Let’s Whip Up Something Amazing Together with Tom the Chef!

More About Tom the Chef

My name is Tom Slepicka aka Tom the Chef, and I’m excited to bring you into my culinary world. Based in Iowa with my wife, Maggie, and our two daughters, my journey in food began in my native Brno, Czech Republic, where I graduated from culinary school. My career has included roles as a chef, catering owner, and restaurateur across both the Czech Republic and the United States (read more about my culinary career below).

My core passion is helping you find joy, not stress, in cooking. With the belief that everyone is capable of creating amazing food, I aim to be your trusted partner in the kitchen. To do this, I create globally-inspired recipes that are delicious, practical, efficient, and always centered on real, unprocessed ingredients.

Alongside creating recipes and content for www.TomtheChef.com, I work as a food writer for The Gazette and CookingHub, a consultant for non-profits and hotels, and a freelance culinary instructor. I am also the co-founder, president, and CEO of the CookingHub Foundation, a non-profit that uses a recipe platform, CookingHub, to fight hunger. All of this work is dedicated to building a community where we can connect, learn, and grow through the powerful language of food.

How It All Started

I was born in Brno, Czech Republic (see the image on the right). Long before my professional career began, a love for food was taking root in my grandmothers’ kitchens. Their cooking captivated me, and by age eight, I was preparing family suppers and baking my first cakes. This early passion naturally led me to pursue a four-year culinary degree in my hometown of Brno.

After graduation, I immersed myself in the culinary world, launching my own catering company. After a couple of years of growing my business into a large catering company that often organized events for up to 3,500 participants, I decided to sell my share and join the largest catering company in the area. During my last year of my Czech culinary career, I met my wife, who was an American born in Iowa. While working in the food industry was a dream come true, demanding hours and a desire to slow down made me leave the industry and start a language school and an educational company, which is growing and successfully running to this day, and is currently operated by my brother.

At 29, we decided to move to Iowa in the United States, planting new roots here in Iowa, where I opened a restaurant and catering business called Czech Deli. A year later, our first daughter was born, and it was again time to slow down and start focusing on my family. So my career transitioned from the daily restaurant grind into a consulting role, allowing me to help other restaurants, hotels, and non-profits succeed. During this period, I also launched a personal food blog, “Cooking with Family,” which has since grown into the TomtheChef.com you see today. I also started actively teaching cooking classes for Kirkwood College as well as for the National Czech and Slovak Museum, and also independently, which later developed into teaching live online classes, of which I have successfully taught almost 200 to this day.

Still, I felt a calling to do more. I envisioned a community where cooks of all skill levels could connect, share, and learn together. This vision first became CookingHub.com and later evolved into the CookingHub Foundation, the first of its kind non-profit dedicated to fighting hunger by operating CookingHub. It’s been an incredible journey, and I’m thrilled to share it with you.