Elizabeth Downer is a relative newcomer to Pittsburgh. Her lifelong interest in food and wine was largely responsible for her leaving California for Paris in the 1970s.

"I went for a one-year sabbatical which lasted instead for 17 years," she said. "I would still be there had I not met my Prince Charming, who swept me off my feet and away to Africa."

During her stay in Paris, she studied cuisine at La Varenne and the Cordon Bleu, oenology at the University of Bordeaux and art history at the Ecole du Louvre. For 13 years Downer was a partner in an adventure travel business that organized hot air balloon vacations in Burgundy, the Loire Valley, Tuscany, Austria and Switzerland. She professes not to miss those days and enjoys her new life in Pittsburgh.