The Truth Staff
Marla Oden celebrated her 60th birthday on Saturday, March 22 at Local 500’s LIUNA Training Center along with several hundred friends who were treated to a lavish luncheon banquet that Oden, an accomplished caterer and owner of Whisk Takers Catering, prepared for the special occasion.
When she first arrived in Toledo, only a few years after graduating from high school, Oden attended cosmetology school and eventually became a successful hair stylist. As the years passed, however, she became interested in developing her cooking skills and eventually started catering for small groups here and there. A single mother by then, Oden was raising children, running her hair salon, cooking occasionally – doing it all to be sure but eventually felt that she needed a career change and a drastic change of scenery.
Oden took her catering skills to the next level when she moved to Las Vegas to enroll at Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts. There she attended classes over the course of the next year, worked in a food truck, found hair clients (her previous profession) and even flew back to Toledo on a red eye frequently to work on clients’ hair.
Somehow, in this blur of activity, she managed to maintain a 3.5 to 4.0 grade point average at the school and received her degree in French techniques.
“Going to culinary school taught me a lot about making fresh pasta, gnocchi, cooking risotto and skinning fish. The one thing I love about Vegas is how diverse it is giving you access to so many different kinds of fruits and vegetable because of all the cultures that are there,” she said later of her experiences in the desert.
She returned to Toledo where she started Whisk Takers Catering about a decade ago and her acquaintances, clients and friends are the better for it.