in Goleta, the SBCC Culinary Arts & Hotel Management graduate now is one of Denver's most highly regarded chefs, with four critically acclaimed restaurants under her belt and a new one, Denver Union Station, opening this spring, showcasing food from the Iberian Peninsula countries of Spain and Portugal.
Résumé: With a stint at New York's Rainbow Room before she was 21, and a decade-long partnership with Wolfgang Puck and prominent chef positions at several of his restaurants, she has remained at the top of her class professionally, too. She remembers Puck’s utmost attention to his customers’ experience. “It was amazing — just a great person to watch: how he tasted everything, saw everything, cared about guest experience. He really saw all the facets of the business, not just the kitchen,” Jasinski said.
Dishes she digs: Jasinski remembers growing up in Goleta, when "every corner was either a lemon orchard or a farm stand or a pumpkin patch,” with a single parent and two siblings, each taking turns to cook. She continues to cook seasonally in a “straightforward, clean” style, seeing how much she can stretch out of a vegetable, preferring “to take an ingredient and use it multiple ways and show its versatility.” She’s recently been jazzed about her own home creations, like an asparagus-mushroom exploratory dish she whipped up for guests: caramelized bone marrow and scallops wrapped in asparagus, with an asparagus velouté, black trumpet mushroom purée, and wilted black trumpet.