Chef Jessica MacLaren’s Passion has been to travel the world and write recipes recreating that memorable flavor experience for her guests and clients.
Our Inspiration
Jessica MacLaren, our chef loves to travel. She and her husband love to break bread with others. The desire to share their experience of travel and culture, their love for food and beverage along with meeting wonderful people all around the world is truly evident in both of them.
our chef
Chef Jessica MacLaren is the Founder and Executive chef of Belle Saveur AVL, located in Asheville, North Carolina. Her mission is to write recipes and prepare dishes inspired by her travels. Tasting the world and recreating that spectacular flavor experience locally is her passion and specialty.
Having lived and cooked all over the United States, she has a great understanding of a range of styles of cooking and regional cuisine. In 2007 she found her niche when the original business in San Diego was born, she began to share her incredible experiences with others on a level everyone can understand, simply delicious food!
Belle Saveur AVL specialties
Specializing in eclectic worldly foods, with the use of fresh local ingredients, our chef creates the flavors she knows and loves with the techniques learned through her travels and background in the kitchen. Most everything is handmade, as necessary to fit with the menu style, the careful planning and preparation demonstrated in the dish is always a huge hit with clients.
Our operation is simple. It starts with an initial discussion about what our clients are interested in during a brief initial consultation, then our Belle Saveur chef prepares a drafted menu with dishes that clients could choose from, tailored especially for their event. This style of service requires a delicate mix of understanding the needs of the client, technical skill, and ability to create specialty foods and assuring that it all finishes in perfect harmony on a plate. This is not so common in the catering world, which makes for a very intriguing niche.
Crafting such a personalized menu makes for a very intimate experience for the host and the guests who attend. Our customers play an instrumental part in the menu planning phase and it’s always nice to share your personality through delicious food and experience with your guests. It wasn’t long before clients became fans and recognized the difference with the kind of service and food they were getting from Belle Saveur.
After 10 years of doing business in Southern California, Belle Saveur began a new phase as the business relaunched in Portland, Oregon. Belle Saveur, PDX began and has been running for 6 years+. The new experiences, techniques, collaborations, innovations, life-long clients, and partners that came out of the PNW region was incredible.
There is always so much growth when you open yourself up to collaborations. Some of the clients and partners included several PNW wine events, parties with breweries, Coffee roaster pop ups and food pairing distilling projects.
Connections to the region and the people continue in a big way. The excitement continues as Belle Saveur begins another chapter here in AVL.
In AVL the thing that stands out almost immediately to us is the obvious talent in the area but also a culture that encourages growth. As we grow in our new home, the excitement and new experiences on the horizon make the chef’s work very inspiring!
With the incredible knowledge base of the AVL eaters, the skill and the support happening among many here in the industry and the local provisions seasonally driven, it all just pushes culinary talents to be their best.
Launching culinary services here in Asheville North Carolina is extremely exciting venture for Chef Jess! Experience how she explores new flavor creations with the finest ingredients that the magnificent mountains of western North Carolina has to offer!
Brett’s Cocktails
In addition to Chef Jess’ culinary versatility, we have the addition of her husband Brett,
a student in the art of fine cocktails and has studied this diligently for over 16 years. Intrigued by the history of the craft, the bartending and distilling techniques dating back since before Prohibition, he has made it his skill to create flavor combinations with seasonal local fare. Together Chef Jess and her husband Brett write menu pairing cocktails with foods. BYOB we provide the mix and recipe and bartend for you.
These special beverages are a fun addition to our adult cooking classes or add it as an optional beverage pairing for your guests at your dinner party. Signature cocktails for small or large events are also a great addition to consider. Learn how we can assist you with Brett’s cocktails.
Belle Saveur AVL Cooking Classes
Classes are inspired by the dishes we love, combining the flavors of the world through a carefully crafted curriculum.
Examples of both group and individual cooking classes include different menus of international cuisine including coursed menus of the following cuisine: Indian, Thai, Italian, Hawaiian Island, Portuguese, Peruvian, Japanese, Vietnamese, French, Spanish, African, Brazilian and Mexican.
Our cooking classes include different menus of those shown above but additional seasonal and local dishes that are custom created for a low carbon footprint, individual wellness, community support and resource awareness. Click on Cooking class to see more.