Julie Siegfried is the sole owner and chef of Julia Blackbird’s and has continued to run her business for 10 years as a single mom.          
Julie is a graduate of the University of Denver and has spent several years in the restaurant industry as a server, bartender, chef and manager.

Julie, a native of Nebraska, has spent the past 20 years traveling the back roads, eating her way through Northern New Mexico, specifically the Taos Valley to Albuquerque, in order to share with Denver her spin on New Mexican cuisine.

For as long as I can remember, I have loved to cook & entertain.
My parents cooked more out of necessity; however, it was my Grandma Amalia’s cooking that truly inspired me. She was a farm wife with a garden half the size of the farm. She made meals a seasonal celebration of the earth’s bounty.               
My mom tells a story of me being too small to see what was going into the soup pot, so I would stand on a step stool, pleading with my grandma to only put certain things in; I guess this is where I developed my ‘clean’ cooking technique.

I have fond memories of harvest time and spending hours, days and weeks putting up sweet corn, pickles, tomatoes, peaches, jelly and anything else that make winter a little easier. Even today, a pot of corn doesn’t get put to boil without me sharing with my employee’s how the smell of freshly shucked corn takes me right back to pig-tails and overall’s running through my Grammy’s kitchen.                
My first trip to New Mexico, I took 10 rolls of film and used them all. I fell in love with it all… the people, the art, the music, the red earth, the endless sky, the food and most importantly the VIBE. The energy in Northern New Mexico is like no where else on earth, it’s where hippy’s host a wine festival with natives, it’s such an amazing mixture of enlightenment it’s always hard to leave. I’ve often been asked, are you from New Mexico, and I must humbly respond no, I wasn’t raised there…

but my soul is at peace there!