Freitag was raised in Cedar Grove, New Jersey. She attended Cedar Grove High School, Class of 1987,, where her home economics teacher, Joan Levine, suggested that Freitag might be interested in attending the Culinary Institute of America. Following graduation from the Culinary Institute of America in 1989, Freitag took a position at Vong New York working under chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten. In 1994, she left Vong to cook at Verbena, under chef Diane Forley. After Verbena, Freitag traveled to France and Italy, working for a short while at L'Arpège restaurant under chef Alain Passard in 1999. In 2003, Freitag and restaurateur Godfrey Polistina opened the Upper West Side restaurant Cesca Enoteca & Trattoria. Freitag was chef de cuisine at Cesca, before moving to an executive chef position at The Harrison. On September 3, 2010, The New York Times reported that Freitag would be leaving the Harrison, and the restaurant's owner, Jimmy Bradley, will return as chef. Freitag is a frequent judge on the culinary game show Chopped. She battled Bobby Flay on Iron Chef America in “Battle: King Crab”. She narrowly lost, with a score of 49 against Flay's 50 points. The judging was evenly matched, with the exception of Freitag having earned one point fewer in the "taste" category. On October 16, 2009, Freitag appeared on The Martha Stewart Show and demonstrated recipes for yogurt panna cotta and celery root and ginger gold apple soup. Freitag competed in The Next Iron Chef Season 2, finishing in fourth place. Freitag stated she would continue as a judge on Chopped for the 2010 season and she returned for the season four episode "Against the Tide". On the April 15, 2012 episode of Iron Chef America, Freitag appeared alongside Chopped Grand Champion Madison Cowan in Battle Kale, acting as Cowan's sous chef. On August 7, 2012, it was announced that Freitag would make another appearance as a contestant on season five of The Next Iron Chef. She lost to Alexandra Guarnaschelli in the finale on December 23. On January, 2014, Freitag took over as executive chef of the Empire Diner in Manhattan, New York. She left in July 2015. On May 22, 2015, she and Ty Pennington began hosting the new Food Network series American Diner Revival, on which they make over diners' menus and interiors.
