Michael Symon's Live to Cook_ Recipes and Techniques to Rock Your Kitchen - Michael Symon [75]
They were a three-top and were like any other table that night except for the fact that they ordered nearly the entire menu. I knew something was up, but not what.
And then I forgot about it. We were really busy. When Food & Wine called to tell me I was one of ten chosen for their Best New Chef award, I thought it was one of my buddies giving me a hard time.
The Food & Wine Best New Chef award resulted in a lot of changes. It altered how I was regarded on a national level. A chef from Cleveland just wasn’t respected. You had to be a chef in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, or Los Angeles. Everybody being written about in the national press was in or near one of those cities. When I was at the ceremony in New York for the announcement, a chef came up to me and asked, “Who’s your PR person?” I said, “I don’t have one,” and he said, “Impossible.”
I said, “I don’t have one.”
“Then how the f— would anybody find a chef in Cleveland?” The guy couldn’t believe it. I don’t think people in Cleveland did either. They seemed to react with the thought, “What? There’s a good restaurant in Cleveland?” And people outside Cleveland definitely thought, “What? There’s a good restaurant in Cleveland?!”
What it was, though, was not some sort of freak occurrence, but rather something that was happening all over the country. There were many good restaurants in Cleveland. Young chefs were returning to their hometowns and bringing good new dynamic food to an American audience that was increasingly eager for what they had to offer.
The Food & Wine award changed things for me personally in more ways than I probably know. Because of the national recognition, I was invited to do charity dinners in cities across the country, and the national press could write about me and not have to explain themselves. I cooked at the James Beard House in New York, and at other New York events. I caught the attention of executives at the Food Network, who had me on as a guest chef on Sara Moulton’s show, and on a show called Ready, Set, Cook. The executives there liked me on TV and invited me to be a part of a show called Melting Pot. And eventually they invited me to compete on a reality cooking show that took place in three countries, and resulted in my earning a spot as an Iron Chef on Iron Chef America.
All this recognition feeds the restaurant and is responsible for a lot of our business. The business success leads to offers, some of which I’ve accepted. We closed Lola and reopened her in 2005 as a more casual Lolita, serving food in honor of my mother and her culinary heritage, turning to the freshly grilled and open-fire cooking of the Mediterranean. And I was able to build out my dream kitchen and restaurant in the center of my city, at the new Lola in 2006. I was asked to open a restaurant in New York, which received a two-star rating from Frank Bruni at the New York Times, who wrote that Parea was “a fittingly arresting showcase for a sophisticated chef’s efforts to recast Greek cuisine by approaching it with atypically high standards, unearthing neglected traditions and finding novel assignments for commonly used ingredients.” I’m proud of what we did there. Unfortunately I didn’t own it, and it closed after disputes with the people who did. I’ve opened a restaurant in Detroit, called Roast, devoted to my favorite culinary subject: meat. And the offers continue to come.
I like the celebrity for the most part, and I don’t think it’s a bad thing as long as at the end of the day you know who you are. I’m still a chef and a restaurateur—that’s my livelihood; that’s who I am. Maybe that will change; I don’t know. I think you have to be honest. Whatever recognition I have, besides driving people to my restaurants, has allowed me to continue to learn. Often what