Alumna chef shows off vegan-cooking chops on competition show

by Chuck Gordon

Not long after graduating from Wingate University in 2015, Sarah Martin was working as a chef in Nashville, trying to find her way in the growing world of vegan cooking, when an email showed up in her inbox from a restaurant in Paris asking her to join its staff. The only hitch? She needed to be there the next week.

Martin didn't have a place to stay, didn't know anyone in Paris and, crucially, didn't speak French. So, naturally, she took the job. It proved to be a difficult but instructive apprenticeship in a typically frenetic environment - a bit like the TV show The Bear, but in French.

"When emotions got high, they would be swearing and yelling at you in French, and I was very glad I didn't know what they were saying," Martin says. "It was like drinking out of a firehose, quite frankly. Nothing prepares you for that. It was by far the toughest thing I'd ever done."

It wasn't the last time Martin took a leap of faith after placing a big bet on herself. She came into her own at Wingate, and since graduation she's fearlessly forged a career out of pleasing very particular palates and spreading the gospel of veganism far and wide. Her latest stop is on the cooking-competition series Top Vegan, on which Martin is one of eight contestants vying to take home the top prize of $20,000. Three episodes of the YouTube series have aired so far, and Martin has acquitted herself well.

The show's format will be familiar to fans of Master Chef, Top Chef, Hell's Kitchen and the like, if a little more collegial and less cutthroat than most. Filming took place over consecutive days in May in Columbus, Ohio, a couple of hours' drive from Martin's hometown of Chardon, Ohio.

Martin excelled from the start, finishing among the top three in the initial episode, in which the challenge was to make a signature dish. She wowed the judges with a saffron pearl couscous risotto with heart of palm "scallops" and carrot puree.

The filming was arduous: 12-hour days; takes and retakes and more retakes; interviews while keeping an eye on multiple pots and pans. Multiple cameras hovered nearby, which made an already tense situation even more stressful. And all in an unfamiliar environment.

"Cooking in a kitchen you've never been in before can be disorienting," Martin says. "My private-chef background certainly helped with that, because I step into kitchens all the time and don't have time to be confused. I just jump right in as if it was my kitchen."

Martin is back in Ohio these days, working as a private chef for a rotating list of clients and teaching at a local culinary school, but she's been around the world since leaving Wingate. A week after graduating with an education degree, she backpacked across Europe with a friend, slowly realizing she didn't want to be a school teacher. A mushroom risotto in Italy made her realize how much joy cooking could bring to other people and helped her decide on her career path.

Martin had learned to cook in high school after deciding to go with a fully plant-based diet - "I taught myself to cook so I could eat actual food that I love," she says - and she's been vegan ever since, even throughout her four years at Wingate.

Maintaining that diet wasn't always easy. Martin came to Wingate on a tennis scholarship, and road trips on the back roads of the Carolinas and Tennessee can provide scant options for restrictive diets. She recalls feeling deflated when the team bus pulled into McDonald's after a long day of tournament play.

"Me and the other vegan on the team started crying, because we could only eat apple slices," she says.

"She started bringing her own food, because she knew it could be a struggle," says Michael Cabana, Wingate's tennis coach. "She took the reins for herself, just in case."

Cabana says he watched Martin blossom at Wingate. She played in only a handful of matches but remained enthusiastic no matter how much playing time she got, and he saw her confidence grow year by year.

"She was a great person to have around and just always would have a positive impact on your day," Cabana says. "I feel like she came out of her shell, and she used cooking as a tool to travel the world. I was very proud of her taking those chances and those opportunities, even if they were uncomfortable for her in the beginning."

Becoming a teacher after all

Martin seems at home on camera. Early in the first episode of Top Vegan, as all the contestants were shaking off the nerves, Martin calmly professed her eagerness to shine: "I feel so ready," she said. "I feel like Taylor Swift preparing for the Eras Tour."

Martin's sweet nature comes through on the show, as does her heavily stamped passport. In episode 3, which called for "vegan on a budget," she leaned into her love of Asia and made udon noodles with gochujang tofu. For someone who had visited only one country (Canada) before coming to Wingate, Martin has certainly made up for lost time. Since studying abroad in Malaysia, Singapore and Costa Rica with Wingate groups, Martin has done her European backpacking adventure, worked in the Gentle Gourmet Cafe in Paris for a year and spent another year traveling to five countries in Europe and Asia to interview chefs as part of a documentary film she's co-directing.

She's also written a book on pickling and fermenting and worked in restaurants in Tennessee, Florida and Colorado, and she now teaches professional and recreational cooks at the Loretta Paganini School of Cooking, where she is experiencing a bit of a full-circle moment: Martin, whose parents were both high school teachers and guidance counselors, finds herself using her education degree after all.

"Coaching style is everything," she says. "It's not a cookie-cutter one-size-fits-all. That's something I learned from my time at Wingate as an education major: that you have to adapt based on the student and their needs."

As she's traveled around seeking mentors in the kitchen, Martin has experienced a range of teaching styles herself. Wingate, she says, helped her understand the value of good mentorship.

"I had a lot of friends who went to huge schools, like Ohio State, and had no personal relationship with their professors," Martin says. "I guess I got accustomed to having someone mentor me and take a real interest in my life. I think that really shaped how I saw my career and who I sought to learn from."

Check out Martin on the latest episode of Top Vegan.

Nov. 6, 2024

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