All About Food: A long road to becoming ‘top chef’

The journey from home cook to professional chef is a long and arduous one. With or without the benefit of cooking school, everybody starts at the bottom and has to pay their dues. This means boring prep work, long, sweaty hours in the heat of the kitchen and a very slow progression through the ranks until you are finally “Top Chef.”

Ronnie Arnold, the executive chef at the newly refurbished Hush tells such a tale. We had been invited to a cocktail and hors d’oeuvre party to celebrate Hush’s new face-lift. There we mingled with the young, trendy set and sampled a variety of tasty bites that reflected Arnold’s continual pursuit of the new. We were eager to interview him and find out why he had left Hush and then returned six months ago.

Arnold didn’t start cooking until he was 20. He lived at home with his three siblings and he confesses reluctantly that his mother was a terrible cook. When her job kept her too busy, he took over the kitchen chores and found they were not a chore at all.

He was bored with his job and the undemanding 9-to-5 grind, the only good part being endless conversations about food with his manager. These were the days of Emeril Lagasse on TV, and they were both big fans. With time on his hands at work and a captive audience at home, he read cookbooks like those of Jacques Pepin and Mario Batali and experimented with various creations, which he served to the family.

He began to fantasize about becoming a chef. Going to culinary school was out of the question financially, but Arnold got a night job through a friend at the now-defunct Partners Bistro.

“Don’t quit your day job,” he was told. “First see if you like it.”

He did and worked there for three years. Then, seeking more experience, he decided to go over to 230 to ask Mark (one of the owners and the chef) if he had any openings.

He found out that Mark had just left on vacation. Walking out disappointed, he looked up and saw a man with crazy big hair, in his white chef’s coat, coming out of the restaurant next door. He approached him and asked if he had any jobs available.

“Funny you should ask,” he said. “A guy just quit.”

The chef was Jonathan Fluger, and the restaurant was Vertical Wine Bar, a new small plates restaurant that was ahead of its time.

Although Arnold worked in the pantry, the restaurant menu changed every day, and Fluger was open to suggestions, and Arnold had lots of them.

In order to support his family, he applied at the Ritz Carlton and worked a day job in banquets.

“This is where I learned the basics, through continuous repetition,” he said. “Cooking 200 pieces of fish, you really learn how to do it.”

He then moved to the Ritz’s Terrace restaurant and eventually worked in the dining room under Yvan Goetz (a Michelin starred French chef) where he learned refinement and presentation. Working from 6 p.m. to midnight, he spent his days helping to take care of his two kids and continuing to teach himself by reading Escoffier from cover to cover, preparing all the mother sauces and experimenting with them.

When Fluger, who was his creative mentor, became executive chef for the Montage Resort & Spa, Arnold followed him. Once again he helped with banquets under Chef Greg Short, formerly of the French Laundry, and persistently picked his brain.

In 2004, Fluger, again on the move, said to Arnold, “Come with me. We are opening a cool new place.”

This was Hush. Arnold started on the hot line and worked the pantry.

Shockingly, three weeks later, Fluger abruptly left. Even more shockingly, Chuck and Danny, the owner and manager, respectively, asked Arnold to be the chef.

Actually, what they said was, “Do you think you can do this?”

He had never run a kitchen before and was not entirely confident that he would be up to it. His approach was to run the kitchen as a democracy. Those of you who watch the Food Network will understand how unusual this is.

He kept the menu as it was and had everybody take responsibility. He saw his role as the idea man, but after a few months with some of the staff trickling off, Chuck felt he needed a chef who would really take charge. He hired someone from outside because Arnold said he didn’t think he was ready to do it, and so he became the sous-chef.

However, the new guy only lasted two months and after watching him in action, Arnold felt he could do at least as well and agreed to take the job. What followed was a three-year learning period, after which, seeking to expand and grow even more, he left Hush almost tearfully, as it had become like family to him.

He sought the benefits of the large corporation that was the St. Regis. Motif had a huge kitchen with 30 cooks doing three meals a day plus room service under an old-world French chef who ran a classically structured operation. After one year of intense experience, Ronnie longed for a smaller place. He worked at several other restaurants, including helping out at Hush two days a week.

When the economy began to tank, he got laid off from his job at Prime Cut Wine bar and went to speak to Danny. Now that he had refined his skills at kitchen management and the current chef had left, he came back to use everything he had learned with the intention of making the menu more affordable, lighter, seasonable and sustainable.

Being open to suggestions, learning and experimenting are the hallmarks of his chefdom. Typifying his mature style is wild Alaskan halibut with cannellini beans, pancetta and spinach in a sun-dried tomato velouté

Last week, Arnold celebrated the birth of his fifth child and a new seasonal fall menu.

ELLE HARROW and TERRY MARKOWITZ owned A La Carte for 20 years. They can be reached for comments or questions at themarkos755@yahoo.com