Laguna Beach native Lindsay Smith is truly a force to be reckoned with. Inspired by a childhood eating organic foods cooked from scratch, as well as watching Julia Child on PBS, Smith created wonderful memories around food. And this is when her passion was born.

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She worked alongside noted chef Pascal Olhats, then moved on to the Ritz-Carlton, and then to develop her own catering business.

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In 2006, at the age of 26, she fulfilled her dream of owning a restaurant and  opened Nirvana Grille in Mission Viejo. Two years later, the Laguna Beach location was opened and the restaurants ran concurrently for five years. Then Lindsay decided to focus all her attention on her hometown restaurant.

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Chef Lindsay is known for her dedication to healthy, sustainable, organic and locally sourced “clean” and seasonal California cuisine. She and her food have been lauded in dozens of publications and have landed on many lists of top restaurants, including “Top Four Restaurants in Laguna Beach,” a town known for its fine dining. She was named as the only female “Top 10 Chefs Under 40 in OC” by OC Metro and has had years of rave reviews and awards from Zagat, Open Table, Yelp and more. In 2019, she competed on the Food Network’s show “Chopped,” and was chosen as the Festival of Chefs Orange County Honoree Chef and awarded by Chef Olhats and her peers for philanthropic commitment in 2020 and 2021. In 2022, she was the first small business owner to be honored for her community support and as an empowered female by California Assemblywoman Cottie Petrie-Norris.

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