I've always loved cooking. In my earliest recollection, I was drawn into my family's kitchen to watch the preparation of our favorite meals. I'm sure many great chefs have a similar story.

 

My first commercial cooking experience began at a restaurant I managed while completing my college degree in the late 60's in New Mexico. During this period, I learned the classic components of classic northern New Mexican and Southwestern cuisine. I later had the opportunity to manage and cook in a mexican food booth at the renowned Santa Fe Fiesta. It was for my college fraternity fund raiser. I was awarded 1st prize for best food and booth on the plaza by the Fiesta Council. That really affected my cooking bug.

 

After graduation, I moved back to the New York area where I secured a dream job at a large food processing plant for the Howard Johnson restaurant chain. Many notable associates were present during my tenure there, such as Albert Kumin, a Carter term White House pastry chef and Pierre Franey [sadly departed] and Jacques Pepin [currently seen on TV cooking channels]  as the executive and assistant chef resprctively for the HoJo company. While there, I acquired many food handling and preparation techniques, ranging from baking pastry goods, meat handling, meat smoking and curing to basic processed food preparation and product cost management. There were real pros at work there.

 

Over time, as my cooking passion continued to evolve and grow. my desire for variety and authenticity grew with it. During that latter period I was fortunate to live and work in China for three years in the late 70's. I was exposed to a whole new and foreign range of ingredients, tastes and style of cooking. Within that time frame, I mastered skills in the venerable Chinese and Asian cuisines. In my latter years, many of those sprcial skills and styles would have a complimentary effect as I mastered other western cuisines. A variety of skills and tastes were now blending into a cooking style of my own.

 

After returning from the far east in the early 80's, I satisfied my long time personal goal and acquired my own restaurant located in Connecticut. I experienced joy and pain in its operation for 15 years while refining my skills further and exploring new and different culinary dishes. Simultaneously during those years I continued a dual business career and travelled extensively doing business consulting engagements in Europe and Asia. I utilized most of my free time during my many international business trips tracking down and understanding classical and noted dishes of each locale that I visited, both foreign and domestic. This long and enlightening culinary process of discovery was supplemented with numerous cooking seminars and classes from around the world. Time had come to share the product of that effort.

 

  My overall life and work experience thus formed the nucleus and focus of my culinary world. My areas of expertise became Italian, Spanish, Chinese, Southwestern, New Mexican and New Orleans Cajun style cuisines. I desparately wanted to replicate and share the classical dishes of each cuisine with others. I spent years of trial and error in replicating many favorite yet classical dishes while being  limited to working with the locally available ingredients.

 

Over the past several years, many of my friends either enjoyed or endured my frequent validation dinner projects at home and at my volunteer cooking projects for some local and very worthwhile non profit organizations. I hope, from those endreavors, that I have pleased more palates than I have created critics.

 

And so it is for those willing recipients who tolerated my culinary projects, be they friend or critic, that I dedicate my next culinary evolution to offer a classic variety of fine regional catering to the public. This hopefully explains my personal journey to the humble yet optimistic beginnings of YOUR OTHER KITCHEN Catering, my final career chapter designed to share my favorite culinary passions with you, the public. "Bon Appetite, mes amis!"

 

 

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