Lana Tour Guide at Miami Culinary Tours

Hi! I’m Lana and I'm from St.Petersburg, Russia. I studied linguistics at Pedagogical University and worked as a High school teacher, but I was always very adventurous and dreamed about traveling around the world, so I followed my dream and joined one of the leading Russian airlines as a flight attendant and that was when my life started to change. I was traveling to various parts of the world, sampled exotic dishes (I always believed that food is strongly connected to history and culture), met very different people and one day I went to Cuba… It was like an explosion for my inner world and my taste buds, from then on every time I closed my eyes I saw blue waters of the ocean, heard the sounds of salsa and had the feeling that there was something Latino inside of me. Leaving the island I left a part of me there and I kept going back every time I could, I just couldn’t get enough. Needless to say, I met my future husband there, perfected my Spanish and discovered this completely different Caribbean cuisine.

My relationship with food is not of a professional type, I didn’t study culinary arts, I just like cooking, so it’s more of life experience and natural curiosity. I passed all the way from distinguishing yucca, malanga y boniato to craving my proficiency in cooking them, I felt like a three-years old child pointing to some exotic fruits and vegetables and asking to explain what they were and how they tasted. Words are powerful, but at some point they just don’t work, so I began trying, comparing and collecting, collecting recipes and life stories of the people behind them. And I still do. When I came to Miami I was amazed how diverse, tolerant and vibrant this city is and I took the time to discover it all, so here I am now sharing my experience with you.