Meet Ally
She didn't set out to start a seasoning company.
She set out to make sure her mom could still enjoy her food.
The rest is Taste of Chi™.
From the Kitchen Table to Chicago's Table.
Ally 'a la Carte Gourmet Kitchen started the way the best things do, not with a business plan, but with a feeling.
Ally has always loved food. Not just eating it, understanding it. She learned to cook through cookbooks the way other kids learned through classrooms. She studied them, recreated the dishes, and made them her own. Over time, what started as curiosity became a calling. Cooking was never just something she did. It was how she expressed herself.
But it wasn't until life gave her a real problem to solve that Taste of Chi™ came to life.
The Moment Everything Got a Purpose.
When her mother was diagnosed with high blood pressure, Ally faced something she couldn't look away from. The food her family loved, the soul food, the cookout staples, the dishes that meant home, was suddenly off limits. Not because of the flavor. Because of the salt.
She refused to accept that.
So she got to work. She developed her own blends, salt-free by design, but bold enough to hold their own at any Chicago cookout. Blends that let her mom eat at the family table without giving anything up. Blends that said: your health and your culture can coexist. They were always supposed to.
That refusal became Taste of Chi™. The refusal to let "low sodium" mean low flavor. The refusal to let anyone at the table feel like they're eating something lesser. The refusal to let health be a reason to lose the food that makes us feel like ourselves.
Some Things Don't Need to Be Taught.
Cooking has always been in Ally's DNA. It runs through her family like a current — her aunts, her uncles, her cousins — everybody can cook. Nobody had to teach them. They just knew.
And at the center of all of it was Granny Louvenia Beasley.
A few times a year, Ally would visit that side of the family. And every single time, without fail, Granny was in the kitchen. Moving with the kind of quiet confidence that only comes from decades of feeding people you love. No recipe. No measuring. Just knowing.
Ally didn't grow up in that kitchen. But those visits left something in her that never left, a reverence for the kind of cooking that carries more than flavor. The kind that carries memory, identity, and love.
Taste of Chi™ is her way of honoring that. Of keeping Granny Louvenia's presence alive in every kitchen these blends touch, including yours.
Chicago Is Not Just Where We're From. It's What We're Made Of.
Every blend in the Taste of Chi™ line is named after a feeling, a neighborhood, a memory, or a moment that anyone who's ever spent a summer in Chicago will recognize immediately.
Who Made the Greens? is the question at every family cookout. Stony Island Seafood is the South Side in a bottle. Summer time Chi is the lakefront, the block, and the barbecue all at once.
This is Chicago food culture: bottled, seasoned, and sent straight to your kitchen.
What We're Here to Do.
Taste of Chi™ exists for the people who love food and the people who raised them. For the cooks who want flexibility. For the families who want everyone at the table eating the same meal. For anyone who has ever been told they have to choose between flavor and their health.
You don't have to choose. Not here.
More Than Just Seasonings.
At Ally 'a la Carte Gourmet Kitchen, we're building a whole kitchen lifestyle around bold, balanced flavor. Seven Taste of Chi™ seasoning blends rooted in Chicago culture, chef-tested recipes that show you exactly how to use them, in-home chef experiences and full-service catering, balanced meal prep with vegan, vegetarian, and pescatarian options, and real, unscripted content straight from Ally's kitchen that makes cooking feel like something you actually want to do.
Whether you're cooking for one or feeding the whole block, you belong in this kitchen.
This Is Personal.
I'm a healthcare worker, a mom, a Chicagoan, and a cook. I built Taste of Chi™ because my mom needed bold flavor without the salt and then I realized how many other people needed that same thing.
So I built it for all of us.
Every blend carries the legacy of my family, the pride of my city, and the belief that bold flavor and a healthy life were never opposites. They never were.
Come cook with me.
With love,
Ally