Summary Bio: I have been in love with cooking since age 7 when I prepared my first French dish, steak au poivre, while living in Morocco. My next challenge came when I accepted a position in Boulder as a culinary instructor for Culinary School of the Rockies. I co-developed a world class 6 month professional program which included a one month externship in Provence. Thanks to my fluency in French, I set up an intimate network of French chefs, artisan producers, sommeliers and vintners.
My cooking style is simple yet elegant with an emphasis on using local, sustainable ingredients of the highest quality and allowing those products to shine. I always thought I was an accomplished cook until I learned how little I knew once I started this program. Every day was an adventure and every day I came to school filled with questions and a desire to become the best cook possible. I still remember many of their lessons to this day and I am still in contact. Occidental Grill: My first cooking job Unfortunately, the dream state of being in an educational environment where you are the customer and where every moment is concentrated on your personal development abruptly vanished once I worked my first shift at the restaurant I chose for my internship.
One which sticks out is when he was working the Front of the house as an apprentice in a fancy hotel and the Maitre D. Come in tomorrow night. I came in for the first shift a bit early and was shown to the locker area. The locker room was unisex. After I was accompanied to the station I was to work that evening. She agreed to stay an hour past her shift to give me an overview of the station.
The total surface area under my domain was around 3 square feet and the total square footage of the satellite kitchen responsible for feeding roughly a people a night was 12 square feet. The grill chef was sick that night and it turned out I was going to be working side by side with Chef Buben.
I had never worked as a line chef before that evening. Nothing could have prepared me for the baptism by fire I endured on that shift. An expediter called out the tickets and we were expected to remember all the orders. A new language was spoken one that was not spoken at school.
