How I got here.

As I wrap-up my last few weeks at Savor, I've been taking a little time to reflect on how I became a chef and lover of great food. The food part is relatively straight forward, how was I not going to be a food person with a father who exposed me to great restaurants and unique ingredients since I was a toddler (an Indonesian-style rijsttafel [rice table] comes to mind), and a mother who is an incredible cook, restaurant owner and notorious portion monster (I still remember how impressed my friends were in grade-school when they came over to our house in the winter to find our back-porch transformed into a makeshift walk-in cooler and loaded with 50-quart stock pots of various delicious soups and stews my Mother had made for us as an after-school snack). Becoming a chef didn't come as naturally. Even though I loved cooking and working in restaurants, I'd always thought of professional cooking as a means to get through film school. Two things happened to help change my mind. The first occured during my first year of graduate studies, while taking a hiatus in St. Louis, my car was broken into and all my film equipment stolen. About the same time I received a copy of A. Dornenburg & K. Page's inspirational "Becoming a Chef" an incredible book that outlines the amazing world of prefessional cooking through interviews with some of the world's best chefs. I took these events as signs, left school (which I wasn't enjoying anyway) and committed myself to learning everything I could about cooking and food. Many incredible meals and unforgettable food experiences later I'm about to embark on another food adventure: Kirk's Traveling Kitchen.