Sarah Kirnon

Sarah Kirnon is a West Indian At the age of four, her parents sent her to Gall Hill, Saint John, Barbados to live with her maternal grandmother and great-grandmother. Kirnon credits her time in Barbados with instilling a love for food. Her grandmother and uncles raised produce and animals on their farm, using the ingredients in daily cooking. At age thirteen, she moved back to England.

Career After relocating to San Francisco, Kirnon was chef at Emmy's Spaghetti Shack, followed by Front Porch.

In December 2012, Miss Ollie's opened in Swan's Marketplace in Oakland. The restaurant specialized in Caribbean cuisine. Menu items included many favorites from her childhood, such as fried chicken, saltfish and ackee, and goat curry. In 2016, Kirnon and Miss Ollie's were featured in the documentary Hungry. Miss Ollie's was named one of the top 100 restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2018 and 2019 by the San Francisco Chronicle.

Kirnon was chef-in-residence at Elda in San Francisco from September until November 2020. She served Caribbean take out meals, including dishes found at Miss Ollie's. During this time Kirnon started to re-examine the concept of the brick and mortar restaurant because of the impact the COVID-19 pandemic had on the restaurant industry. She believed that pop-ups and smaller establishments, with lower overhead and smaller staffs, would be more common after the pandemic.