Meet the Author: Shilpa Noronha
My food story started during my childhood in Bombay with daily homemade meals a la my mother, who is a superb cook. My family is originally from Mangalore, which was colonized by the Portuguese and we have a pretty distinct culture, with our cuisine being my highlight. We immigrated to Chicago when I was 6 and while this was a momentous change, the fact that we came with a suitcase full of spices was pretty indicative of how little our culinary home life was disrupted. My next major trip was a backpacking one in Europe with my sister after graduating college, which ignited a thirst for other cultures and a lifetime of travel adventures. I constantly feel like I belong nowhere and everywhere.
I am a Math major (Northwestern Wildcat), MBA (Chicago Booth), and management consultant who questioned if there’s more to life than the one brought by the letter M. The answer: food is what makes my world go round. A few years ago, I explored my curiosity about the culinary world by working for the Alinea Group and was an opening team member for their first foray in “casual” with Roister. Talk about baptism by fire and I thrived with my previously undiscovered hospitality bone! I then studied in Italy at the University of Gastronomic Sciences in a Food studies Masters program that opened my eyes to the Slow Food world of how to make food “good, clean, fair” for producers, consumers, and the planet with sustainability, preserving culinary traditions, and biodiversity as the key themes.
I moved back to Chicago and that’s when things got interesting because my health took a nosedive and I was pretty much bed ridden as a result of an autoimmune condition. Not the next chapter I was dreaming of, however, it’s the part of my food journey that took me on a different trajectory, one aligned with the thought that food is medicine. The question I have asked myself more than any other in the last several years is “who am I?” The answer is always someone who loves and respects food deeply, for whom the common thread in life is food which has led me to some pretty spectacular people and places to date. And I hope this is just the beginning of my learning and growing!
About the Name
The word arcadian is derived from a Greek province where residents led an idyllic life in harmony with nature and it implies simple contentment with a rustic way of life. How dreamy for an urban dweller whose feet are firmly planted on the ground and head drifts in the clouds. Arcadian in nature from a young age: I have always been drawn to experiences centered on simplicity, serenity, and nature and am told that my favorite things as a child were two simple things: to eat and to help people. Granted, this is a unique combination, not much has changed, and all of this inspired the name Arcadian Fare. Join me on my journey to connection, adventure, and health, one bite at a time!