SAN ANTONIO – Keeping your kitchen and food clean, handling sharp objects and dealing with high heat are all responsibilities chefs deal with daily in a kitchen.
A 12-year-old junior executive sous chef in San Antonio does it all.
“My dream when I become an adult is to open my own restaurant,” Victoria Taylor, fifth grade executive junior sous chef said.
Since she was eight, Taylor has been training in a professional kitchen and has been coated by an executive chef.
She has even started her own catering business, Chef Vickie, that her mother and sister help her run.
Her mother Tori Warford said Victoria has ADHD and her daughter’s future wasn’t always so bright.
“Victoria was a child that was always in the principal’s office,” Tori said. “She was failing every single subject and then using conduct. And at that point I was just at my wit’s end. I didn’t know what to do. And so this was kind of like, I hope you know, I hope it worked. And thank God. Thank God it did.”
“It helps me stay focused, and keeps my mind off of having bad behavior in class,” Victoria said.
“You can’t play in the kitchen,” Tori said. “You have to you know, there’s knives and there’s heat and there’s all that kind of stuff. But it’s just giving her, I think, someone giving her more responsibility.”
Being in the kitchen gave her gave her purpose.
“It’s a big step from where Victoria was,” Tori said. “It was from people not wanting their kids around her to her actually being a role model to kids in the classroom.”
Victoria has catered several events, making a wide range of foods, from soul food to an all-vegan menu. This Valentine’s Day she is taking orders as well.
She hopes to get a scholarship to a culinary school after high school.
Victoria is even working on teaching cooking classes for other kids who have ADHD like her.
“I want to help other people, like not only people with ADHD because I suffered ADHD, but because, like, I want people to know that, like, if you like if you want to do a dream, you could, like, pursue it.”