The kitchen in our small Romanian village smelled like something was always simmering. I was 13, my mother out working the fields, and it was up to me to feed our family — and soon, a whole crew of farm workers. People would stop in the doorway just to watch, hardly believing someone so young could pull it off. I didn't know it yet, but that was the moment I fell in love with cooking.

Years later, I chased that feeling all the way to Italy — arriving without a word of the language, and starting at the bottom, washing dishes. Then, unexpectedly, a door opened: the assistant chef left, and the owner turned to me. Terrified, I said yes anyway. She became the mentor who taught me everything — sauces from scratch, pasta by hand, and a respect for ingredients I still carry today.

By the time I was plating dinners for 270 guests a night under the relentless Chef Enzo, I'd stopped being afraid of hard kitchens. I'd started becoming one of the chefs who run them.

In 2017, Australia gave me a new beginning — and in 2019, Aura's Kitchen was born. Every dish I make still carries that same girl's hunger to prove herself, one table at a time.