Lauryn Therin
F&B Director at Restaurant Boca at the Hotel The Companion Vienna
“I want people to feel free around food. No judgment about what they eat, how much they eat, or how they eat.”
Fotos © The Companion Vienna
There are chefs who learn cooking through recipes. And then there are people like Lauryn, who arrived in gastronomy through life itself.
Before she ever stepped into a professional kitchen, Lauryn was an elite athlete. Born in Auckland to a Samoan Māori mother and a French father, she grew up between cultures, languages and landscapes. Nature shaped her early years. Fishing with her family, moving freely outdoors, learning that strength is not always loud. Sometimes it is quiet, consistent and deeply rooted.
At twelve, life took her to Jersey. There, another education began in her French grandmother’s kitchen. Rustic food, honest food, food without performance. Spider crab with potatoes, brawn, pigs heads on the kitchen counter, freshly picked raspberries, dishes cooked from instinct and memory. She learned that great food does not need spectacle. It needs care, time and attention.
Then came sport. Scholarships, boarding school, international competition, Commonwealth Games, Junior Olympics, British Bobsleigh, British Cycling. Years of discipline and relentless pursuit of tiny improvements. Entire seasons built around fractions of a second. “Who spends a whole year thinking about 0.4 seconds?”
That world taught her resilience. It also taught her suffering.
Lauryn speaks about suffering with honesty. Not as something glamorous, but as something real. In elite sport, the body adapts to pressure. Pain becomes normal. Limits move. You learn to stay calm in discomfort.
She says the same can be true when opening a restaurant. The long days, the uncertainty, the emotional weight, the need to keep going when you are tired. Suffering can break people, but it can also build stamina, humility and perspective.
Food during those athletic years became highly functional. Fuel, recovery, performance, data. It was measured and monitored.
And then one cookbook changed everything.
Her sister gifted her an Ottolenghi book after Lauryn had become vegetarian. She cooked her way through it and felt something return. Curiosity. Joy. Colour. Appetite beyond function.
She decided that once sport was over, she would become a chef.
After the Olympics, Lauryn returned to New Zealand and cycled solo across the country. It was a journey to recover, to grieve the loss of her father and to reconnect with herself. Along the way, she met a young man recovering from a severe brain injury. Lauryn ended up caring for him for six months, changing his nutrition and daily routine. By the time she left, he was running five kilometres beside her.
That experience stayed with her. „He ended up helping me just as much as I helped him. I needed that time to take care of myself too and this opportunity gave me the chance to do so.“
Food could nourish. Food could comfort. Food could support healing.
From there, kitchens followed. Melbourne first. Then London. Then five formative years with Yotam Ottolenghi. Lauryn moved from Sous Chef to Head Chef and later into the test kitchen, where she worked on recipes, books and creative development.
She speaks about him with real gratitude. Not only because of his culinary mind, but because he gave credit generously, created space for ideas and led without ego. He showed her that brilliance and kindness can exist in the same room.
Later came NENI, where another important chapter began through Haya Molcho. Lauryn met Haya by chance during a cooking class in Vienna. Two weeks later, she was invited to join the company.
Five openings in five years followed. Paris, Amsterdam, Vienna, Copenhagen. Fast years, demanding years, rich in learning.
Lauryn says Haya gave her something for life. A fearlessness around hospitality, instinctive generosity and the courage to create experiences with personality. She learned how energy in a room matters just as much as what lands on the plate.
But another question had already started growing.
Why do so many people struggle emotionally with food?
Lauryn began studying psychotherapy and completed two years of training in Bristol. She wanted to understand the relationship between childhood, identity, shame, reward systems and eating behaviour.
This is where her idea of food therapy was born.
Food therapy, as Lauryn describes it, is not dieting and not nutritional coaching. It is the deeper work of understanding how a person relates to food emotionally. What was said around the dinner table. Whether food was used as reward or punishment. Whether eating felt joyful, stressful, secretive or full of shame. It is about repairing the relationship, not controlling the plate.
“No one has the same story with food. We all learned something different long before we had words for it.”
Today, all of that flows into Boca, the restaurant she created in Vienna.
Boca is not just a place to eat. It is Lauryn’s answer to everything she has lived so far.
The food is warm, intelligent and approachable. Familiar enough to comfort, surprising enough to stay interesting. A menu should never intimidate anyone. A guest should never feel they need special knowledge to order well.
But what defines Boca most is the feeling.
This is where Lauryn speaks about international hospitality. For her, the difference lies in a certain generosity of spirit found in cities like Barcelona, London, Paris or San Sebastián. Service that is attentive without stiffness. Rooms that feel alive. Teams that remember faces. Design, language, music and energy working together naturally.
At Boca, birthdays are welcomed with handwritten cards signed by the whole team. Guests are remembered. Feedback is invited. Returning guests might be asked whether they would like the wine they loved last time. Nothing forced, everything thoughtful.
Lauryn believes hospitality begins long before the first plate reaches the table.
She checks in with her team. Asks about mothers, partners, difficult weeks, journeys home. She wants people to feel safe enough to speak honestly and confident enough to make mistakes.
“Failure is important. It keeps you humble. It teaches you how to truly value when something works.”
She is convinced the industry needs more women in leadership. More empathy. More emotional intelligence. More proof that excellence does not need aggression.
And when Lauryn speaks about hospitality, she means something much bigger than service.
She believes we need spaces where people don’t have to explain themselves, spaces where food can be enjoyed again without judgment and without pressure. And that is exactly what she has created with Boca, a place that doesn’t just feed you, but stays with you long after you leave.
Women you love to work with?
There are three women I have worked with and I adore:
- Haya Molcho, from whom I learned how much warmth, energy, and generosity a business can carry.
- Pam Brunton, whose uncompromising approach to produce, nature, and cooking she deeply admires.
- Ola Szwarc, who represents a modern kind of hospitality shaped by purpose and integrity here in Vienna at the Rosebar Centrala
A woman you’d want to talk to?
There is one woman I would especially love to sit down with for a long conversation: Jacinda Ardern, the former prime minister in NZ. I admire the way she led with empathy, calmness and clarity. She showed the world that strength and kindness can exist together.
Topics you love to speak about?
Food as therapy, women in leadership, international hospitality, empathy in kitchens, identity through food, and how restaurants can become healthier, more human places for everyone.
Contact
Lauryn Therin
Restaurant Boca, Hotel The Companion Vienna
Mahü 127a Betriebs GmbH
Mariahilfer Str. 127a, 1150 Wien
+43 191 666 00 66