Nora Pouillon opened Restaurant Nora in 1979 with her partners, brothers Thomas and Steven Damato. In 1999 Restaurant Nora became the first certified organic restaurant in the United States. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the first Genesis Award from Women Chefs and Restaurateurs. An IACP Cookbook Awards finalist, Nora is a tireless advocate for nutritionally wholesome food and a sustainable, health-focused. Her memoir, My Organic Life: How A Pioneering Chef Helped Shape the Way We Eat Today (Knopf) is the story of an unheralded culinary pioneer who made it her mission to bring delicious, wholesome foods to the American table. My Organic Life encompasses the birth of the farm-to-table movement, the proliferation of greenmarkets across the country, and the evolution of the chef into social advocate. Spanning the last forty years of our relationship with food, this is a deeply personal, powerfully felt story of the organic revolution—by the unlikely heroine at its forefront.
