Instructors

Janet Beeby is a wine educator and a certified sommelier. She’s crazy about wine, food, and pairing wine with food. She believes that wine doesn’t have to break the bank to be thoroughly enjoyable. She enjoys writing and teaching about unusual wines and far-flung winemakers, and she’s on a mission to show people how fun and approachable wine can be. Janet is certified through the Court of Master Sommeliers and the Wine and Spirit Education Trust. She is also a French and Spanish wine scholar, certified through the Wine Scholar Guild.

Stephanie Eburah is the chef and owner of Ebb & Company, a business she started 5 years ago with the passion of bringing people around the table in unique ways to build community and celebrate the bounty of the local area. She has cooked professionally in San Francisco and Seattle for the past 25 years, 10 of which was as culinary director for California Caviar Company where she worked closely with renowned chefs such as Jaques Pepin developing products and recipes as well as running their caviar café.

Brenna Estrada is an accomplished flower farmer, focused on bringing attention to often overlooked flowers, particularly pansies. Raised in the Pacific Northwest in the shadow of the Cascade Mountains, she has a deep love of nature and has been growing flowers since she was a child. Brenna’s extensive collection of pansies has drawn the attention of growers and artists from all over the world. She continues to share her passion with others and is working to make seeds for the specialty varieties more accessible to both small-scale growers and home gardeners. When not among her flowers, she is likely reading, writing or hiking with her three boys and four dogs.

Lauren Feldman is an accomplished chef with 30 years of experience cooking in San Francisco, Italy, and Seattle. Her passion lies with honoring quality ingredients and maintaining a strong connection to agriculture and local farmers. The farm-to-table food cycle has shaped her career. Here in Seattle, Lauren was the Pastry Chef for Campagne and Cafe Campagne. She then was a private chef for several years before she worked at McCarthy and Schiering Wine Merchants to learn about wine. This led her to open Vif Wine|Coffee, an all day cafe in Upper Fremont with a focus on natural wines and house-made food and pastries. She also opened Petite Soif, a natural wine bar on Beacon Hill. Both businesses reflected her strong commitment to wholesome, locally and globally sourced ingredients. Most recently Lauren has been spending her time developing and teaching workshops and classes both online and in person.

Pastry Chef Samantha Gainsburg is the mind behind Butter Shtick, a multi-faceted creative outlet based in Seattle. Previously in charge of the pastry programs at Mamnoon, Canlis, Cafe Juanita and Temple Pastries locally, she also draws from her time in New York and Las Vegas, as well as multiple culinary trips to Turkey, to embody these experiences through beautifully crafted and delicious pastries. Samantha is particularly committed to seasonality, locality, and sustainability through the use of local flours, fruits, and botanicals. Butter Shtick products can be found through pop-ups, custom orders, and workshops.

Street Cheese is a mobile cheese shop founded in 2020 by two career cheesemongers, Courtney Johnson and Tailor Kowis. They sell local, domestic and imported cheeses, charcuterie and accompaniments, crafts cheese and charcuterie plates, platters and grazing tables, as well as offer cheese education classes and tastings for the general public and industry. Street Cheese’s mission is three-fold: to support local cheesemakers and farmers in getting their products to market, to make good cheese more widely available in our communities, and to spread the word that cheese is for everyone. Courtney is an American Cheese Society Certified Cheese Professional and Certified Cheese Sensory Evaluator. She is also Executive Director of the Washington State Cheesemakers Association and an adjunct faculty member at Seattle Central College’s Seattle Culinary Academy.

Meghan McKenna is a professional cheese and buttermaker new to Bellsong Creamery. She is also building her own family farmstead sheep creamery, Woolley Cheese Co., in the Skagit Valley. She farms with her husband, Shawn, and two young daughters. Meghan has created fresh pasteurized cheeses, bloomy rinds, washed-rind and raw-aged, natural-rind cheeses in addition to other fermented dairy products. She also most recently made award-winning cheese and butter at Cherry Valley Dairy in Duvall. Meghan has completed cheesemaking and food safety courses at OSU, WSU, Cal Poly and through the American Cheese Society and Food Safety Preventive Controls Alliance.

