Today we’d like to introduce you to Anthony Nicaj.
Hi Anthony, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today.
Most chefs have a photo of themselves as kids in the kitchen, wearing a chef’s hat, standing on a chair, and stirring a pot on the stove. I’m not like most chefs. While growing up in New York, I only showed a slight interest in cooking. Despite my El Salvadorian immigrant mom being a fantastic cook for our family, I mainly ate chicken fingers. I do remember loving the spice cabinet smells, though. I would climb the kitchen counter and stick my head in there to absorb the aromas. Although I didn’t spend much time in the kitchen some of my fondest memories growing up involved my mom putting me to work preparing elaborate dishes during holidays so we could all eventually sit down at the end of the day and celebrate the occasion together.
My first time working in a kitchen came from needing pocket change and a meal. When I was 23 years old, I decided to walk across America- from New York to the coast of Washington- as a rite of passage for myself. The walk took 8 months to complete. During that time, I came across a few restaurants that let me work a night or two in exchange for dinner and a roof over my head. In these kitchens, I learned that I didn’t need culinary school to figure out how to work in professional kitchens. I also learned that I loved the kitchen environment and watching someone’s face light up after eating something I made, just like my mom did with our holiday meals.
After the walk, I moved to Austin to be closer to my family who lived here. My sister’s friend opened a gastropub in town and allowed me to work there as a bartender. I eventually gravitated towards the kitchen and asked for small tasks to learn how to contribute. The chef referred me to a prep cook position at another restaurant; from there, I spent the next couple of years working for a steakhouse, a food truck company, a brick-and-mortar Italian restaurant, and a catering company. I then made it to a position as a prep cook at a restaurant under a reputable James-Beard nominated chef. This restaurant was essentially my culinary school. It taught me scratch-cooking techniques, refined my palate, and taught me how to develop dishes.
In 2016, I started a personal and private chef company with a friend I had worked with. We stumbled upon this opportunity after a mutual friend asked us to cook for their birthday party at their apartment. Seeing people enjoy our food and make memories in an intimate setting got me hooked. Over the next few years, we took on as many cooking jobs as possible, eventually serving celebrities and hundreds of gatherings in Austin every year. Over my nearly ten years in the industry, I’ve cooked in small-town diners, food trucks, and mansions for some of the world’s wealthiest and most influential people. No matter the setting or the price point, everyone always wants the same thing- great food and a memorable experience that facilitates connections with those around them. It’s human nature. I realized, though, that typically, these experiences are inaccessible to most people due to their highly customized menus driving up costs. At the same time, I saw more people wanting these types of services come to their homes due to the pandemic. I recognized an opportunity. I made it my mission to make a company that provides at-home dining experiences that are delicious, fun, and accessible to everyone, not just the Austin elite. I started Happy Cooking in late 2023 with my partner, Ashley Brown.
It wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Happy Cooking stands on the backs of three failed entrepreneurial ventures. My other attempts at making it outside the corporate or restaurant environment ended due to the need for a better strategy and better alignment with business partners. If I didn’t have those experiences from these previous businesses, Happy Cooking might never have seen the light of day.
Let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
Happy Cooking is the only dining services company in Austin that’s part cooking class and part show- making it the perfect experience for birthday parties, family gatherings, work off-sites and bachelor and bachelorette parties. We bring the fun back to hosting.
When you book a Happy Cooking Party, a chef comes to your home and prepares a delicious 3-course menu while engaging you and your guests in games and hands-on cooking tutorials between each course. The beauty of hiring Happy Cooking is that we provide dishes that are proven, chef-driven crowd-pleasers from my decade of personal chef experience, including Pasta, Brunch, Steak Dinner, and Cookout Parties. Hosts can get out of the kitchen and be with their guests, and guests get to walk away with culinary tips and full bellies. Each party even includes a QR code with step-by-step cooking videos and recipes so our customers can make a dish from the menu on their own.
We’re all about making memories easy and bringing your party vision to life. We work with you to personalize the most important elements of your party, such as the menus, where you want to have the party (indoor, outdoor), and the tailored activities to make guests of honor feel the love. For example, every party is given a chef hat and menu for guests to doodle on as a keepsake. We also offer a social media content creation package where we have a creator capture your event and produce social media-ready videos for you to post.
And we’ve spent a lot of time figuring out how to make our booking process as simple as possible so hosts can spend more time on the fun parts of party prep and less time going through booking logistics. Our parties are booked with just a few clicks on HappyCookingATX.com. Just choose your party type, your date, and pay your deposit, and you can cross booking a chef and entertainment off your to-do list!
Is there a quality that you most attribute to your success?
As a chefprenuer, I’ve found the most important ingredients to the recipe of success include staying humble and having an insatiable appetite for learning. Cooking in someone’s home or for their special day is a privilege and I feel a significant responsibility to make that moment memorable for them. I’m constantly digging through cookbooks, experiencing new restaurants, collaborating with other chefs on techniques, and gathering customer feedback to help my team reverse-engineer the perfect dining experience. It’s essential to try new things and stay in line with what customers are asking for. For example, we just tried out a “Valentine’s Cooking Date Kit” offering. We’re excited to hear what our customers thought and hopefully do more holiday offerings in the future.
Pricing:
- Brunch, Steak Dinner, Cookout and Pasta Parties start at $50 per person
Contact Info:
- Website: happycookingatx.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/happycookingatx
- Yelp: yelp.com/biz/happy-cooking-austin
- Other: tiktok.com/@happycookingatx
