Sara Bir

Location: Marietta, Ohio

Education: Ohio State University, The Culinary Institute of America

Sara Bir is a CIA-trained chef and writer who has written for Serious Eats about pawpaws, Midwestern cuisine, the best meat grinders on the market, and foods considered lucky at new years.
Sara's interest in wild food inspired her book The Fruit Forager’s Companion (2018), for which she won a 2019 IACP cookbook award, and her other publications include Tasting Ohio (2018) and the recipe zine The Pocket Pawpaw Cookbook (2021).
In past lives, Sara has worked as both a sausage cart lackey and chocolate factory tour guide.

Experience

Based in Ohio, Sara Bir is a chef, writer, and reference librarian who has written for Serious Eats about pawpaws, Midwestern cuisine, and other topics. She’s also written for publications like Saveur, The Oregonian, and the North Bay Bohemian, while her writing has been featured in the likes of Lucky Peach and Ohio Magazine. Her cookbook The Fruit Forager’s Companion (2018) won an IACP award in 2019, and her other books include Tasting Ohio (2018) and the recipe zine The Pocket Pawpaw Cookbook (2021).

Over the years, Sara has worked as everything from a sausage cart lackey and chocolate factory tour guide to a food critic, recipe tester, and restaurant critic. She's also a passionate culinary instructor, teaching classes to home cooks on the fundamentals of cooking as well as giving foraging presentations inspired by her love of wild food.

About Serious Eats

Serious Eats, a Dotdash brand, is an award-winning food and drink website visited by over 7 million hungry readers every month. Our audience comes to us for rigorously tested recipes, science-driven cooking techniques, robust equipment reviews, and stories that offer cultural and historical context to the foods we love to eat.

Dotdash is among the largest and fastest growing publishers online, and has won over 50 awards in the last year alone, including Digiday's 2020 Publisher of the Year. Dotdash brands include Verywell, Investopedia, The Balance, The Spruce, Simply Recipes, Serious Eats, Byrdie, Brides, MyDomaine, Lifewire, TripSavvy, Liquor.com, and TreeHugger.