Chef Du Jour

A vibrant, skilled workforce of talented and competitive chefs remains one of the missing components in our area’s rise to the pantheon of great food towns. Too many local restaurants are content to recycle chefs with questionable track records, refusing to reach outside our borders for fresh culinary visions.

Consider this summer’s oddities: Marianne Miller’s abrupt dismissal from Bobino and Patrick Atanalian’s brief stage at A Rebours.

When a chef’s tenure at a restaurant is measured in weeks, something is deeply wrong. Hindsight is twenty-twenty, but with a million-dollar business on the line, how is it possible to make such poor choices for the operation’s most important professional? Or are pickings that slim from the pools of chefs that established restaurateurs are obligated to risk their livelihood on chefs whose last jobs ended in acrimony?

A Rebours co-owner Doug Anderson hired the duo of Atanalian and Matt Kempf to replace Don Saunders, because he thought they had complimentary talents. Kempf—who took over for Miller when she left Red—was considered more adept in cooking in the modern style, and seemed young and aggressive. (His output at Red was less than inspired, in my opinion.) Atanalian is quiet, more classically skilled, and, Anderson explains, “I wanted to give someone a second chance. But Patrick never really took charge and Matt really rose to the occasion. Finding good [chefs] in this town is so hard.” After a few months, Atanalian was no longer at A Rebours.

At Bobino, Chris Paddock summed up his tumultuous experience with Miller via a sports cliché: “Someone should have pulled me from the mound in the ninth inning. I was so eager to fix the current problems I overlooked the obvious. I was rushed, I was dealing with my family [both parents had recently passed away], Marianne was persistent and a great talker. I should have been more savvy, and we are all paying for it now.”

Miller has another side of the story, of course, but has repeatedly declined to talk, on the advice of counsel.

“I would have loved to hire a guy like Steven Brown,” Paddock continues, “but I can’t afford his pay and the cost [of his food]. When Pat [Weber] left Bobino [for Mojito], he had it on the right track, and we have been trying to get back to the Bobino-ness ever since.”

The list of candidates Paddock talked to is a who’s who of local chefs who seem to float from one shuttered or lifeless restaurant to one in need of new talent.

D’Amico & Partners didn’t speak to any of them in launching its new venture, Masa—a high-end Mexican concept in the Target HQ. Instead it chose Saul Chavez from within the company. “We promoted Saul because he has worked for us for years, he understands the food, he’s Mexican, he fits in, and knows our corporate culture,” explains Richard D’Amico. “Changing chefs is an expensive proposition. Why even think outside?” Plus, D’Amico is big enough to have a deep bench.

So how many lives does a local chef have? The answer is too many in a community where journeyman talent sometimes gets it done, but more often proves a crapshoot that restaurateurs pay for every day.

To be fair, bringing in an outside superstar doesn’t guarantee success either. Jason Robinson’s great cooking did not save Goodfellow’s. In a town where eating out is not quite the pastime it is in NYC or San Francisco, restaurant goers must also take some of the blame (as restaurants bear the culinary burden). Settling for second-rate ceases to be a viable business strategy in a dining community that can be reliably counted on to reward excellence.

Reach restaurant columnist Andrew Zimmern at azimmern@mspmag.com.