This Home Cook Just Needed a Nudge to Start Her Successful Food Blog
Photos courtesy of Fix Feast Flair
Some cooks get their starts in the steamy confines of a professional kitchen, while others hone their skills at culinary school. But Alana Kysar, the blogger behind Fix Feast Flair, opted for a third route: Cooking under the tutelage of her parents in their Maui, Hawaii, home.
“Growing up, my dad gave me the job of making salads,” Kysar told us of her early days in the kitchen. But carelessly throwing lettuce into a bowl hardly sufficed: “He would grade me on a scale of one to five, taking into account presentation, creativity, and flavor. So that’s kind of where this whole food thing started.”
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Kysar’s father, a noted francophile, later taught her to make pommes Anna, a classic French dish of thinly sliced potatoes baked in a savory cake. Her mother, born in Japan but raised in Hawaii, walked her through local dishes like kalua pig and chicken long rice, plus Japanese treats like glutinous mochi filled with red bean paste. But it was college — the University of San Diego — that truly put Kysar’s skills to the test.
"None of my roommates or dorm-mates knew how to make anything, you know?” she said with a laugh. That meant cooking for the holidays, since Kysar and other Hawaiian students couldn’t afford the pricey airfare home except for Christmas. “I was the only person who knew how to roast a turkey for Thanksgiving, so we had 12 people in our tiny apartment,” she said. “And St. Patrick’s Day was a big one; I’d do corned beef and cabbage, the whole spread.”
Still, a career in food couldn’t have been farther from Kysar’s mind. After school, she landed a job in Los Angeles doing project management for Williams-Sonoma, but was soon turning heads with her culinary hobby.
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A typical Hawaii spread of lomi salmon, kalua pig, and chicken long rice.
“I would bring in a tart I made, or a pie or cookies or cupcakes that I was trying out and share it will my team members,” she recalled. “One team member, he pulled me into his office one day, and he was like, ‘Are you trying to do recipe development? Because you’ve obviously got a talent here. I think you should be doing more than this.’ I went home and that weekend, I started my food blog.” It’s hard to believe, but that was just a year ago.
Fix Feast Flair is a reflection of Kysar herself: a mish-mash of Japanese, Hawaiian, and American influences, plus whatever flavors and ingredients she’s enamored with at the moment. Recipes run the gamut from matcha black sesame babka to lomi salmon to soft pretzel knots with a cheesy dipping sauce, not to mention libations like lychee lemonade and boozy Kentucky mule cocktails.
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In the year since the blog launched, Kysar has achieved a remarkable level of success for someone who professes to be an amateur in the realms of writing and photography. This year, Fix Feast Flair was named the Best New Voice by readers in Saveur’s annual blog awards, and Kysar shows no sign of stopping. She’s officially out of project management, instead making a living off her blog and other food and photography projects. The success is all a bit much for her to process.
“I’m still shocked that more than two people read my blog — my mom and my dad — and maybe three if you count my boyfriend,” she said. “I’m just honing my craft on this blogging platform, and then I’ll go from there.”
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