In addition to her television work, she is a Canadian food critic and Special Projects Manager with Food & Wine Magazine. Simmons graduated summa cum laude from McGill University where she majored in anthropology and Spanish. She began her food journalism career writing restaurant reviews for the school paper before moving on to the monthly Toronto Life magazine and later to the daily Globe and Mail and National Post newspapers. She attended culinary school in New York City at the Institute of Culinary Education and apprenticed at Le Cirque and Vong.