Meet Chef Leah
& EAT's Story
EAT Marketplace is a farm-to-table eatery, café, and bakery in Old Town Temecula, built on Chef Leah Di Bernardo's decades of work in sustainable, community-rooted food.
Meet Chef Leah
Chef Leah Di Bernardo has spent 24 years building Temecula Valley's farm-to-table food scene from the ground up. She hosted the region's first farm-to-table dinners, founded Temecula Valley Slow Food in 2006, and opened EAT Marketplace to put good, clean, and fair food on Old Town's tables.
EAT's Mission
EAT Marketplace exists to make eating closer to home part of everyday life in Old Town Temecula. For over 16 years, we've built our menu around relationships with local growers, not supply chains, because good food starts with a healthy farm and a healthy community. That means regenerative agriculture, ethical sourcing, and community food independence: families and neighbors having real access to good food, not distant supply chains. Every dish we serve is an invitation to eat closer to home.
Our Story
EAT Marketplace carries three generations of food knowledge into a single storefront. Its recipes and instincts come from Chef Leah Di Bernardo's family heritage, the cooking she learned at home long before it was a career, and its purpose comes from a promise she made when her daughter, Gigi Rose, was born in 2002: that food in this family would always be something worth passing down. Leah didn't build that promise alone. Her sister JoJo has been a business partner from the start, and her sister Deborah, who went on to found the award-winning Roast House Coffee, helped get EAT off the ground in its earliest days. Slow Food gave the family's shared instinct a wider community. Leah helped bring the movement to Temecula in 2006, and what began as a commitment to regional food culture became EAT, a farm-to-table eatery, café, and bakery built to put those values into daily practice.
Today, that work is carried forward by the group of women who run EAT day to day, gathering people around the table and putting good, clean, and fair food at the center of this community. Everyone at EAT shares the same sense of obligation to what ends up on your plate and in your cup. That partnership continues the story Leah, JoJo, and Deborah started. It doesn't finish it.
At its core, our story is simple: we want you to break bread, gather at the table, and connect with one another over good food.
Full Bio
Chef Leah Di Bernardo is the founder of Cultivating Good Inc. and a 24-year veteran of the global Slow Food movement, known for building Temecula Valley's farm-to-table culinary identity from the ground up. After moving to the region's young wine country in 2002, she pioneered its first farm-to-table and farm-to-fork dinners, founded Temecula Valley Slow Food in 2006, and went on to open EAT Marketplace, Extraordinary Catering, and Hello, You're Welcome.
Her work extends beyond the plate: she has founded and directed 21 academic and edible school garden programs across the region, teaches Exploration of the Culinary Arts at Mt. San Jacinto College, and serves on a Riverside County committee advancing regenerative agriculture and farmland stewardship. A member of the California delegation to Terra Madre in Turin, Italy, Chef Leah has been recognized as a Top 100 Small Business by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, named among Visit Temecula Valley's Women Mavericks and Makers, and featured in the Huffington Post, Wine Spectator, and Condé Nast Traveler for her role in shaping Southern California's good, clean, and fair food movement.