It all started when…

A native of the Midwest, Burns’ interest in food began at an early age with childhood outings to the market for comfort foods like warm corned beef and Muenster cheese. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Burns earned degrees in Cultural Anthropology and South Asian studies with a focus in Tibetan language, which took her to Nepal and India for a year, where she fell in love with the region’s exotic spices and flavors. Upon graduation, Burns moved to Australia, where she first began to cook professionally, and eventually returned to the States in 2001, settling in the Bay Area. 

In San Francisco, Burns first worked at Café Rouge under Marcia McBride, honing her kitchen skills and exploring butchery and charcuterie. From there, she moved on to the management team at Quince, where her true passion for handcrafting foods took hold. After Quince, Burns worked her way through many kitchens in the San Francisco area, spending many years working at Boulette's Larder under the tutelage of Amaryll Schwertner. Burns left San Francisco in 2006 and opened a private chef business in Sun Valley, Idaho, which took her to cook in Seattle and Hawaii as well. In 2008, she returned to California, cooking in wineries in the Napa and Sonoma Valleys and teaching at The Culinary Institute of America at Greystone. 

In 2011, Burns joined co-chef Nick Balla at Bar Tartine, where the duo cooked bold and innovative dishes that earned national acclaim. The pair wrote their first cookbook together in November 2014, Bar Tartine: Techniques and Recipes (Chronicle Books), which won a James Beard Foundation Award in the “Cooking from a Professional Point of View” category and an IACP Award in the “Chefs and Restaurants cookbook” category. 

In October 2016, Burns and Balla opened Motze, a pop-up okazu-inspired restaurant in San Francisco, then returned to their Central European roots by transforming Motze into Duna, a restaurant where the menu centers around Hungarian and Central European flavors. After Motze’s opening, Burns closed Bar Tartine in December 2016 and moved east to assist with opening Tourists, a 55-acre hotel property in North Adams, MA, where she curated the food program. After the opening she left North Adams and currently splits her time between Cape Cod and New Hampshire where she finished writing a new book, Nourish Me Home (Chronicle Books),published in Spring 2020.  She is currently consulting on the setup and extension of various preservation programs and restaurants around the country.