Sometimes I wake up on a Monday morning and I just want to cook.
It’s funny how success in something you love can take you in unexpected directions. I got into this career because I love food, I love cooking, and I love people. That passion led to opportunities, which led to growth, and eventually to becoming an entrepreneur.
But as the business grows, you start making different choices about where to focus your time and energy. These days, I spend more hours in the office than the kitchen, making sure payroll runs, that our team has great health insurance, that we’re staying compliant, and figuring out how to keep the company growing in the right direction.
The challenges I face today are a world apart from those early years in my twenties when I was running a fine dining restaurant, just focused on putting out great food. Now, more than 20 years into my career as an executive chef, and as the CEO of a growing hospitality group that operates two catering brands in three markets with 85 employees across Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and San Diego the work looks different. But the drive is still the same: the food and the people. Whether it is a flight for SuperFd Performance Nutrition or a wedding for EcoCaters, the driving force is still the same.
That’s where the tension, and the balance comes in. How do I keep growing as an Executive while still staying connected to what made me fall in love with this business in the first place?
Sometimes the answer is simple: I put my headphones on and join the marketing meeting from the kitchen.
That’s what I did today: took back-to-back meetings while I was cleaning duck thighs for confit, simmering sauces and getting ready for Capital Food Fight, a benefit for DC Central Kitchen this Thursday at The Anthem. EcoCaters will be serving Duck Confit, “Our Farms” sauteed greens and japchae with sesame tamari, and I can’t wait.
I was excited to make duck confit because it’s one of those dishes that chefs love, not just for the flavor, but for the process. You cure the duck for 36 hours with aromatics, then gently cook it in its own fat until it’s tender and full of flavor. It’s an old-world technique, a form of culinary preservation that connects you to generations of cooks who came before. It takes patience, precision, and care; the kind of work that reminds me why I fell in love with cooking in the first place.
Every day, there’s a balance to strike between being a chef and being a CEO. But at the end of the day, both are about the same thing: caring deeply about people, doing things the right way, and never losing sight of what got you here in the first place.