Cat Cora made television history this year on the Food Network’s Iron Chef America as the first and only female Iron Chef. Based upon the format of the Japanese cult sensation, Iron Chef, America carries on the legend of the Kitchen Stadium and the famed “secret ingredient.” Each week, world class chefs battle the legendary Iron chefs of America: Bobby Flay, Mario Batali, Masaharu Morimoto, and Cat Cora.

Cora has just been named the Executive Chef of Bon Appetit Magazine. She is the first ever Executive Chef for the prestigious magazine.

Cora also co-hosted the Food Network show, Kitchen Accomplished. Each week Cora, design expert Wolfgang Schaber, and contractor Peter Marr surprised a homeowner in desperate need of a new kitchen. With the homeowner’s wish list as a starting point, the team had three days to complete a total kitchen makeover. Cat last appeared alongside Wolfgang Puck in NBC’s Primetime Miniseries Celebrity Cooking Showdown where celebrities were paired with famous chefs and competed against each other in a timed cook-off a la Iron Chef.

Additionally, she co-hosted the Food Network’s Melting Pot with Rocco Di Spirito, My Country, My Kitchen: Greece, and she was one of the featured hosts on Fine Living’s Simplify Your Life. She is featured in a documentary called Cat’s In The Kitchen by director/producer Scott France about her first James Beard dinner that took place in April, 2002. Cora will also be featured in a new series for PBS called Chef’s Story, co-produced by the same company that created Inside the Actor’s Studio”. Each episode is structured around the life, culinary roots, and work of a world-renown master chef, and will provide a unique glimpse of his/her evolution as a culinary legend.

Cat’s first published cookbook was called Cat Cora’s Kitchen. Her second book titled Cooking from the Hip will be out Spring 2007.

On the humanitarian front, Cora is the President and Co-Founder of Chefs for Humanity which was developed in response to the tsunami tragedy. It is a national grassroots coalition of culinary professionals who raise funds and resources in response to circumstances that put any group of people in a country in need of humanitarian relief. In addition to this, she recently became the nutritional spokesperson for UNICEF 2006 with a focus on Malawi, Africa.

Cora was raised in a small Greek community in Jackson, Mississippi by a family who held strongly to their Greek and Southern heritage, which included traditions, celebrations, and food. In the Cora family, it was common to eat spices from the South, as well as fresh sheep and goat cheeses and home-cured olives sent by relatives from the island of Skopelos. Both her grandfather, father, and godfather were restaurateurs and by the time she was fifteen she had already presented a business plan to them for her very own restaurant.

During college she cooked at an Italian bistro and a private dining club preparing classical French cuisine. After graduating from college, Cat followed a dream and backpacked through Europe for four months in search of good food and wine.
Leaving Mississippi for New York, Cat got the education of her dreams at The Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park on the advice of a famous mentor, Julia Child. Child specifically advised Cora about CIA and following her dreams as a chef. While in New York, she apprenticed with and then worked for Chef Anne Rozenweig at Arcadia and worked at the Beekman tavern under Chef Larry Forgione of An American Place.

Cora’s culinary education continued in Europe with apprenticeships with two of France's three-star Michelin chefs: George Blanc and Roger Verge. From George Blanc of Vonnas, outside of Lyon, she learned a great deal about cuisine of the French countryside, tolerance, and extreme cooking. With Roger Verge, she learned not only about cooking great classical French cuisine, but also about embracing life and living it to the fullest.

After returning to New York, Cora worked as a sous chef at The Old Chatham Shepherding Company under Chef Melissa Kelly before heading west to plant her roots in Northern California. She was offered the position of Chef de Cuisine in Napa Valley's Bistro Don Giovanni where her knowledge and love of Italian-inspired cuisine grew. Cora has plans for her own signature restaurant in 2007.
Cat has been fortunate enough to cook for such luminaries as Jacques Pepin, Robert Mondavi, Wolfgang Puck, and Bill Gates.