Dennis Prescott understands the very essence of cooking. A celebrated Canadian chef and cookbook author, his practice is based on making people happy with food that inspires joy at the table. Prescott’s uplifting and joyful spirit towards food also comes across his popular Instagram page, which has so far accumulated some 600k followers (and counting!).
Naturally, it took Prescott time and work to achieve a level of freedom and joy in the kitchen. “Deliciousness requires risk,” he relayed once in an interview with Medium. “Taking risks guarantees failure while on the road to success,” he noted.
Prescott knows what he’s talking about. A once struggling musician living in Nashville, TN, he learned how to cook by working his way through several Jamie Oliver cookbooks. He soon realized that food, rather than music, was his actual passion and he threw himself into not just creating delicious recipes. Working alongside chefs in various restaurants, lead him to travel the world as a chef and ultimately become the master he is today.
“Mastery takes years,” stresses the chef. “The best chefs in the world are the best because they’ve put in years and years of work to get to a place where something comes naturally to them like second nature. And they still fail often, because they’re constantly pushing their own creativity in the kitchen.”
Alongside the actual cooking, Prescott’s success is also owed to his online presence. His Instagram account is full of photos of mouth-watering food and eclectic recipes that will inspire you, at the very least, to order some takeout. “When I started, I naively thought all I’d have to focus on was food,” he says. “Wrong. Should you aspire to the best chef you can be? Absolutely! That said, I spend much more time working on account receivables and in meetings than I do in the kitchen.”
His advice to other aspiring cooks? “There is no special pill or secret hack to success. Just put your head down, work hard and put in the time. In the end, the risk will pay off.”
