Lu Cebreros

My passion for cooking is very much related to my mother, who owned a taqueria where it was just me and her with her business, mainly making tacos and feeding the truckers that would stop by at a gas station. I took a lot of tips and pointers from her. After going to school in Iowa, I moved to Chicago where I was teaching urban agriculture to third graders. From there, I went from being a line cook to getting a supervising position and going into being a chef, opening up a couple restaurants for a couple of influential celebrity chefs. I wanted to have a little bit more of a work-life balance, so I became involved with university dining. Right before the pandemic hit, I became a task force chef for a company called Pendry, and they sent me on location to Big Sky, Montana, where I was cooking for a private country club with a few VIP names. Coming from Mexico and LA and Chicago, I kind of brought those flavors over to Montana, and I was sought out for private clientele over there. After that, I returned to Chicago, where I still have a couple of private clients that have streamed over from Montana, but I mainly focus on university dining right now. I'm currently second in command catering chef at the Global Hub for Northwestern University, where the Global Hub focuses on executive education, graduate students, CEOs, and executives that run logistics for Northwestern. They come in from different parts of the world for their conferences, and I basically create the menu and they have dinners there for their conferences and meetings.