A Mother's Day Tribute to my First Restaurant Boss

Mom loved food. With five sons to feed, she seemed to always be in the kitchen. Growing up on a tiny New England farm, Mom believed in cooking from scratch using fresh ingredients. She canned fruits, made preserves, and baked bread daily. We were never without homemade cobblers, cookies or cakes. ??

Dad was a small-town dentist, but my parents’ dream was to open a bed & breakfast in The Berkshires of Massachusetts. Our family of seven spent countless weekends there, getting to know the area. My father was the dreamer, but Mom was rooted in reality. When asked why she pursued formal chef training, her reply was typical: “We were clueless, so at least one of us needed to know what to do.”?

In 1981, with two kids in college and three still at home, Mom enrolled in the culinary arts program at Johnson & Wales. ?This middle-aged housewife was thrilled to learn alongside young men fresh out of high school or the military. For most weekends over a two-year period, she drove 50 miles to Providence on Saturday morning, took eight hours of classes, and drove home at night. Then did it again on Sunday.?

Home became Mom’s practice kitchen. By 13, I knew the difference between chop and dice, blend and mix, and soft and stiff peaks. She taught us how to clarify consommé using egg whites, served weeks of meals featuring the French “mother sauces” (Hollandaise, Sauce Tomat, Béchamel, Espagnole, and Velouté), and we suffered through the module on aspics (how much savory jelly can one family endure?). Mom’s name is Bernice, but during culinary school, we referred to her as “Béarnaise”.?

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As she learned more about technique, her tastes evolved. Several times each year, my parents and another couple would hire a driver and head to New York to dine at La Grenouille, The Four Seasons, or Windows on the World. They would return with stories of crisp duck skin, sky high soufflés, and expertly prepared tableside omelets. I took the photo in this post prior to one of these trips.?

?After taking a summer course at Cornell about running a B&B, my parents abandoned their dream of owning one. ?The hours and risk were too daunting. But Mom was hooked on hospitality. She landed the job of sous chef at The Spa at Norwich Inn which had recently been bought and renovated. She’d wake up at 4:30am to prepare a healthy breakfast and lunch for hotel guests, then come home and feed us. It was this phase of Mom’s career that exposed me to wheatberries, tofu, soba noodles, French lentils, and Indian spices. ?

As a 16- and 17-year-old, I worked as Mom’s dishwasher, prep cook, and busboy. Though it took some getting used to, I loved working for my mother. Her grace, strength, and ability to handle pressure were an inspiration, especially in contrast to the younger men around her who would regularly lose their heads. The restaurant industry has never been known for its enlightened attitudes toward women, and Mom no doubt faced her fair share of discrimination. But she never lost her cool. Perhaps raising five boys had prepared her for two decades in restaurant kitchens. ?

When I started working in restaurants during college, we would share war stories and recipes. I was probably the only college kid cooking and freezing batches of marinara sauce, making basil pesto ice cubes, and saving vegetable scraps to make veg stock – things I still do decades later.?

It was Mom’s example that inspired me to pursue a career in restaurants, even though it tore me away from my dream career of landscape architecture. Mom was proud when I became the general manager of Union Square Cafe, especially when we received a glowing review from William Grimes of the New York Times. She loved coming to New York and pickling vegetables with Kenny Callaghan and Michael Romano for the launch of Blue Smoke. Danny Meyer sent her a copy of Setting the Table when it was published in 2006, and she immediately read it to make sure I was mentioned favorably (I was, to her relief). She became an avid reader of Eater , and she loved sending me articles about new openings or industry intrigue. We shared a common language, which kept us close throughout our lives. ?

I cooked for Mom until she passed away in December 2022, preparing gallons of bone broth during her years of chemo. She generously credited the broth with extending her life. I prepared batches of chicken soup and tomato sauce and stocked her freezer with pint containers, just as she had done for me in college. We had come full circle.??

While I no longer work day-to-day in restaurants, I have held onto many of the lessons I learned from Mom as a teenager in her kitchen: Work clean, help your teammates, don’t complain, and remember, even the worst service will be over at some point.?

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