(Photo from Cat Cora's website)
- Cora is still proud of her heritage and always promotes her roots and home state.
At 58, world-renowned chef, author, restaurateur, television host, and health and fitness expert, Cat Cora still possesses all the enthusiasm and energy of a high school cheerleader. She could still pass for one, too. Her rise to worldwide prominence in the culinary industry is more riddled with highs and lows than a Pat Conroy novel.
Cat’s entire career has included a series of “firsts.” She was the first female Iron Chef on Food Network’s Iron Chef America in 2005. Cat became an instant star when cooking shows became the rage in the late 1990s. Her Southern accent was disarming, her original recipes to die for, and her vivacious personality was as fresh as the ingredients in her food. Invitations from Fox, Bravo, and ABC’s network shows were steady.
She is still proud of her heritage and always promotes her roots and home state.
Cat Cora’s brand is respected from Los Angeles to New York City to Singapore, Paris, and beyond. You can find her name in a variety of themed eateries coast to coast and around the world.
In her heart of hearts, she is still Spiro and Virginia Cora’s little girl who grew up on Swan Lake Drive in South Jackson in a neighborhood where everybody knew everybody and children roamed barefoot in the summertime, catching frogs and chasing fireflies after dark.
Her mother was a nurse, and her father was a history teacher at Wingfield High School. Money was always tight, but love was abundant. Spiro often took a second and occasionally a third job to supplement the family income. When Virginia decided to return to school at UAB to get an advanced degree in nursing, Grandmother Alma came to live with the Coras to help take care of Cathy (Cat) and her brothers, Mike and Chris.
Grandma Alma simply added more love, laughter, and warmth to the family dynamics. Like Cat’s mom and dad, Alma was also an excellent cook. Everything was made from scratch, and there was never a time when Cat did not relish the opportunity to assist!
Spiro’s father came from Greece to America in the 1930s. His surname was not Cora but Karagiozoses. While matriculating through immigration on Ellis Island, he made the wise decision to shorten his last name. Thus, the Cora lineage began, and Grandpa Pete Karagiozoses became Pete Cora, who opened his own eatery, Coney Island Café, in Greenville, Mississippi, where he settled. Cat shares in her memoir, Cooking as Fast as I Can, that he chose that name because he thought it sounded American.
Love for family, food, and big community defined Cat’s early memories. Her parents’ sense of gratitude for the life they enjoyed and the blessings they shared meant they absolutely loved opening their hearts and home to others at Thanksgiving.
Cat recalls the menagerie of people assembled around their table. Between the nurse and the schoolteacher, the invitations to the Cora Thanksgiving encompassed a diversity that almost surpassed a snapshot of a United Nations delegation. Virginia’s University Hospital’s international connections and Spiro’s outreach to some of his lonely high school students from sad homes meant the Coras had a big table that welcomed everyone.
That example of hospitality and acceptance has forever shaped Cat’s concept of hospitality and food.
No restaurant on the planet could match her grandmother’s cheesecake, her mother’s pizza crust, or her father’s grilled everything. Her godfather was Peter Costas, a longtime Jackson restaurateur who encouraged and, in many ways, guided her culinary aspirations. He invited her into his famed white tablecloth restaurant’s kitchen many times. Such an experience for Cat was better than being turned loose in a candy store.
Cat was initially named “Melanie,” and was born to an unwed teenager in Greenwood, Mississippi, in 1967. She spent one week in the custody of the Mississippi Children’s Home Society before being given to her adoptive parents, who could not possibly have been a better match for this determined, creative, feisty child.
A wonderful loving home, however, could not protect her from a devastating ongoing series of sexual abuse from the time she was six until she was eleven. Her abuser threatened her should she tell, and so she did not. The abuse ended when her father accidentally walked in on an encounter.
But there was no follow-up, no counseling, no “Let’s deal with this.” It was the 1960s, and the world was different. Cat was just thankful it would never happen again.
Cat graduated from Wingfield in 1985 and enrolled at Hinds Community College. From Hinds, she went to the University of Southern Mississippi to pursue a degree in exercise physiology and Biology.
Fitness was and continues to be a top priority for Cat. She worked as an instructor in several fitness clubs and gyms after graduating, but she did not feel like she had found that thing she planned to do for the rest of her working life. Cooking had, perhaps, been something so natural and routine – almost as normal as brushing her teeth – that she had not given serious thought to making it her vocation.
Soon after her college graduation, she embarked on a three-month European adventure with a Eurail pass and a bare-bones budget. With no frills, she spent time in Portugal, France, Italy, and finally Greece, where her father’s family in Skopelos rolled out the red carpet and ignited a passion in Cat. She remembers thinking, “The passion my Greek relatives put into their food, and the passion my southern family put into their food [are] the same. This so moved me that I felt a goal begin to materialize.”
A stint as a conscientious waitress at Jackson’s popular Italian restaurant Amerigo led to a promotion as a cook in their kitchen. Not long after, she entered and won a local competition called “The Taste of Elegance.” Cat was the only female participant and the most uncredentialed as far as a career with a beloved restaurant around the city. The famed Paul Prudhomme was the judge.
Cat Cora knew she was just beginning. She had so much to learn, but this career would combine her love for the cuisine of her childhood and the joy of gathering with friends and family around a common table to celebrate the best of life together. Cat wondered, “Can I make a living doing what I love?’ She rolled up her sleeves and set her strong will toward making it happen.
Cat’s focus became achieving her goals. When she happened to see a newspaper announcement one morning that the renowned Julia Child would be signing a new cookbook in Natchez in a few days, she convinced her mother and her grandmother Alma that they must go.
Patiently waiting until the crowd had cleared, Cat positioned herself in front of Julia and said, “Mrs. Child, I want to cook.”
Cat’s application and acceptance to the Culinary Institute of America, the Harvard of all culinary schools, came from that brief conversation. She enrolled and found it brutal and so beyond her skills at the time. Crushed and defeated, she withdrew after two weeks.
However, it did not take long for her determined will to recover. She sent a letter begging for another chance, explaining that she had been totally overwhelmed by her inexperience. She was ready for the challenge and eager to learn.
The Institute replied that they would welcome her back after a year spent gaining more experience in a professional kitchen. Cat hit the jackpot when she landed a position under the wing of Chef Paul at Jackson’s University Club, the private club at the top of the Deposit Guaranty Plaza, quite the elite place at the time.
Chef Paul and Cat’s relationship was fraught with conflict in the beginning but evolved into a friendship marked by mutual respect and eternal gratitude on Cat’s part. His seemingly unreasonable demands birthed a discipline and commitment to perfection that served Cat well.
She was completely prepared when she gave the Culinary Institute a second shot and did not disappoint those who believed in her. From there, the doors opened, and she has spent decades racking up awards, shattering glass ceilings as a female chef and an actual female tour de force, appearing on every major network, opening eateries in her own name, and even giving back to humanitarian efforts during natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina.
Cat is currently single. She lives in Santa Barbara, California, where she enjoys life as the mother of six boys, all of whom enjoy being put to work in their mom’s kitchen. For much more on Cat’s life story, pick up her memoir, Cooking as Fast as I Can.
Marilyn Tinnin
