Pawlcyn is the daughter of Stephen Pawlcyn, an immigrant from Russia, and his wife Dorothy, of German and Norwegian ancestry. Her father founded a potato chip company and had a deep interest in food. She was born in
Minneapolis and lived in
Golden Valley, Minnesota in her childhood. Pawlcyn began working in a
Minneapolis cooking school at the age of 13, and while in high school, she ran her own
catering business. She earned a hotel and restaurant management degree from the
University of Wisconsin-Stout. She took courses at
Le Cordon Bleu and received formal training at La Varenne in Paris before working at
The Pump Room in Chicago. She moved to
California in 1980 to take a job at MacArthur Park. Pawlcyn left MacArthur Park to be the opening chef at Meadowood in
St. Helena, California and then joined Bruce LeFavour at Rose et LaFavour. Pawlcyn's first husband was Murdo Laird. She married John Watanabe in May, 2008. Pawlcyn suffered 22 broken bones, was hospitalized for 15 days, and used a wheelchair for months. The driver of the other car pleaded no contest to a charge of vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence. He had fallen asleep at the wheel, had been driving on a suspended license, and was sentenced to 60 days in jail, followed by 120 days of home detention. Her home in the hills above the
Napa Valley was featured in
O, The Oprah Magazine in 2009. It included a 1-1/2 acre fruit and vegetable garden, a swimming pool, a ceramic studio, plus a canvas-walled guest cabin. The kitchen was the largest room in the remodeled home and had lower-than-usual countertops because Pawlcyn is only 5'-2" tall. Her library of thousands of cookbooks occupied an entire room, with some volumes overflowing into her office. Pawlcyn collects cookbooks, but her home and her personal library of about 3,800 books were destroyed in the 2020
Glass Fire in
Napa County. She is beginning to rebuild the collection; people from all over Northern California bring her cookbooks from their own libraries. ==Professional history==