Milne, now executive chef at Vancouver's Pacific Palisades Hotel, discovered her culinary talent and love for cooking while feeding hungry hordes of fellow students. For two years it was her duty as a co-op member to cook for 70 people once each week. "I never cooked as a child or teenager," says Milne, who grew up in Brockville, Ont. It was in the kitchen of the Bagot St. co-op house where the idea of becoming a chef started to simmer. "I absolutely loved preparing food for everyone, and many years later when I was trying to figure out what to do with my life, I remembered that time and thought I might like cooking."

Finding her first career choice a little bland, in 1978 Milne quit her job as a high school English teacher in Calgary, and made the decision that changed her life. She enrolled in the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology's professional cooking program and, while still teaching night school, completed the two year intensive training course.

After an impressive career as sous-chef and executive chef of several restaurants in Calgary and Vancouver, she was hired as executive chef at the Pacific Palisades Hotel.

The hotel's new owners have made extensive renovations in the last year. Milne's job has been to revamp the kitchen, menu, and the dining room. "People have a horrible view of what hotel food is all about,” she says. “There’s a real stigma attached to it. People tend to think you can never get a decent meal in a hotel." Milne has worked hard to change that view, at least for the Pacific Palisades. "The food here has gone from greasy coffee shop food to Four Star dining," she says of the hotel's new restaurant, called Monterey.

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The transformation means a demanding schedule for Milne, who works six days a week, 12 hours a day. The 16 member staff she supervises prepares food for the 233-room hotel, and the restaurant that seats 130.

"I definitely feel that cooking is a gift," she says. "You can be trained, but to really make it, you have to have the gift. Cooking is very creative, and that's something that I enjoy about it. But it was very one dimensional for me. I like orchestrating everything, too."

Milne's work at the hotel is a pinch of this, and a dash of that. She creates menus and new dishes, and fills a public relations role by promoting the hotel and the new dining room. But she also prepares lunch every day to stay in touch with the kitchen and her love of cooking. Milne is also a food stylist and has designed dishes for magazines such as Canadian Living, Vancouver Magazine, and Western Living. In the past, she combined her teacher's training with her kitchen skills to teach cooking courses. It's something she'd love to do again, when she has the time.

These days, time is as precious as saffron for Anne. "If I had a husband and kids," she admits, "I could never do this. This is the most challenging position I've ever had. I love it."

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Milne's position is not only challenging, it's unique. In the male-dominated world of chefery, she's Vancouver's only female hotel executive chef. But Milne believes that things are changing in gourmet kitchens. "Women, more and more, are making inroads into the profession,” she says. This is especially true in Vancouver, which is strongly influenced by the California tradition. Female chefs have been more readily accepted in that state since Alice Waters' breakthrough work in the kitchens of Chez Panisse in the 1970s; Waters is known as the mother of California cuisine.

The Pacific Palisades' Monterey, like its namesake West Coast city, specializes in laid-back California cuisine. "Our menu is pretty West Coast, health conscious, lots of anti-egg yolk and anti-butter stuff," Milne says. "Some of the healthiest people in the world live here. They are health conscious and so am I."

Milne looks it. She's fresh-faced and fit — no small feat in a profession that demands working around food. And long hours and the high stress of the job are all too often the main ingredients for burn-out among chefs.

"I know so many people who have burned out in this business — drugs, alcohol, broken marriages,” says Milne. "You have to have a certain temperament; you have to be really strong."

At 2:30 in the afternoon, after the lunch rush, the kitchen of the Pacific Palisades still bubbles over with activity. Dining room doors swing, phones ring, dishes clatter. Working daily in this frenetic environment, what is Milne's, recipe for mental physical health? "I swim and go out to dinner' on my nights off. The only thing I make at home is tea," she says with a smile.

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