Ivy Stark always knew she wanted to be a chef. Her earliest cooking memory is making potato salad at age 5 or 6 with her mother in Boulder, Colorado. Remembers Stark, "I found it unbelievable that you could take such simple ingredients — potatoes, mayonnaise, some flavorings — and make something so wonderful. I was hooked." Stark soon graduated to an Easy-Bake oven, then stepped up to a Winnie-the-Pooh cookbook, and cut her teeth with her first cooking class at age 9.

Stark attended UCLA where she took a BA in history before heading to New York to attend ICE's culinary arts program. She graduated in 1995 and traveled back the West Coast to intern at the celebrated Border Grill under Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger (of "Too Hot Tamales" fame). She stayed on for two years, getting experience at every station — even filling in for a pastry chef out on maternity leave.

Stark bounced back and forth between both coasts for the next few years, working at such high-profile restaurants as Sign of the Dove, Normand Laprise's Cena, and the Pan-Latin restaurant Ciudad, another venture of Milliken and Feniger.

Stark headed back east for good in 1999 and ended up working for 6 months as a private chef for Ralph Lauren while she took stock of what she wanted. Realizing that Latin cuisine was her passion, she decided that the executive chef position at Zocola, the creative Mexican restaurant on East 82nd Street, was for her. "Mexican is a fascinating, complex cuisine with endless possibilities" says Stark, and although she enjoys authentic Mexican she also a talent for bringing in other influences, a talent that shows up on her menus.

Another passion, increased after taking a course at the American Sommelier Association, is wine, and she spends as much time as her schedule allows in pursuing it.

December, 2002