It’s the typical bustling restaurant scene. Food sizzles in the kitchen; guests socialize over drinks in the dining room; dirty plates, bowls and silverware pile up in the sink; and the next course comes to the table, eager to be enjoyed. Only this particular scene isn’t happening inside of a chic bistro, and there aren’t staffed waiters and cooks. It’s all Laura Laird.
A Texan for almost 30 years, Laura is a wife, mother and self-made chef. After learning a variety of cuisine styles to enhance her craft, she began the Culinary Immersion Supper Club out of her house in 2017. Now she serves five-course meals to families all around Southlake and surrounding areas.
“It’s going to her home or yours and being immersed in amazing cuisine,” client Magdalena Battles says. “It isn’t just a dinner with her — it’s a whole experience.”
Immigrating to America when she was 24, Laura knows what it’s like to live without all of the flavors and sensations she experiences today. Now, she works to give her clients everything she missed while growing up.
RAISED IN ROMANIA
Laura was born in Ploiesti, Romania, in 1968. Raised under the communist rule of Nicolae Ceausescu, Laura lived with her parents on the sixth floor of a concrete building. With the winter weather usually dropping below zero degrees, Laura says living in Romania was like living in the freezing winter storm that crippled Texas in February.
“The electricity, the hot water, the gas — everything was turned off every day at 10 a.m. and would not turn back on until 6 p.m.,” Laura recalls. “We were told by Ceausescu and his people that we needed to do our part to pay down the debt that Romania was in. I lived like that for 10-15 years.”
Even getting food from the grocery store was a challenge for Laura and her family.
“You stood in line for five to six hours just for a loaf of bread,” Laura recalls. “Whether it was rain, snow, heat or sun, it didn’t matter. You stood and waited in line to get your bread. If you got to the front and they ran out, that was just your bad luck. You went home with the worst of the worst, or you went home with nothing at all.”
The rest of the grocery stores would be empty, save for a few cans of 10-year-old green beans and peas. While milk and yogurt were available when Laura was younger, those too faded away as she grew older. And if they were lucky, the butcher would have cuts of parizer bologna deli meat available.
“The people in the villages had a little more food,” Laura recalls. “They grew some vegetables and raised some livestock. People would bring my father things like lamb, chicken or pork. Mom would butcher it on the kitchen table, then we would freeze the meat so we could have it for a little while. The only beef we ate were the bones we used to make beef stock.”
Despite the hardships they faced, Laura loved to cook, especially around her grandmother. When she was 6, she would watch her grandma toast rice in a pan while she dangled her feet off of the kitchen table. When she turned 12, she learned how to make dumpling soup for her family.
“When I started learning how to cook, I learned that I loved it very much,” Laura says. “It wasn’t just a necessity to me. It was something I very much enjoyed and looked forward to.”
After Ceausescu’s government was overthrown in 1989, Laura experienced her first taste of freedom, and she was eager to see the world.
COMING TO AMERICA
In September 1992, Laura left Romania and explored Paris. She immediately noticed the difference between the two countries.
“The first time I went into a grocery store in Paris, I walked in and had one of those visceral experiences,” she recalls. “These people were carrying huge carts of food and checking out. I went all around these aisles, seeing fresh bread, hand-rolled pasta and 14 different kinds of cheeses. I had never seen that much food in my whole life, let alone in one day in one grocery store.”
Her eyes grew even wider when she tasted the food. From roast chicken and potatoes to roast beef sandwiches, there was nothing that Laura didn’t enjoy.
“The food was excellent everywhere,” Laura smiles. “The cheeses were fresh. The baguettes were golden brown, crispy and crunchy on the outside and moist and buttery on the inside. And you’ve never had French onion soup before if you haven’t had it in Paris. You couldn’t swing a dead cat and not hit a foodie somewhere in Paris.”
After three months, she took a detour into Germany via the autobahn, where she got to immerse herself even further into new culinary offerings.
