Recent feature Country Roads Magazine >>
In an effort to feed her family more sustainably, Chef Loomis looked to the bountiful natural environments around her home in Concordia Parish, a place teeming with wild game. A now-seasoned hunter, last year Loomis killed two deer, one of which she processed entirely on her own. “I wanted to get the most meat and to be honest in the process,” she said.
In 2010, Victoria Loomis was a recently-divorced newly-turned vegetarian just starting culinary school; in 2020, she spends at least two months out of the year at a hunting camp and has become an advocate for ethical meat consumption. The years in between have seen her in restaurant kitchens, hunting lodges, taking a year off professional cooking to paint, and now working with friends on a series of pop-up drive-in movie events, exploring the boundaries of hospitality in a changed world. Sit with her for an hour—over a meal she’s prepared, if you can swing it—and you’ll see how this transition, dramatic on the surface, fits into her story of pursuing creativity where it leads and developing and communicating reverence for the natural world.