Dawn Burrell

If you walk into my kitchen, you will smell bread baking.

You will smell a lovely aromatic side, just caramelizing.

Those are my two favorite smells.

Butter, you'll smell butter.

These are the things that I love the most.

I am chef partner of Late August here in Houston.

I'm an Olympian.

Okay, so I'm Dawn Burrell, Olympian.

I'm a former world champion of the long jump in 2001.

You know, I'm focusing on what I'm doing now.

But I should honor it because it's made me who I am today.

I decided if I did not make that Olympic team, then I would have to find something else that I really love to do.

It was time to stop.

Really, it was like, oh my gosh, I'm in survival mode.

What can I do?

You know, because I suffered a death of my athletic career.

my thoughts landed on going to culinary school.

I didn't have the easiest start because I started cooking when I was 34 years old, which is very late.

And I just needed to figure out how I can grow quickly into who I needed to be to cover the expenses that I accrued as an adult.

I was in culinary school with teenagers.