About Chef Sera Cuni
Sera Cuni is the chef and owner of two North Carolina restaurants: Root Cellar Café & Catering in Chapel Hill and a sister spin-off, Café Root Cellar in Pittsboro. Classically trained in the culinary arts, Chef Sera launched her career in her home state of Connecticut, where she grew up surrounded by a family of cooks who embraced their Italian and Czech foodie traditions.
Her early kitchen experiences, including in restaurants Main and Hopewell, Americus on the Wharf, and Pastis, all in Connecticut, helped to inform and influence the cuisine she loves to cook today – creative and flavorful dishes that reflect the vast diversity of foods from across the country.
Moving to NC
In the early 2000s, Chef Sera left the icy winters of the North behind to settle in North Carolina to be near her immediate family. Following several years as a chef at the Fearrington House Inn in Chapel Hill and Nordstrom’s Café in Durham, she was hired by restaurant owner and cookbook author Sara Foster to lead the kitchen of her signature Foster’s Market in Chapel Hill. Chef Sera and her wife Susan purchased the Chapel Hill location in 2013 and rebranded it to the Root Cellar Café & Catering in 2014. They opened a sister spinoff of the restaurant in Pittsboro in 2018.
Chef Sera devotes her free time to supporting other women culinary entrepreneurs and working with nonprofits to address food insecurity in North Carolina.
A founding member of the North Carolina Chapter of Les Dames d’Escoffier and a selected member of Sterling Silver’s Signature Chefs, Chef Sera devotes her free time to supporting other women culinary entrepreneurs and working with nonprofits to address food insecurity in North Carolina. In August 2023, Chef Sera launched her latest project Feed-Well Fridges, a community fridge program that aims to address hunger in Chatham County and eliminate restaurant food waste.
When she isn’t cooking, you may find this lovable, big personality chef on the Food Network. A frequent competitor on Guy’s Grocery Games, Chef Sera was crowned a 2023 winner of Chef Alex Guarnaschelli’s Supermarket Stakeout.
Occasionally, she can also be found lifting cars and pulling planes in Strong Man competitions across the state or absolutely obsessing over otters, an animal she dreams of leaving the culinary world for if ever given the chance to work as a handler at a zoo or aquarium.
