From an early age, Chef Bethany Costello knew the place she felt most at home was the kitchen. Hailing from Middle Tennessee, Costello spent most of her childhood and early teenage years moving from state to state with her family. The necessity to adapt to new environments and kitchens from a young age has had a clear influence on Costello’s style of baking and cooking. Her food—much like her own personality—exudes a sense of home with an elevated air of creativity, mindfulness and finesse.

Once her family settled back into Middle Tennessee, Costello spent two years at Middle Tennessee State University, at which time she decided to take a monumental risk and left the state to attend culinary school to pursue her true passion at just 19 years old. Upon graduating from the French Culinary Institute with a diploma in Pastry Arts, Costello began her career in New York City by stepping into her first kitchen at the acclaimed Three-Star Michelin rated Bouley. Over the course of nine years in New York, she worked in several distinguished restaurants, whose cuisines ranged from Austrian to French and Canadian. Rising the ranks from pastry cook to chef by the age of 24. Throughout her years in New York she not only learned how to develop food, but also how to develop work environments. She often was running multiple locations and overseeing staffs ranging from five to thirty, as well as twenty four hour operations. This gave Costello the opportunity to learn program development and oversight as well as various traditional styles of pastries all while adding her own panache, which is what she is best known for.

Most notably of these restaurants were both M. Wells Steakhouse and M. Wells Dinette, located inside of the MoMa PS1 contemporary art museum, where, as Executive Pastry Chef, she created the pastry departments for both locations. In her time at M. Wells, the restaurants received multiple stars from the New York Times, as well as a star from the revered Michelin Group. Further accolades of Costello’s work while in New York include Top 5 Best New Desserts of 2013 by New York Magazine, being voted as having the #1 Pie in NYC by the Village Voice, having one of her own recipes featured in Food and Wine Magazine, and being listed #7 on Eater.com’s Top 50 Best Things About New York Dining, winter 2013, to name a few.

In April of 2015, Costello left New York for Nashville where she began her own concept, Eat Like Kings. The next two years were spent testing concepts including white labeled desserts programs and food manufacturing finally settling on festival culinary operations.