About Us

HELLO!  We thought it was a great idea to tell you About Us!  Chez Us is a food blog that we cooked up in 2007 to document what we were cooking in a tiny 20 sq. ft kitchen in San Francisco.  We had a tiny stove, a tiny cupboard, and a tiny counter;  urban cooking at it’s best!  Chez Us was meant to be an inspiration that anyone could learn to cook, using minimal tools and space and the real star was the ingredients.

Since those early days, we have moved into a grown-up kitchen with a big stove, lots of counter space and even a pantry.  Chez Us has evolved, into a personal journey about our love affair with life and good home-cooked meals.  We think Julia Child said it best, “Learn how to cook, try new recipes, learn from your mistakes, be fearless and, above all, have fun”.  This is what we try to do, in and out of the kitchen on a daily basis.

We met 20 years ago;  Lenny was a starving bachelor who longed for his mother’s home-cooked Portuguese meals. They say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.  Denise likes to think she got to his heart through many means, cooking just happened to be one of them. Unfortunately, he loves her cooking so much that he thinks they only need to eat at Chez Us.

We share many passions, one of them is that food should be simple, wholesome and real.  Nothing fancy, just comfort food that makes you want to pull up a chair and linger at the table. We are clean food eaters and cook seasonally using what is fresh and available to us.  Don’t get us wrong, we still have guilty pleasures such as French cheese, Portuguese fried cod, and luscious wines from other countries. Entertaining our friends is a favorite past-time as there isn’t anything more special then breaking bread together.

If you can’t find us in the kitchen, look out the back door.  We may be in the great outdoors, either camping (good food will be included), biking or just spending time outside.  Another deep passion is traveling to far-away lands, submerging ourselves in the culture and of course eating!

All recipes are developed in our kitchen and all photography, as well as videos, are shot in our home studio space.

We would love to hear from you. Email us directly at:

  Denise Woodward –  denise { at } chezus.com

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