Aloha!
I’m Chef Kyra Mirian Bramble.
Oh wow. Where to even begin my story?
I’m a Northern Californian girl who grew up between the redwood forests and the wine country of Sonoma County, with the Grateful Dead as my childhood soundtrack.
I began working in the kitchen in local restaurants when I was sixteen and fell as much in love with the fast-paced environments as I did with hospitality. When I moved to San Francisco after high school, I continued hospitality work and attended the California Culinary Academy’s Le Cordon Bleu program. My early twenties were a blur of long days and late nights working all positions available in the city’s restaurants and nightlife, supporting production and dancing at music festivals, and then long international sabbaticals where I would backpack and volunteer on organic farms, falling deeper in love with food and the stories woven into each culture’s cuisines.
When I was twenty-five I had what I now refer to as my “quarter-life crisis” – and I quit restaurant work to find something easier on my body and my spirit. I quit restaurants after a decade for good. I tried my hand at travel writing. I worked for innovative winemakers in sales and marketing. I learned how to design websites and manipulate basic code. I took a doula certification and worked to support natural birth education. I studied circus arts and learned how to fly. I did everything I could to find meaning and purpose.
But it truly was when I started volunteering to teach inner-city teens healthy cooking that I found my calling, combining my love of food with my love of people. I continued teaching, and in the process of this, relearned how to love the art of cooking.
At the time, I was heavily involved in the yoga community and was asked to cater a yoga retreat in the Joshua Tree Desert. That retreat changed my life! It still, to this day, ranks as one of the most difficult gigs I’ve had: cooking in intense winds and heat on camping equipment with nothing but propane stoves and coolers in my open-air kitchen, but something shifted in me that had been dormant. I felt alive, empowered, and innovative. I decided that cooking for others with love and intention would be my path.
After a decade of city life, I moved to Maui and began my journey to where I am today. I threw myself into cooking, yoga, holistic health, and wellness, and allowed myself the space to explore my true calling.
Twelve years later, Maui is still home, but both my life and my role at Lotus Chefs have changed quite a bit.
Around the time Lotus Chefs began growing into a true team, I became a mother. Early motherhood naturally pulled me away from constant onsite cooking and deeper into the creative and managerial side of the business. Then, in 2025, I was diagnosed with melanoma. After surgery, cancer treatment, and some unexpected complications along the way that I’m still navigating, it became clear that my years of running around hot kitchens for hours at a time had officially come to an end.
It was a huge identity shift after spending most of my life in hospitality, but also an unexpected gift.
Today, I run Lotus Chefs from behind the scenes, working closely with our incredible team of chefs and hospitality professionals who have carried this business forward with so much talent and heart. I still love popping into services, seeing longtime clients, tasting dishes, fussing over a tablescape, and adding my own little touches, but I am no longer the chef you’ll find behind the stove.
Instead, I’ve discovered how much I love dreaming up the experience around the food.
I oversee our menus, client experience, creative direction, systems, styling, and design work, right down to the custom printed menus and silly little coloring books we make for our keiki guests. I get to think about how a table feels, how a family is welcomed, what will make a child light up, and all the tiny details that turn dinner into a memory.
And somewhere in the middle of cancer treatment, I started collecting vintage teacups.
One became five. Five became twenty. Then there were champagne coupes, linens, serving pieces, and entirely too many beautiful things that deserved to be used. What began as a personal creative outlet eventually blossomed into our new sister business, Camellia Tea Society, where I get to indulge another side of myself through vintage tea parties, styled celebrations, and a little bit of grown-up dress-up and magic.
These days, I’m spending more time off my feet, more time with my family, and finding entirely new ways to create.
Food will always be one of my great loves, but I’ve come to understand that what drew me to this work was never only cooking. It was hospitality. Gathering. Beauty. Feeding people in all the ways that word can mean. Coaching other aspiring chefs through my personal website.
I am incredibly proud that Lotus Chefs has grown beyond me and into this extraordinary community of women, each bringing her own gifts to the table. What began as one chef with more requests than she could handle has become something far more beautiful than I could have created alone.
Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for continuing to support this dream, our team, and my family. I may not be behind the stove anymore, but I’m still here, dreaming up what we can create for you next.
