SUSANNE DILLINGHAM
Susanne Dillingham, also known as The Tiny Chef, is a private chef, sommelier, entrepreneur, and author who has spent more than 20 years building a career around food, hospitality, and bringing people together.
She trained at Apicius in Florence, Italy, and later spent nine years as the private chef for NASCAR champion Jeff Gordon and his family—an experience that taught her as much about trust, adaptability, and hospitality as it did about cooking.
Today, Susanne is the owner of The Tiny Chef, creating private dining experiences, hands-on cooking classes, destination events, and the occasional bit of delicious chaos from her little farm in North Carolina.
Viewers may have also seen her on Food Network’s Extreme Chef or cooking on Charlotte Today.
And now she is adding author to the list.
Her first book, Secret Ingredients of Life, comes out this fall—a collection of stories, recipes, lessons, and the people and places that have shaped her life in and out of the kitchen.
Susanne's cooking is deeply influenced by Italy, where she has spent years learning, traveling, eating, and returning again and again. She loves handmade pasta, beautiful seasonal ingredients, really good wine, and food that feels special without feeling stuffy.
At the heart of everything she does is a pretty simple idea:
Food is rarely just about the food. It’s about who’s sitting around the table.
📍 Charlotte, NC + destination events
🍝 Private Chef | Sommelier | Culinary Experiences
📺 Food Network + Charlotte Today
📖 Author, Secret Ingredients of Life
Secret Ingredients of Life: A Memoir of Identity, Appetite, and the Hunger for Home is the story of a woman who learns that belonging is built, one choice at a time. Adopted at three days old, Susanne Dillingham grows up loved yet searching, carrying an ache she can't quite name. Years later, she experiences adoption from the other side as a birth mother, making a decision that will reshape how she understands family, love, and selfhood.
Threaded through the heat of kitchens and the freedom of Italy, Susanne discovers that food is identity, memory, and the language of care when words fail. She transforms that insight into a life of hospitality, building The Tiny Chef from the ground up into a sought-after brand defined by seasonal cooking, wine pairing, and white-glove trust, the invisible structure that lets clients relax and feel held. As her reputation grows, so does the pressure of running a business without losing the soul that made it special.
When a long-awaited search leads to a photo that feels like a mirror and a reunion that changes everything, Susanne must navigate the beautiful, complicated truth that family can be real in more than one direction and that success doesn't cure hunger; it simply gives you new ways to name it.
Warm, honest, and richly sensory, Secret Ingredients of Life is a memoir about the sweetness and salt of survival, the heat that refines us, and the bravery to become your own home.
IN THE PRESS
