Sous Chef – The Fountain Cafe at The Hotel Hershey

 

My Culinary career began in 1990 in Chapel Hill, NC as a dishwasher and busboy. I knew from the moment I entered the kitchen that I was hooked. It was hot loud and after six months of washing dishes and helping prep, the brothers that owned the place let me work the cold station.

 

I loved it; I got to work where all the action was. I was only sixteen and working with the big boys. All the guys had tattoos and smoked and wore bandanas and cursed more then my own father. Cool, I thought, this is what I want to do for the rest of my life.

 

 It wasn’t until about my 10th year in high school that my parents told me of a school in upstate New York where I could get a formal education in the culinary field. In 1993 my family moved from North Carolina to San Antonio, Texas. I found a job near home at Macaroni Grill. They let me do a little bit of everything, from sauté, grill, pantry and pizzas. The head chef was from a school called the CIA, also known as the Culinary Institute of America.

 

 From that moment I started researching where the best schools where. I decided it would either be Culinary Institute of America or Johnston & Whales. After talking with some of the cooks I worked with I narrowed it down to the CIA. I started the CIA in 1995 and graduated in late 1997. After School I found a job at the Little Nell in Aspen, CO. It was a small hotel of about 95 rooms and it was also rated five stars and five diamonds and a member of the Relix Chatue.

 

Relix Chatue, if you don’t know, is a very prestigious award only given to a few hotels and restaurants throughout the world. There I learned what fine dinning was all about. I learned to call customers guest and not customers. Everything had to be prefect, and if it was not the Chef or Sous Chefs would let you know about it. After about two years I decided it was time for a change and went back to Texas this time to Austin. I wanted to stay with the five/four star hotels. I decided on the Four Seasons Hotel. So in 2000 I started work at the Four Seasons Hotel.

 

 I stayed in Austin until 2003 when I found that the company was opening a Hotel in Jackson Hole, WY.  So again it was time for a change. In October, 2003 I moved to work in Jackson Hole.  Jackson Hole is where I met a Chef that would change me for the better. 

 

At FSJH I learned what it takes to move up the professional ladder and the extra work that it takes to open a hotel.  Chef would push us every day and sometimes right to the breaking point.  There where a few times that I was ready to call it quits.  I would think to myself maybe I’m not cut out for this and what did I get myself into. 

 

But, now that I look back on my days in the Hole, I’m glad I did it.  If it where not for Chef pushing and believing in my talents, I do not think I would be where I am today. When the Chef left in 2003, so did I. I did not want to work with a new Chef.  So when I got the phone call one day to have the chance to work with him and some others I had worked with before I jumped at the opportunity. 

 

I came to the Hotel Hershey in March of 2006 and started as the Sous Chef of the Fountain Café in the fall of 2006.  I’m still up there today and have no immediate plans of leaving though I do want to start fine dinning some time.  You can see me out in the dinning room talking with guest and receiving comments about the food.  So if you ever see me out in the dinning room.  Say hello. I will stop and talk with you for a few moments.