Who is Balaboosta?

A native New Yorker, I fell in love with Maine on my first visit.

Hi!

I’m Ali Waks Adams, chef-owner of Balaboosta: Food Made for You.

I believe food is a language. At its best, it communicates care, memory, and belonging—often more clearly than words ever could. What I love most about catering is using food to meet people where they are: offering nourishment during a difficult board meeting, recreating a bride’s grandmother’s beloved salad, showcasing Maine’s local bounty for a donor dinner, or creating a feeling of nourishment and community at a memorial service. Every menu I create is shaped by the people gathered, the moment being marked, and the story they’re sharing.

I moved to Brunswick, Maine in 2014 after spending 15 years in Philadelphia, where I was deeply rooted in the restaurant world. Since arriving in Maine, I’ve immersed myself in the local food community, inspired daily by the quality of ingredients, the abundance of the land and sea, and the people who steward them.

I am a board member at Mid Coast Hunger Prevention Program and a former volunteer chef. Feeding people—thoughtfully, generously, and with dignity—has always been central to my work, and it’s a privilege to support such an essential organization.

During the 2020 pandemic, I created and produced Willie & Chet’s Food To Go, a weekly pop-up at Dog Bar Jim in Brunswick, rooted in consistency, familiarity, and care during an uncertain time. Also, we made a lot of Fancy Junk Food! In the summer of 2021, I was a featured chef for Outstanding in the Field at Forty Acre Farm.

Since 2015, I have been deeply involved in Maine’s Green Crab movement, working to find smart, delicious culinary solutions to the challenges posed by this invasive species. I am considered an expert in cooking with green crab and am available for interviews, appearances, and collaborations.

From 2016 to 2019, I served as Executive Chef of The Brunswick Inn, where I created and executed menus for events of every scale—from weddings and graduations to baby showers and celebrations of life. I also launched the popular Tuesday Night Plat du Jour, a three-course, fixed-price weekly dinner open to the public, centered on local, seasonal cooking.

I was the producer and chef/partner of the Butter + Salt Pop-Up with food writer and chef Christine Burns Rudalevige, and I’ve cooked collaborative dinners at The Robinhood Free Meetinghouse, including music dinners with The Arbiträre Project and seafood dinners with the Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association, as well as private weddings and events throughout the region.

As a former consulting chef for Dog Bar Jim and Dirty Larry’s Cone Town, I helped shape and refine menus—and could often be found behind the grill on Monday mornings making breakfast sandwiches and having a genuinely great time doing it.

I live in Brunswick with my husband Christian, our two cats, two birds, and I am a sometime storyteller at Community Plate Potluck Suppers.

What is a Balaboosta?

A Balaboosta is the heart of a home.

She nourishes, organizes, remembers.
She feeds people not just with food, but with care, intuition, and presence.
She knows how to fill a table, how to welcome others in, how to hold a room together around a table.

Balaboosta is the name of my business.
It is also the lineage I come from.

Our logo, a matryoshka—a nesting doll—represents the generations of women in my family whose knowledge, care, and resilience live on through my work. Inside me are my mother, my aunts, my grandmothers, and my great-grandmother, each carrying her own understanding of what it means to be a Balaboosta.

The image is inspired by my great-great-grandmother’s nesting doll, a treasured object that once sat just out of reach. I wasn’t allowed to play with it. When I was eight, I broke one of the dolls anyway. Today, that same matryoshka holds a place of honor in my living room. It feels fitting—something once fragile and untouchable now fully integrated into my daily life, just like the legacy it represents.