Sandra Tichy: Flavors, Flops, and Serving it Real

Based in Amsterdam and originally from Chicago, she shares globally inspired recipes alongside the kind of honest, unpolished moments most creators edit out. Her work is shaped by Czech family traditions, a love of international flavors, and a firm belief that a kitchen flop can be just as valuable as a perfect dish.

Sandra's path into food content began with a failure. About two years ago, she was preparing to host friends and decided to make a cake she had seen online, covered in berries and looking effortless. She did not do much research beforehand, and the result was a disaster. Instead of hiding it, she filmed the wreckage as a coping mechanism and posted it to TikTok. The video went viral, reaching over 8.8 million views.

The response surprised her. People were not just entertained. They found it refreshingly relatable. Some laughed, some offered advice, and many said they had been in the same situation. That reaction gave Sandra a clear sense of what she could offer. With a professional background in digital media and content strategy, she saw a way to combine her love of cooking with her industry experience. She launched Saffron and Tarragon on Instagram shortly after, choosing the name because both ingredients matched her initials and happened to be ones she genuinely enjoys.

Sandra's relationship with food reaches back to childhood. Her earliest memory of cooking is watching her maternal grandmother teach her father how to make crepes during a family vacation in Florida. She remembers the blender whirring and the batter swirling, and from that point on, she was drawn in.

During summers spent with her grandparents in the Czech Republic, she would sit at the kitchen table grating potatoes for potato pancakes, slowly learning the steps. She was given a cookbook at eight years old and began to understand the rhythm of a recipe. Crepes, or ‘palačinky’ as they call them in the Czech Republic, in particular, became a kind of love language for her, something she made first for family, then for friends, then for the man she would marry. To this day, her family still asks her to make them when she visits Prague and loves taking over her mother’s kitchen to cook for her mother and brother in Chicago.

Try her delicious Spinach and Raspberry Swirl Crepes Recipe

What sets Sandra apart from many food creators is her willingness to share the moments that go wrong. Collapsed gingerbread houses, off-days in the kitchen, recipes that simply did not work. She posts them all, and she does it on purpose.

"I wanted to celebrate kitchen flops while showing that cooking can be approachable." she says. For her, the pressure to appear perfect on social media can be exhausting, and she would rather offer something people can actually relate to. She also believes there is a practical side to sharing mistakes, because others can learn from them and avoid repeating them.

"I don’t trust people whose kitchens are spotless while they cook, or whose dishes never fail,” she laughs. “Mistakes happen. We’re human."

Sandra grew up as a first-generation Czech-American in Chicago, later lived in New York for six years, and moved to Amsterdam about three years ago to pursue new projects and opportunities. That international path has shaped the way she cooks. Her go-to cuisines are Asian, Mexican, and Mediterranean. On the day of her interview, she was preparing harissa chicken with saffron rice and a pomegranate arugula salad.

Living abroad has also pushed her to get creative with substitutions. When familiar ingredients are not available in Dutch grocery stores, she turns to AI tools to find ingredient substitutes, recreating dishes she misses from the US like Chipotle's black beans or Panda Express's Orange Chicken with whatever she can source locally. It is a practical, resourceful approach that reflects how she thinks about food in general: work with what you have and make the most of it.

Sandra tends to a small balcony garden in Amsterdam where she grows hot peppers, heirloom tomatoes, sweet peas, and herbs. Some of her seedlings come from the previous season's plants, and she reuses green onion roots by replanting them in small pots outside. It is a simple, low-effort system that gives her fresh ingredients through the warmer months.

Her approach to leftovers follows the same spirit. She repurposes black beans into breakfasts, uses leftover broth to cook rice, and turns stray sauces into pizza toppings or marinades. Stir fry and pizza are her favorite vehicles for clearing the fridge. She does not follow a strict plan for it. She wings it, and that is part of the fun.

Check out Tex-Mex Stir Fry with Leftover Rice.

Sandra is open about the challenges of being a content creator. She talks about burnout, about stretches where inspiration runs dry, and about the frustration of watching others grow faster while doing similar work. She knows the comparison game is not productive, but she admits it is hard to avoid entirely. Still, she keeps coming back to the reason she started.

"I'm just a normal person cooking, having fun," she says. "I just happened to put more effort into putting it online so that people can use those recipes or relate to the challenges they might face in the kitchen."

She does not introduce herself as an influencer and would rather be known for the food she makes than the platform she posts it on.

Sandra's longer-term goals include expanding to more platforms, building an online blog or website, and continuing to grow a community that feels welcoming and real. She wants Saffron and Tarragon to be a go-to source for tips, approachable recipes, and global culinary inspiration.

Her advice for anyone thinking about cooking and posting online is simple: keep your phone recording while you cook, find a good angle and natural lighting, and do not overthink it. If it works, share it. If it does not, you can always delete it. Or better yet, post it anyway.

Sandra Tichy's approach to food is refreshingly unfussy. She does not chase perfection, and she does not pretend that every dish turns out as planned. What she offers instead is something harder to fake: honesty, humor, and a genuine love of feeding people. Whether she is recreating her grandmother's crepes or rescuing leftovers with a makeshift pizza, the spirit is the same. Food is best when it brings people together, flops and all.

Explore Sandra's recipes on Chefadora at chefadora.com/@saffronandtarragon and follow her journey on Instagram at @saffronandtarragon. Her work brings approachable, globally inspired cooking and a refreshing dose of honesty to the kitchen.

Updated on 02 Apr 2026