Notes on food, hospitality, lessons learned, and the people who make it all worthwhile.
I've spent more than twenty years in professional kitchens, and if there's one thing I've learned, it's that there's a pretty big difference between cooking food and cooking for someone.
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A lot of people assume that the more complicated a dish looks, the better the chef must be. I've spent enough years in kitchens to tell you that isn't always true. Sometimes the hardest thing to do is leave a perfectly good ingredient alone.
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When I started cooking professionally, I thought becoming a chef was mostly about learning to cook really well. That's definitely part of it. But the kitchen has a funny way of teaching you things you didn't realize were on the syllabus.
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A restaurant is a world the chef and team create, and guests come into it for an evening. Private dining flips that around. Someone invites me into their home, their celebration, and their story. That's a pretty meaningful invitation.
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After more than twenty years of cooking professionally, you might think a culinary competition would feel like another day at work. It does not. There is something very different about knowing a group of accomplished chefs is watching every move you make, and you have sixty minutes to prove you know what you're doing.
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When I think about the chefs who helped shape my career, I don't just remember the dishes they taught me. I remember the standards they held me to, the times they challenged me, and the moments when somebody took the time to explain why something mattered.
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