“I went to an authentic German pub with beer wenches, and I ate so much German sausage and sauerkraut that I practically died and went to sausage and sauerkraut heaven,” she says. “The fact that I didn’t become 50 pounds overweight is a miracle in and of itself.”
When she moved to Houston, Texas, in December 1992, she only had an apartment and a car with a cigarette burn in the front seat to her name. But she also had the freedom to go to the store and buy more than bread and canned goods, and that was worth more.
“To this day, I’m smiling every time I go to the grocery store,” she expresses. “I am so grateful I can wake up in the middle of the night, go to certain stores and buy anything I want. I lived in Romania for 24 years. That never happened over there.”
CULINARY IMMERSION
During her first few years in America, Laura started watching cooking shows and picking up on hosts' tips and tricks, learning from professionals like Gordon Ramsay, Ina Garten and Wolfgang Puck.
“I was sitting in my living room watching Wolfgang Puck, and he says he’s going to serve this amazing piece of veal with polenta,” she recalls. “Polenta was peasant food. We boiled corn and water and ate it every day in Romania, and you’re here getting paid millions to make it. But then I tried making it his way, and it tasted amazing. I was like, ‘No wonder Wolfgang sells this thing for $12 a spoon.’”
Laura immersed herself into anything food-related, whether it was books or recipes. Laura says she would sometimes spend hours sitting on her couch reading and looking at pictures, essentially turning her living room into her own cooking school.
“I started studying cuisines of the world because I realized that even though food is universal, it’s also personal to everyone belonging to that culture,” Laura says. “Great food made with love always brings people together.”
A consultant recommended Laura start her own supper club, where she would travel from household to household to prepare elaborate four- to six-course meals for clients. In February 2017, she went for it and turned her culinary passions into a professional endeavor.
To test out the concept, Laura invited a group of friends to her house and served them a five-course meal that included a salad, salmon, soup, chicken stew and a fruit dessert called clafoutis. Longtime friend Tammy Lewis already knew the food would be delicious, but Laura exceeded her high expectations.
“We all loved each dish so much, it was actually hard to think of a criticism,” Tammy chuckles. “We gave her some thoughts of how the evening flowed, timing issues and how the soup needed to be warmer, but other than that, it was a great first event. It was then that I knew how incredibly strong her passion for food was.”
PASSION FOR FOOD AND PEOPLE
For years, Laura kept steadily growing her brand, promoting her business in Facebook groups, going to clients’ houses and serving dish after dish. Using only organic ingredients, Laura prides herself in her menu always being fresh and original, never repeating the same recipe twice. She also explains the origin and background of each course to her clients so they understand the significance of where it came from.
She’s also expanded to doing more themed events, such as French and global cuisine and “Downton Abbey” dinners. Her friend Mary Evelyn Wallace usually works alongside her as a floral decorator, and she says Laura’s creativity inspires her own.
“Working with Laura gives me joy, especially because Laura never loses her childlike excitement in sharing her work as it unfolds,” Mary says. “Laura excitedly outlines every detail with precision and always with a ready smile, even in the flurry and intensity of an event.”
Laura has even hosted a murder-mystery dinner modeled after Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot novels, where she wrote out the script and characters her clients played.
“My husband played detective Poirot,” Magdalena chuckles. “I didn’t think he would get into it, but he did. He played the part, investigated, accused suspects and had fun with it. I think Laura made it easy for him.”
Seeing her guests happy and satisfied makes the whole endeavor worth it to Laura.
“That’s what I love about this business — meeting people and them allowing me into their intimate home with their family and friends for one night,” Laura says. “I adore the interaction, the friendships I make and seeing the people’s smile when they eat.”
People are why she got into food in the first place, whether she was cooking for her own family or others’.
“I want people to know where I came from,” she expresses. “Why food is so important to me — because of how I grew up. Why people are so important to me — also because of how I grew up. Whatever you had, you shared with others. When you didn’t have food, you had each other.”