Discover

Who We Are

We are big foodies! Honestly, we are always thinking about what our next meal will be. Sophia was raised in a Russian Jewish household in southern California and Ryan also grew up celebrating some of the Jewish holidays near Philadelphia. We both ended up moving to northern Virginia for work, where we met.

Even from the beginning, we were always a team; cooking and baking and trying out new recipes. You’ll find that a lot of our recipe inspiration comes from our childhoods and the flavors we grew up with. But we also love trying new food and learning about different cultures, so we like to try some things out here and there.

Ryan and Sophia are both software engineers by day and amateur chefs by night. When we are not working at our full-time jobs, we are either making, photographing, and eating food, playing video games, working out, or traveling. There sometimes aren’t enough hours in the day to do everything we love, but we are both very excited to be here on this small part of the web.

What Is Lapa

Lapa started out as a place where we could store our recipe collection in one place. These recipes included those from family, ones we’ve made up on our own, and adoptions from other chefs. We grew tired of misplacing recipes -- sometimes we wouldn’t write down what we just created or only had recipes in the form of verbal dictations. But not anymore; we’re writing everything down! And over time, we decided to share those recipes with all of you.

One of our biggest beliefs is that if you can do it yourself, why not? We are big fans of DIY and cooking at home and we believe that you can do it too! That’s why you’ll find that our food photography, content creation, and stories are our own.

Why ‘Lapa’, you ask? The word comes from an old Slavic root that means ‘to eat voraciously’, and frankly, we do a lot of eating. And you probably love food too, otherwise you wouldn’t be here! We hope you enjoy reading our stories and trying out our recipes at home.

The Site And Beyond

You can think of the content here as being written by Sophia and illustrated by Ryan, sort of like a physical cookbook! But like all of our recipes, this website is, too, homemade. If you’re interested in our tech stack or have questions about web design, feel free to contact us!

For more information and to start the conversation, write to us at lapa.eats@gmail.com or visit our Contact page.

You can also check us out on Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest.

Enjoy!