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Liza Goltsman is the creator behind @bylizagoltsman, a Tampa-based food page built on cozy, from-scratch recipes shot and edited with a level of polish that takes most creators years to develop. Born in the U.S. and raised in Moscow, she moved back at twenty, where she taught herself to cook, eventually turning it into a creative practice. She has spent the years since building her skills in both the kitchen and behind the camera, working in healthcare marketing by day while creating recipes every evening.
Liza grew up in a household where her mother cooked every single day. She was not particularly involved. She was just eating, and she saw no reason to change that while her mother was around. When she moved to the United States at twenty and started living on her own, the reality of cooking became immediate.
She was not good at it in the beginning. She burned pans, oversalted dishes, and produced meals that were difficult to eat. But she kept going, and gradually the instinct for what works began to develop.
"I pretty much know in my head what goes well together,” she says. “If I have tomatoes, I know they pair well with basil, balsamic vinegar, and certain spices."
That intuition now guides how she approaches both her everyday cooking and the recipes she develops for her page.
Her husband is also a picky eater, which turned out to be motivating rather than frustrating. With two people in the house who are particular about what they enjoy, she had no choice but to get good at cooking things they would both actually want to eat.
The food came first, but the photography and videography were always part of Liza's vision. She had always been drawn to both, and a few years ago she decided to combine her love for cooking with her interest in visual storytelling.
The early attempts were not good. The food was fine, but the quality of the videos did not match. Rather than settle, she took photography and videography classes, invested in professional equipment, and practiced consistently. The improvement has been significant and visible. She edits everything herself, using CapCut or Instagram's own editing tools, and the results speak for themselves: cinematic lighting, clean composition, and a visual style that makes even a simple salad look like something worth saving.
She started posting around five years ago, then stopped, then started again. For the past two years she has posted almost every day.
Liza's culinary background is rooted in Russian cuisine, which she describes as more nuanced than its reputation suggests. Some of her South American friends tease her that Russian food lacks heat and spice, but she does not agree. "I really like it this way," she says. Russian cuisine, as she describes it, leans into combinations of sweet and sour, uses sour cream generously, marinates almost everything, including tomatoes, mushrooms, apples, and watermelons, and has a strong tradition of fish, caviar, and preserved foods. She draws a comparison to Persian cuisine in its sensibility.
Beyond her Russian roots, Liza's palate is genuinely global. She cooks a lot of Asian and Italian food, pulls from cuisines freely based on what appeals to her, and names French cuisine as her overall favorite to eat, even though she does not cook it as often because of the time it requires. The food she makes for her page tends to be elegant but accessible: simple ingredients handled with care and presented beautifully.
Her go-to dish, if she had to choose one for the rest of her life, is panzanella salad. Tomatoes, burrata, breadcrumbs, basil. She loves it because it tastes remarkable, it is low in calories, and it is not difficult to make. She makes a version of it every few months and always looks forward to it.
Liza is realistic about the challenges of building an audience on Instagram in the current climate. She notes that growing in 2026 is genuinely hard, and she stays consistent as her primary strategy, avoiding long breaks and continuing to put work out even when the results are not immediately visible. The brands that reach out, the comments from people who save and share her recipes, and the visible improvement in her own work are what keep her motivated.
She works full-time in marketing, while continuing to grow her creative practice outside of it. After work, she creates recipes and films. Evenings and weekends are when the content gets made. She treats it as a craft worth continuing to develop, still taking cooking classes every few months to keep learning.
Liza's vision is clear: to continue growing her work in content creation and brand collaborations. Further down the road, she has thought about opening a restaurant or bakery. The through line in all of it is food, and the serious care she brings to everything she makes suggests she will get there.
Her advice to anyone thinking about starting a food page is the same advice she wishes she had taken earlier herself.
"Perfection doesn't happen overnight and you don't need to be perfect," she says. "You just need to get started as soon as possible and then you will get better with time."
The hardest part is beginning. After that, everything else follows.
Liza Goltsman's food page is the result of sustained effort across two different skill sets: cooking and visual storytelling. She came to both as an adult, without formal training in either, and she built them by paying attention, taking classes, and practicing until the gap between what she imagined and what she produced closed. That combination of patience and precision is what makes her work stand out, and it is what will carry her to wherever she is going next.
Explore Liza's recipes on Chefadora at chefadora.com/@bylizagoltsman and follow her on Instagram at @bylizagoltsman. Her work brings Russian warmth, global flavor, and a self-taught eye for beauty to every dish she makes.
Posted on 07 May 2026
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