She cooks. He critiques.

This is our story of what we create in our 20 sq. ft. (it has changed temporarily to a 40 sq. ft) kitchen based in San Francisco.  Our kitchen has a small stove, not our dream La Cornue Stainless Steel and Chrome Stove/Oven, one and a half counters to work on and one cupboard to put everything in.  The nice thing about having no cupboard space, everything we eat is fresh!  We have become very creative with space, think European living, no big shopping sprees here, everything in the pantry (which is really a quarter of that one cupboard) is consumed within a couple of weeks.  We want to share with YOU how we live small but still eat big.

My name is Denise.  I confess, I am a foodie.  I love everything about food, in fact, the first thing on my mind when I crawl out of bed, besides that first espresso, is what I will be cooking that day, is a sickness.  My partner is Laudalino. He is not a foodie, he is an eater .  Neither of us are in the food business we are both in the video communications field.

We met 6 years ago, when he was a starving climber and bachelor who longed for his mother’s good Portuguese cooking. They say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach; I like to think I got to his heart through many means, cooking just happened to be one of them. He loves my cooking so much that he thinks we only need to eat at Chez Us.  He is my own personal food critic.

We care about not only what goes into our bodies but from where it came and how it came to us.  We shop organic and as local when possible. We do admit we have a few guilty pleasures such as wines and cheeses from other countries but over all 85% of our food comes from within a 150 mile radius of Chez Us.  Most of our recipes are originals of Chez Us.  We may poke around a site or in a few magazines/cookbooks for inspiration but overall what we put into our mouths came from our minds first.  We will always give credit where credit is due when posting a recipe.

If you can’t find us in the kitchen, just look out the door and you may find us anywhere in the great outdoors either camping (gourmet  food will be included), road and mountain biking or climbing some of the high peaks.  When we are not cooking and eating we try to enjoy life to the fullest by keeping active.  Our passions are traveling to  far away lands, submerging ourselves in the culture and of course eating!  We also love to spend time behind a video and/or camera lenses.

So come along and join us on our culinary capers.

We would love to hear from you.  You can reach us:

the cook ~ denise@chezus.com

the critic ~ lenny@chezus.com

general inquires ~ info@chezus.com

Snail Mail:  55 New Montgomery Street, Ste 602, San Francisco, CA 94105