Kathryn Lukas

Her sense of smell spoiled the surprise. Friends and family lay in wait at her home, ready to ambush Kathryn Lukas for her 40th birthday.

But the second she opened the door, she could smell her son was there and called out his name. “No surprising me in my house,” she says.

This supertaster ability has guided Lukas, a self-described “classically trained chef and food alchemist” to a career in food that included globetrotting as a private chef and time as a GM at Pebble Beach Lodge’s Stillwater Grill. Now, it finds her at the helm of a burgeoning dynasty. Her boutique Farmhouse Culture sauerkrauts and Gut Shot juices have gotten so popular that the company just hired new staff and unveiled a 28,950-square-foot production facility in Watsonville. It’s surrounded by the organic cabbage that goes into award-winning kraut interpretations like classic caraway, smoked jalapeño, horseradish-leek and kimchi (read more on the food blog, www.mcweekly.com/edible).

The most exciting part of the new property is the actual farmhouse nextdoor. It provides authenticity for the brand, and more importantly, it will furnish a kitchen for Lukas to sniff out still more products and flavors, like the apple-fennel kraut and cauliflower-curry kraut she’s contemplating.

Weekly: You’re one part classically trained chef.

Lukas: The chef I learned to cook from in Strausberg taught me to finish sauces and soups with sauerkraut juice and to do classic dishes like pork chop-sausage-potato-and-sauerkraut casserole. I apply flavor profiles he taught me – the right amount of sweet and salt and tang.

You’re also part “food alchemist.”

I inherited a crazy olfactory system from the women in my family. I’m a supertaster. I experience food, so I love food. I experience the world through flavor. My mother was such a strong smeller she knew where you’d been. She could smell people in the dark. This proclivity led me early on to food. I’m fascinated with science, too. Geeking out on fermentation is a real love. Bacteria represent an entire world; the microbes have different moods and characteristics. By setting temperature and salt, you can achieve layers of complexity.

How was living outside of Yosemite for a reflective “pause”/sabbatical?

My son was graduating high school, and I finished my bachelor’s in pre-corporate food traditions in 2007. I traveled all over South America, Asia and Europe, took cooking classes in Thailand and Brazil and went into macrobiology, learning about fermented anything in these cultures, though not with intentions of starting a food business.

I rented a cabin, took a year to think and write, had an “In Season” column with Sonora Union Democrat and taught seasonal and local cooking. Meanwhile, my CSA had cabbage and I set up crocks everywhere. I sold some kraut through a farmer friend and it went crazy from there. It all happened very quickly.

How about the new digs?

We were making sauerkraut in the middle of Santa Cruz, and neighbors would think there was a gas leak and firetrucks would show up. Being out in the country is the right place to be. From the beginning, I wanted to have a vertically-integrated process. The values around food production are very important for me. It’s a dream to be next to cabbage.

What’s it like to see people gravitating toward probiotics and gut-friendly foods as you’re scaling up?

It’s incredibly satisfying to have an idea and the timing is right. I didn’t create these profiles and foods because I had health issues or needed to heal myself; that knowledge is new to me. I created them because I think they’re so freaking delicious. All my favorite foods are fermented: cheese, salami, coffee, beer, wine.

OK, free association time: vinegar.

Eeks. It’s too much. It’s intense. So good for you, but intense.

Pickle.

Crunch.

Cabbage.

Oh, man. Life. It’s such an important vegetable in so many cultures. Brassica oleracea’s original seeds started in India but every culture has a form of it.

Love.

Ha. That’s a hard one. Going in too many directions.

Then it’s no longer free association!

What came to mind was kindness.

Stinky.

Yum.