Cooking Up Community

Cailey Lilly Quita

KNEADING Vostrejs skillfully spreading and rolling out the pizza dough to achive the perfect plumped crust and bite.

Long before Senior Sunrise cinnamon rolls, homemade pizzas for friends, and a growing social media following, Palo Alto High School senior Luca Vostrejs was just a kid experimenting in the kitchen. 

“I started cooking with my dad from a very young age, maybe five or six years old,” Vostrejs said. “It was a way to spend quality time together and an excuse to hang out and experiment with different ingredients.”

What began as a way to bond with family slowly grew into something more. When the COVID-19 pandemic forced online learning, Vostrejs suddenly found himself with hours at home and few ways to spend them. Instead of scrolling through his phone or waiting out the day, he turned to the kitchen. 

“Over the Zoom year, I spent hours at home just cooking random things because I didn’t really know what else to do,” he said. “It became an outlet, almost like a form of therapy for me to disconnect from the outside world and keep experimenting with something I was really interested in.”

Unlike other hobbies, Vostrejs says food allows him to create something tangible and immediately share it with others. 

“It is an art that allows you to not only express your creativity, but share it with other people and build a community through your art, practice, and experimentation,” Vostrejs said.

To document that creative process, Vostrejs created an Instagram account, @lucav._.cooking, where he posts photos of his dishes ranging from homemade pastries to elaborate dinners. What started as a personal log has slowly evolved into a platform that tracks his growth as a chef. 

“It became a way for me to log all of my successes and failures,” Vostrejs said. “It was less to show other people and more for me as a memory keepsake, almost like a journal.”

Scrolling back through older posts, Vostrejs can see how much his cooking style has evolved. Early dishes focused on mastering fundamentals like sushi or steak and frites, while more recent creations experiment with bold flavors and new techniques like limoncello liquor tiramisu with homemade lemon curd or crispy prawn baos. 

One of the most memorable examples of this growth occurred during Senior Sunrise, when Vostrjs and fellow student Jonathan Bakhash woke up early to bake cinnamon rolls for all of the seniors. The project required planning, preparation, and cooking on a much larger scale than usual, but it also allowed them to share their love.

“It’s very rare to be able to share your art or passions with a widespread community and do it in a way that genuinely makes someone’s day better,” Vostrejs said. “Our goal was to not only challenge ourselves, but to leave people saying, ‘this is not something that will happen that many times in our lives. This is something really unique, really special.’”

Paly senior Katherine Zaner attended the event, and recalled excitement and appreciation for their dedication in feeding the senior class.

“Knowing that Luca had made the cinnamon rolls himself made the sunrise much more memorable than it would have been if it was store-bought food,” Zaner said. “They physically brought us all together as a class, since before the cinnamon rolls were brought we were pretty spread out across the football field.”

Although cooking plays a major role in his life now, Vostrejs does not plan to pursue it professionally. Instead, he hopes to keep it as a personal passion when he goes to college, whether that means hosting dinners for friends or cooking for roommates. 

“When you really just love something, and it’s your escape from reality, you don’t want to contaminate that passion with obligation,” Vostrejs said.