IVY HAAKS

Chef de Patisserie

M Café de Chaya

Ivy Haaks, had a revelation and this occurred at
New York City’s National Gourmet Institute for Food and
Health, led by the culinary visionary Annemarie Colbin.
The possibilities of arriving at the forefront of a revolution in healthful dining proved irresistible, in fact, leading the young chef to open her own vegan restaurant in Manhattan in 1992 – the Sun Café. Her notoriety as a vegan pastry chef led to pastry commissions by Healthy Pleasures, New York’s first all-natural supermarket, and soon thereafter Featherweight Pastry Company, her own private pastry catering firm in upstate New York. Returning to the city, Ivy served as Food and Quality Inspector for New York City’s Greenmarkets, where she was in charge of auditing the Greenmarket bakeries, visiting and inspecting farms throughout the state of New York to ensure strict compliance with the guidelines set forth by the NYC Council for the Environment.

2001 proved to be a pivotal year for many of New York’s culinary leaders. Compelled to expand upon her cooking expertise, which centered primarily upon vegan and vegetarian lifestyle options, Ivy enrolled in the exhaustive Chef training programs of Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, France. She studied formal French cuisine in Paris for two years, opting to complete her final year of studies in London. Upon receiving her Le Grand Diplome Cuisine and Patisserie, she relocated to Adelaide, South Australia, where she was awarded Cordon Bleu’s Bachelor of Restaurant Management. Her academic interests peaked with Le Cordon Bleu’s Master of Arts in Gastronomy, in conjunction with the University of Adelaide, where she completed the dissertation “The Future of Organics in the United States.” In 2004, Ivy relocated to Los Angeles, where she owned and operated Whole Haute, a health-oriented catering and meal delivery service. Her firm was a pioneer in providing individualized menus that specifically analyzed the dietary requirements for each client. Ivy then joined M Café de Chaya as Chef de Patisserie in the fall of 2006.

Ivy arrives at M Café with a mission: “Although we adhere to the principles of macrobiotics,” says the chef, “it is my job to simply wow people with incredible flavors. Even while I was at Le Cordon Bleu, I was always thinking of how to retool recipes for healthful cooking. We are continually testing and learning to take the classics and remold them for a health-conscious audience. This style of cooking is just now reaching into the mainstream and it is a very exciting time to be at M Café, obviously the leader in macrobiotic dining.”