Laura Calder is a Canadian writer. Calder was host of the James Beard Award-winning series French Food at Home, airing on Food Network Canada, The Cooking Channel, and other international stations.
Calder has written four cookbooks, including French Food at Home (2003), French Taste: Elegant, Everyday, Eating (2009), Dinner Chez Moi: The Fine Art of Feeding Friends (2011), and Paris Express: Simple Food from the City of Style (2014). French Taste was awarded the 2010 Taste Canada gold medal for cookbooks. She has also written The Inviting Life (2017) and Kitchen Bliss (2023). She is a judge on Recipe to Riches, a reality series on Food Network Canada, and has been a guest judge on both Top Chef Canada and Iron Chef America.
In 2011, the Canadian government announced that Calder had received the Order of Agricultural Merit from the French government, in the standing of knight.[1]
Calder was born in Saint John, New Brunswick,[2] and raised in Long Reach on Kingston Peninsula, the southern part of New Brunswick.[3] She left New Brunswick to attend Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec. She also attended York University in Toronto, and the London School of Economics in the U.K., after a stint as a sports reporter for a New Brunswick newspaper. Leaving London to return to Canada, Calder took a job in PR, but left that position to enroll in the Dubrulle Culinary Institute, a cooking school in Vancouver. She then honed her cooking skills at the École de Cuisine La Varenne in France.[4]
| Television | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Year | Show | Role | Notes |
| 2007—2010 | French Food at Home | Host | |
| 2007 | The Chateau Dinner, French Food At Home Special | Herself | |
| 2008 | Twas the Night Before Dinner Christmas Special | Herself | Christmas special with Bob Blumer, Anthony Sedlak, Anna Olson, and Ricardo Larrivée |
| 2011 | Iron Chef America | Herself/Judge | Battle mussels, Battle caviar |
| Top Chef Canada | Herself/Guest judge | Episode "The French Feast" Judged the elimination challenge | |
| Recipe to Riches | Herself/Judge |