HOW RÊVERIE WAS BORN: THE STORY OF JULIE AND LISA

We get asked a lot how Rêverie was started, how Julie and I came to know each other and why we decided to start this company. There are good answers to all of those questions, so here they are.

It all started in a restaurant kitchen, naturally. Julie was a young buck, looking to learn about pastry. I was a tired, disillusioned chef who worked too many hours, made too little money and was starting my strident journey upon the road to “not give any f***s town”, where I currently live.

Why was I disillusioned, you might ask? Well, because restaurants, by and large, are bullshit and all the rumors you might have heard are true - it is hard, oftentimes for no good reason. Restaurants, however, I will go to my grave saying to anyone who listens, are also one of the most beautiful institutions created by the human race. Julie just found me in a particularly grueling, misguided one. Thank god she still loved me. 

But you know, I’ll be a bit bold here - I’ll give the hardship of that particular restaurant credit for our coming together. I recognized something in Julie immediately that made me stay hopeful. And maybe she saw flickers of it remaining in me, too. She must’ve or else we wouldn’t be here. Thing is, there are good, great, beautiful reasons restaurants can be hard and those were the reasons Julie and I bonded. Both of us loved to learn, both of us loved a real challenge and both of us took our practices very seriously. We also loved to be in a kitchen together, which is a special kind of magic that, much like a travel partner, does not exist with just any old person or friend.

After some winding roads for both of us - me officially leaving restaurants to write full time and Julie to France to study baking and play music (she’s a musician to, in case you wondered where her talents end: they don’t) - our mutual friend artist Emily Leonard brought us back together by planning a painting retreat in Toulouse, France and asked me to be the featured chef for it. Julie and I had gently kept in touch. A few loving social media check-ins, I’d buy whatever music she made available, she’d take a train from Angers to come visit me in Paris when I visited. Without hesitation, I called Julie to come cook with me. It was the same good magic.

But better. Better because we had both grown. Better because it was on our terms. Better because we were laughing and there was joy, there were good times. There was simplicity in it all - the food, the freshly picked herbs, the freshly butchered whole chickens roasting while we cleaned locally foraged mushrooms, the vegetable stock reducing, the brioche baking, and just me, Julie and a thirteen year old Maggie Donovan, spending hours in the kitchen together in France with the windows wide, the wheaty air from the fields breezing through, and an immediate recognition that this, this exact thing, was all we were searching for as cooks to begin with. For me, at least, there is nothing more powerful or pure than the feeling we found in that kitchen in Toulouse - standing in a kitchen with two women I love, preparing a quiet, humble meal for a room full of people who will be hungry soon. That  is what I search for every day, that feeling. That place and that feeling is one of the few ways I feel satisfied in this life. When you find those places, you should do all you can to keep it close to you.

But it didn’t happen overnight. Julie came back to the United States. I was still flying all around teaching workshops and finishing my book. If Julie was available, she was willing to come cook and travel with me and then Emily came calling once again, this time for Santa Fe, New Mexico. I asked Julie again, but this time, we came as a stronger, whole unit, not just as a chef who hired a cook to help - we had never really been that to begin with, really. But something about this trip solidified our potentially longer partnership. Our friendship was growing steadily and strongly, and our kitchen dance was becoming well rehearsed. 

Love blooms in the desert, I’ve been told. This idea for Rêverie bloomed there, too. Beyond just two cooks falling in love over food, we discovered that what was going on in the kitchen was of deep interest to the guests of the painting retreat. They liked being in there with us, they liked watching us cook, they wanted to know stuff, things. We enjoyed sharing - having a calm, happy, energetic kitchen was something Julie and I naturally could create together and it was a delightful surprise to learn that people wanted to join us in that space. 

So we built Rêverie so we could offer an opportunity for people to get back into a kitchen, with no pretenses, no intimidation, no celebrity chef filter between them and their experience with the food, because inadvertently, that is what we did - for ourselves most of all. 

In 2018-2019, Julie took the great initiative to start building the infrastructure for our company. We announced our first retreats in 2019 for 2020 and they sold out very, very quickly. Naturally, we had to cancel and re-begin in 2021and in 2022, we took our first two (sold out!) trips to Toulouse and to the Loire Valley. 

Now here we are, knee deep in our second official year of hosting retreats and planning an outrageous third - 2024 is going to be incredible in ways we wholly dreamt they would be.
While it has appeared to grow quickly, Julie and I are taking our time and it has been built over a decade of building trust and friendship. There is much I want to say about the company culture and our goals as business owners. That feels like a different post, though. More on that later. Here now, I just want to take a moment to say that we are so honored you trust us with your time and experiences. We know travel is not easy to come by for some and we are so thrilled that we’ve been able to build this with clear vision and confidence wholly because you’ve trusted us. 

There will be more posts, so stay tuned. Or better yet, join us this year in the Loire Valley (it’s my favorite trip for so many reasons) - there are still a few rooms available. 

But mostly, just thank you. 

We’re so glad you’re here and that we get to share this journey with you.

And, ps., I lied about still living in No F**** Town. I give a lot actually, but only about the right stuff, largely thanks to Julie Belcher. 

Rêverie forever!

Love,

Lisa