C
incinnati is quite familiar with the name of chef Jean-Robert de Cavel. He’s the brilliant Frenchman at the top of the local dining scene with three — soon to be four — restaurants under his belt: Le Bar a Boeuf in East Walnut Hills, French Crust Café and his namesake Jean-Robert’s Table downtown. (A fine-dining restaurant inside Queen City Tower is in the works.) Understandably, it’s impossible for de Cavel to be at the helm of each of his restaurants preparing all of the food, so he takes on the role of creative force, while the actual task of cooking is often left to a well-trained chef and a staff of cooks. It does, after all, take a village to get dinner on the table.
In the 19th century, culinarian Georges Auguste Escoffier revolutionized kitchen management with his “Kitchen Brigade System.” Based on military efficiency, this system of hierarchy divided staff into stations, each responsible for a different part of the meal. Each of these cooks reports to the chef de cuisine, the “chief of the kitchen” in French, or the sous chef (“under-chief”), who then in turn reports to the executive chef or the restaurant owner.
For the most part, the job of chef de cuisine or sous is a nameless, faceless, often thankless one. It’s basically middle management. There’s not a lot of glory. You’re the right hand man/woman stuck in the kitchen while all of the accolades go to the executive chef or owner.
It’s long overdue that we see the faces and learn the names of some of the exceedingly talented people working in the kitchens of some of Cincinnati’s best local restaurants and hear, in their words, some of the best and worst things about their jobs.
Bhumin Desai: Chef de Cuisine at Jean-Robert’s Table
Executive Chef: Jean-Robert de Cavel
“The first time I came to Cincinnati, my goal was to work for Jean-Robert,” Bhumin Desai says. “He’s the godfather of cuisine in Cincinnati. You look anywhere, the chef tree here — Dave Taylor, Dave Cook, the list goes on and on. That’s how I ended up at Table the first time for a stint of 11 and a half months.”
Easy enough for any young cook to wish for, and of course it’s the penultimate Cincinnati cooking gig, but not so easy to accomplish. For the 30-year-old India native Desai, it’s been a long road, one that he has actually been down twice.
Desai’s parents immigrated from India looking for a better life for their children, first settling in New Jersey, where Desai finished high school, and finally in Oxford, Ohio, where his family still resides. From a very early age Desai knew he was destined for a life in a kitchen. “I always wanted to be in food,” he says. “There’s a picture of me like age 2 or 3 sitting on the dining table, and it’s my birthday, and everyone’s singing ‘Happy Birthday,’ and I’m the only one eating.”
Desai enrolled in the prestigious Johnson & Wales College of Culinary Arts in Providence, Rhode Island, after high school. But after two years, family obligations brought him back to the Midwest and he decided to continue his education at The Midwest Culinary School at Cincinnati State, though he soon quit after deciding to gain his knowledge working in restaurant kitchens.
While working for chef Jackson Rouse at the former Iron Horse Inn in Glendale, Desai received that first go at his dream job. Chef de Cavel was in the process of opening Table, and he wanted Desai to come work for him as a cook. Desai passed on a lucrative corporate gig to take the job.
Desai left after about a year when an opportunity with up-and-comer chef Stephen Williams at Bouquet Restaurant and Wine Bar in MainStrasse became available. The decision was a difficult one, but Desai rationalized it this way:
“Everybody knows who Jean-Robert is,” he says. “If you want to make a name for yourself, you don’t do it by working as a line cook for someone who is already established, you go do it by working for someone who is up and coming. The two and a half years [at Bouquet] was my favorite time of my career, to this day. We had so much fun. We did some of the best food I’ve ever seen.”
When the chance to return to Table last year as chef de cuisine became available, Desai returned to work again under de Cavel.
CityBeat: What does the No. 2 job mean to you?
Bhumin Desai:
“The hardest working motherfucker in the restaurant. Because everybody else is allowed to be lazy, everybody is allowed to be incompetent, everybody is allowed to goof off, you’re not.”
CB: What’s the most important thing you’ve learned from chef de Cavel?
BD:
“The attention to detail, and I’m still learning that. Also, no task worth doing is easy.”
CB: What’s the best thing about your job?
