Jill Padua is a culinary legend throughout the Upper Delaware River region, where people have encountered her creative, fresh and satisfying food at festivals and music venues, special events and retail locations, family gatherings and business receptions in New York and Pennsylvania.

 

Jill’s reputation for an ability to devise dishes that are at once healthy and unique led to an appreciative and loyal customer base. “I love interacting with people, making them happy and working with food,” she notes.

 

“I can pair the person with the food,” Jill says. It’s the kind of sensitivity that led readers of her hometown newspaper, The River Reporter, to consistently vote Jill’s Kitchen “Best Caterer” for 8 consecutive years. Her passion for pleasing palates produces the kind of food that people remember fondly—and tell others about.

 

As a caterer, Jill was responsive, collaborative and organized. As a person, Jill is fun, energetic and kind. Customers tend to become friends because her enthusiasm for what she does infuses her food with a sensibility that is both classy and comfortable.

 

Jill discovered her passion for cooking as a teen with working parents. Using whatever food was on hand, she began experimenting with new combinations, trying recipes in cookbooks and inventing some of her own in the process, and now has chosen to take her sauce Open Sesame sauce to the marketplace!

 

In 1988, Jill assumed ownership of the Midtown Café’ in Narrowsburg, and renamed it the Chatterbox Café. Her menus satisfied a varied customer base with tastes that ranged from meat and potatoes to vegetarian and low-fat cuisine. Jill sold the successful business in 1992.

 

In 2001, Jill’s entrepreneurial spirit came into play as she realized that homeowners, businesses and vacationers in the region needed quality food for casual gatherings and catering for significant events. She began planning the launch of Jill’s Kitchen. Friends and acquaintances urged her onward, having experienced the quality of her cooking.

 

Whether packed up for an impromptu picnic, relished at one of the region’s many special events or taken in tandem with fantastic tunes at the Bethel Woods Center for the Performing Arts under a starlit sky, Jill’s food is a satisfying and soulful expression of her love for what she does.

 

In a word—it’s “Jillicious!”