Meet Jess
Jess Haque is an Executive Chef and creative director in New York City whose career spans professional kitchens, hospitality leadership, and more than 15 years of experience in design and marketing.
Her work is rooted in hospitality as a language—one that tells stories, creates belonging, and turns everyday moments into something considered and memorable. Whether she’s cooking for a room or shaping a brand narrative, her focus is always the same: care, clarity, and connection.
The Journey
Jess didn’t grow up in kitchens. She studied Visual Communications and spent over a decade in design and marketing. But at 22, cooking became an obsession—she read cookbooks like novels, took every class available, hosted dinner parties, and couldn’t shake the feeling in her bones that she was meant to do this.
In May 2020, she moved to New York City and started from the bottom. From private chef to line cook to Sous Chef to Head Chef in less than two years, what she calls her “designer-to-Chef” journey. By 2023, she was Executive Chef at North Miznon and was tasked with opening a new concept, Malka, which remains one of the hottest restaurants, most sought-after reservations in NYC.
She’s run high-volume kitchens, built teams, developed menus, and learned where systems break under pressure and how to build ones that don’t burn people out.
The Freckled Fork
The Freckled Fork was born out of that journey, her return to the intimacy and intention that first drew Jess to food.
It’s a culinary studio offering private chef services, meal prep, event catering, and consulting for people who want food that feels personal and real.
Her cooking sits somewhere between Southern roots, Mediterranean technique, South Asian influence through family, and fine dining discipline, all shaped by motherhood, reinvention, and the lived mess of rebuilding.
She doesn’t cook fusion for trend’s sake. She cooks from her actual life.
Jess is a mother to her 10-year-old daughter, Millie. Beyond Chef life, she spends time living her best life with her husband, her family, friends…one that looks nothing like what she expected and everything she had hoped for. Her new normal is a beautiful mess, and it’s exactly where she’s meant to be.
A few words from Jess…
I believe hospitality is about meeting one of our most basic human needs—it’s about how people feel in a space.
Good hospitality looks like a meal that fits you, sees you & knows you. It looks like a kitchen team that’s treated well and built on trust. It looks like a gathering that feels thoughtful, not overdone. It’s a table where people can breathe.
I’m passionate about creating spaces where food feels like care, not a show…where the work is intentional not performed, where people gather without needing to impress.
I love mentoring younger cooks, career changers, and women building creative lives around real responsibilities. I believe in making room for people who are still figuring it out, who are starting over, who are brave enough to chase what lights them up.
I’d love to cook for you, so let’s chat. There’s always room at the table—pull up a chair.