BD:
“The stress, the chaos, the short notice, having to break down, bone, stuff and confit 500 quail for Derby the day after getting shitty drunk after a huge event.”
CB: What’s the worst thing about your job?
BD:
“The same.”
Kyle Roberts: Chef de Cuisine at Bouquet Restaurant and Wine Bar
Executive Chef: Stephen Williams
What happens when you get into Northern Kentucky University on a soccer scholarship, major in pre-law and political science, graduate and then tell your parents that you’re not going to go to law school but intend to become a chef instead? Chef Kyle Roberts did just that.
“[My parents] had both worked in the restaurant business for a long time,” Roberts says. “My mom was a server at Dayton Racquet Club, and my dad had worked all over the place for different restaurants. They would rather me not be in the restaurant business. They weren’t disappointed, I don’t think, but I think they were really surprised.”
Instead of heading off to law school after graduation, the Centerville native got a job as a fry cook at The Cock & Bull Public House in Glendale.
“Once I got going there, I decided I wanted to start doing something a little bit more serious as far as cooking,” Roberts says.
Roberts moved on to Boquet as a line cook, eventually working his way up to his current role as chef de cuisine. As for the reason he thinks he was given such a huge break despite his youth, lack of culinary education and experience?
“He’s told me a couple of times that I remind him a little bit of himself when he was my age, but I think the fact that I work hard and I come to work every day wanting to be there and learn,” Roberts says. “For me it translates a lot like sports — I have a coach in Stephen.”
CityBeat: What does the No. 2 job mean to you?
Kyle Roberts:
“It means responsibility. To me it’s about representing the restaurant the way Stephen wants it to be represented.”
CB: What’s the most important thing you’ve learned from chef Williams?
KR:
“He taught me to not quit. If we’re stuck in something, if I’m not doing something right and I’m getting a result that I don’t want, to not get frustrated, to just keep trying, to ask questions and just be open to everything.”
CB: What’s the best thing about your job?
KR:
“We had a customer come in a couple weeks ago that had such a great time that they were crying about how much they enjoyed the meal, the time, the service, so I think making people happy and the fact that I get to come to work with some of my really good friends now.”
CB: What’s the worst thing about your job?
KR:
“The stuff that people all talk about: the crappy hours, the pay, stuff like that. But most of the guys and I, we don’t really think about it like that, we just like coming to work.”
Molly Costello: Chef de Cuisine at Otto’s
Executive Chef: Paul Weckman
It was after reading the job-hunting self-help book What Color is Your Parachute? that Molly Costello figured out her passion.
“A good friend recommended that I read the book,” she says. “I was leery at first because it sounded corny, but as I got into it, it was a really neat exercise, and cooking kept coming up. I had always loved to cook. My mother was a caterer growing up, and I figured out that I really enjoyed working on my feet in a fast paced environment, all the things that the restaurant industry provides.”
Costello spent some time living in Chicago after attending DePauw University in Greencastle, Ind. She worked for about two years at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange with various jobs in the hospitality industry in between, including bartending and serving.
“I was having fun in the big city,” Costello says, “but not really on a career path.”
While visiting a friend in Covington in 2007, Costello fell in love with the area. “I’m actually from right near Lexington, in Paris, Kentucky, and I was ready to leave Chicago, but I didn’t want to move back home,” she says. “I just wasn’t sure where to go. I started working at Chez Nora as a server and at the Hyatt, when it was Champs, as a bartender to make a living and try to figure out what to do. So I decided to go to Cincinnati State.”
While attending The Midwest Culinary Institute at Cincinnati State in 2008, Costello bartended at the Palace in the Cincinnatian Hotel but decided against a kitchen job — the hotel atmosphere wasn’t a good fit — and applied at Otto’s in Covington as a server instead. She already lived in MainStrasse and it was one of her favorite restaurants. And while she expressed an interest in kitchen work there, she had no experience outside of school.
“Eventually the two guys in the kitchen, Andrew Mersmann, and another guy, left, and I was trained on all of the menus and all the stations, and I wasn’t sure what Paul was going to do,” Costello says. “But I felt I was ready, and when we sat down for a meeting and he said, ‘I want to train you to be my chef,’ I was floored, of course. I did not expect that.”