Nicco Muratore was born and raised in Boston, where he got his start cooking at the restaurants inside the historic Fenway Park. He was introduced to Middle Eastern cuisine at Oleana Restaurant and Sofra, before joining The Montagu Kitchen in London’s Grand Hyatt Hotel and then Danny Meyer’s historic Union Square Cafe in New York. He returned to Boston to join chef Steven Postal’s team at the newly opened Commonwealth, where he spent five years working his way from Sous Chef to Chef de Cuisine. We know Nicco from his work at Mamnoon, in Seattle, where he became Chef de Cuisine in 2019. Since then he’s taken the menu to new heights, and in 2022 took over the role of Mama Group Culinary Director, overseeing the culinary teams at all of the Mamnoon-related restaurants. In 2024, he branched out from restaurant work and can now be found in the community teaching classes on fermentation and koji, preservation, and cooking with local foods. Outside of the kitchen, you can find Nicco gardening, hiking, skiing, or in the woods hunting for mushrooms.

Over the years, Chef Bruce Naftaly has been hailed by local and national press as “the Father of Northwest Cuisine” and Seattle’s “Food Hero”, and has long been considered one of the pioneers of the local farm-to-table movement. The former head chef and chef/owner of some of Seattle’s most renowned restaurants—including Le Gourmand (for 28 years!), the Alexis Hotel and Sambar —Naftaly is now bringing his locally driven food philosophy to your table as a personal chef and instructor. An avid supporter of local organic producers, the PCC Land Trust and other organizations dedicated to preserving local farmland and sustainability, Naftaly also offers custom meal preparation, is available for special events, and often teaches group cooking classes like the ones he hosts here at Bella Luna.

A 4th generation Seattleite, Seamus Platt traded aprons for adventure after close to 20 years in the restaurant industry. Drawn to the art of salumi after working in Michelin star kitchens, he entered the world of cured meats with his company, Norcino Salumi. Descended from a grandfather that was a butcher at Pike Place Market, Seamus honed his craft working with master butchers and Italian norcini, the traditional name for a pork butcher that specializes in salumi. He now crafts his own stories in every savory slice, committed to preserving the time-honored technique as Norcino is involved in every step of production, from breeding to slaughter.

Ashley Rodriguez is a Seattle-based award winning food writer and photographer. She is the author of four books; Date Night In, Let’s Stay In, Rooted Kitchen, and Field Notes from a Forest Guide. She is the host and co-creator of the James Beard nominated series, Kitchen Unnecessary. Ashley is a graduate of Seminary of the Wild through the Center for Wild Spirituality and a certified Nature and Forest Therapy guide. When not eating, or talking and writing about food you can find her foraging, fly fishing, feeding her sourdough starter and spending as much time outside as possible. She believes the outdoors is a place to be fed both physically and spiritually.

Artist and author Sarah Simon, a.k.a. @themintgardener, has taught thousands of people to watercolor and with her teaching talents, has made it such an approachable and enjoyable art form, both for the experienced and novice alike. Her Watercolor Workbook series provides everything you need to know about the art of watercolor and has been the #1 best-selling watercolor book series in the world for five years now. Sarah’s teaching has received worldwide attention with her online and in-person painting courses and art retreats, where she shares the very best in quality, crafting a lifestyle of slow beauty and intentional choices, one post at a time. Visit her website to learn more.

The owner and baker behind Pennyloaf Bread Co., a cottage bakery on Bainbridge Island, Jessica Sherrow is a former professional cook, self-taught baker, mom of two, and a Pacific Northwest native with a degree in biology and a deep love of microbes. She spent her formative kitchen years at The Pantry and Juicebox; since, she’s been learning and baking sourdough since 2012, and teaching workshops since 2022.

Chef Michela Tartaglia is an Italian native, born and raised in Turin, Piedmont. She’s made Seattle her home for 15 years and opened Pasta Casalinga in 2018 in the iconic Pike Place Market, offering a rotating menu of seasonal dishes. Recently, she also published her first cookbook, Pasta For All Seasons: Dishes that Celebrate the Flavors of Italy and the Bounty of the Pacific Northwest, which features 50 seasonal recipes that showcase the best of Northwest seafood, produce, and meat in creative, delicious dishes that will up your pasta game. Away from the kitchen, Michela enjoys the outdoors, and has been exploring the woods learning mushroom hunting with friends and her Lagotto Romagnolo pup Argo.