Dame Nicole Aloni
Profile by Karen Binder
Nicole began her entrepreneurial career at the ripe old age of 13 when she convinced seven women in her Laguna Beach neighborhood to let her make dinner for their families once a week. Armed with two books, Betty Crocker’s Cooking for Kids and the Larousse Gastronomique, she proceeded to plan, cook, serve and clean up in their homes, and thus commenced her future lifelong metier.
In her early 20s she hooked up with our deceased, beloved Dame Susan Kaufman who was living in Laguna Beach at the time, and the two of them formed a catering company that was successful but short-lived and sowed the seeds for an enduring friendship bringing Nicole to Seattle 30 years later.
Realizing in her 20s becoming a chef might require training and credentials, Nicole attended culinary school in Paris commencing a 2-year stint as a chef in France. Upon returning to the U.S. in her early 30s, her quest for chef work led her to become director of catering at the Los Angeles Music Center, at the time the largest catering company in the U.S. She masterminded catering for the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, the Academy Awards (five times!), and dinner for Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth of Great Britain, but realizing the toll this career took on her, left after leading the company to triple its sales in five years.
Married to the love of her life, composer Ami Aloni, and having a stable and supportive husband and homelife, Nicole had the freedom to start her own catering company which she led successfully for 13 years, until the death of her husband. She then wrote and published her first book, Secrets from a Caterer’s Kitchen, and became one of Sur La Table’s celebrity chefs. In this role, she traveled to all the retail culinary chain’s teaching kitchens every season (basically four times each year) for five years.
Nicole ultimately moved to Seattle 15 years ago, where she continued to write cookbooks and nurtured a freelance writing job with Sam’s Club. After years of this rigorous and exhausting schedule, Nicole decided it was time to contribute more to society and to pursue something she deemed more important for her: helping people realize their life’s goals. To this end she attended school to become a certified life coach and, in 2017, went to work for Capital One Bank as a life coach in their free program coaching people in every strata of life. After a very happy and successful career at Capital One, Covid forced the shutdown of the program in December 2020.
The months since then have been spent planning and packing for her imminent move to her primal home of Laguna Beach. Nicole has said that one of the most pleasurable parts of her life in Seattle has been being a member of les Dames d’Escoffier, a group of accomplished entrepreneurial woman with whom she feels great comraderie. We will miss her, her warmth, humor, culinary prowess and contributions to our group.
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