She had only been there for little more than a year.
CityBeat: What does the No. 2 job mean to you?
Molly Costello:
“Paul has developed the vast majority of the menu. He asks for me for my input and we work together on specials, but the meat of the menu is really his vision. I see it as my job to carry it out.”
CB: What is the most important thing you have you learned from chef Weckman?
MC:
“Paul is a fantastic teacher. He’s absolutely my mentor. His vision for the restaurant is all about hospitality.”
CB: What’s the best thing about your job?
MC:
“That sense of accomplishment when it all comes together and we’re all able to just bang it out and make everyone’s food tasty, and we’re getting it out in a timely fashion, and the staff is in a great mood because they’re excited because we’re busy and it’s just that fun sense of exhilaration.”
CB: What’s the worst part of your job?
MC:
“Certain aspects of management. It can be a really transient business; you get all walks of life. And in many ways that’s what I love about this industry. You’re judged on your work ethic. It doesn’t matter where you came from or what your story is, if you come in and work hard you can do very well.”
Jack Hemmer: Chef de Cuisine at The Mercer OTR
Executive Chef: Dan Stoltz
Jack Hemmer’s childhood pretty much guaranteed him a career in Cincinnati’s finest restaurants.
“My mom is an amazing cook,” he says. “My dad was the one who would take you to all of the fancy places. He and Nicola Pietoso [owner of Nicola’s downtown] were really good friends and still are, so from the time that I was 8, 9 years old I was eating at Nicola’s with my dad.”
During college, Hemmer had a bout with some self-destructive behavior. “My actual restaurant journey began after my freshman year at college,” he says. “I partied a little too much, failed out and Via Vite just opened so I started working as a food runner/expediter. I was 19 years old and it kind of just stemmed from there.”
Hemmer cooked at Via Vite for awhile and then at Quarter Bistro in Mariemont for about six months. It was during one of his dinners with his father at Nicola’s that Pietoso offered him a job. He of course said yes, then worked his way up for five years from garde manger (salads) to the hot line under executive chef Joel Molloy. When Molloy left to pursue a job in Chicago, sous chef Dan Stoltz took over.
“Dan had already been offered the executive chef position and asked me if I wanted to be the sous,” Hemmer says. “And of course I did.”
Stoltz left Nicola’s in May of 2013, originally to take some time off but then received the opportunity to head up the new Mercer OTR as executive chef that year. Hemmer left Nicola’s to join him in February of 2014.
“I’ve always told Dan, if you ever open a restaurant, let me know and I’ll come help you out, and that’s how I ended up at The Mercer,” Hemmer says. “I love it. It’s fast paced, we’re doing some really cool food, it’s creative and we just do our thing.”
CityBeat: What does the No. 2 job mean to you?
Jack Hemmer:
“It means mostly I’m there for my crew. I work really hard for them and I’m there to teach them just like Dan and Joel taught me. We strive to be better every day than the day before. For me it’s never been about notoriety or having my name out there, it’s the end result, the food that we produce, and the camaraderie in our kitchen.”
CB: What’s the most important thing you’ve learned from the chefs you’ve worked for?
JH:
“They worked their asses off. They would never ask you to do anything that they weren’t willing to do themselves. We had a Christmas party at Nicola’s once and some lady threw up all over the steps. None of the servers would clean it. They were all so grossed out. Finally Dan and Joel were like ‘fuck it,’ and walked out with a mop and cleaned it themselves. So we had our executive chef and our sous out in the dining room mopping up some lady’s puke. Nobody else wanted to do it but they were willing to go out and do it.”
CB: What’s the best thing about your job?
JH:
“I guess it’s that rush you get when you can create all you want — being creative is really fun, but that rush on a Saturday night and when everybody on the line is in tune and everyone is working together and you’re just shoveling food out faster than you would on a slow Tuesday night.”
CB: What’s the worst thing about your job?
JH:
“The amount of hours we work; Dan and I in particular. When we first opened The Mercer we were working 100 hours a week and we’re still working probably 80-90 hours a week.”
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story stated that Molly Costello attended DePaul University in Chicago. She actually attended DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana.
This article appears in Mar 11-17, 2015.
