I have always loved food. One of my first memories of food is eating clams from a bag.
I wasn’t quite four years old yet, it was 1960 and we were on a family vacation in York Beach, Maine. I even drew little pictures of the local restaurants and one of them said, “Open. Clams Today.” My mom kept the drawings for years, and then framed them. They’re still hanging in my home now.
And at the same time I was stocking up on G.I. Joe action figures, my godmother Agnes Bridget Eileen Kelly was encouraging me to cook. She would bring me gift boxes from Marshall Field’s. They were filled with cake mixes, jams, preserves, pancake mixes, syrups, chocolate sprinkles, and other things for me to cook with in the kitchen.
As long as I can remember, I was cooking food. But I liked sports, too. We used to play wiffle ball in the backyard and I would come inside between innings to help my mom
stir and taste the soup, or whatever it was we were having for dinner.
Later, after high school, I attended Dumas Père Cooking School in Glenview. It was
an intensive, ten-week program designed mostly for housewives interested in French cooking. I felt a little bit out of place but the owners took me under their wing. I stayed late and absorbed everything I could like a sponge.
But it was perhaps my 1983 visit to France that convinced me that cooking was going to be my life’s passion and work. I was 23 and this was my first trip out of the country.
After flying to Paris, I took the TGV (you know, the high-speed train) to Marseilles and then a bus to Cannes, about twenty hours of traveling straight through. I had to walk two miles up a steep hill to the medieval town of Mougins—with a duffle bag and my broken luggage in tow. Remember luggage when it was square and lacked wheels? Well, that’s what I had. I had tied it to a little rack with wheels but it kept coming off the rack. Total disaster.
Anyway, after a day of traveling, I finally spotted the hotel, Le Vaste Horizon, where I was going to stay. When I got there, they told me they had sold my room. I was stunned. And so tired, that I broke down and embarrassed to say that I started to cry.
The manager of the hotel told me to relax and gave me a glass of champagne. Looking back, two glasses would have been better. After I calmed down a bit, he gave me the key to his Renault. He gave me some directions to another inn and told me I could have my room the next night. As I hadn’t been a very good French student (more about that some other time) I didn’t really understand his directions. I drove through the countryside, making several wrong turns–and eventually spotted a roadside motel in a village called Valbonne. I slept like a log, returned to Mougins the next day, and enrolled in cooking school.
Here again, housewives interested in learning how to cook for their husbands surrounded me. I couldn’t believe it. I had already learned the basic skills the school was teaching, so I complained. I was really beginning to think this trip was a bust.
The school’s director felt pretty bad about it. While promising to help me get a job at a restaurant, she also said she had a special surprise for me. “Dress nicely,” she told me. That evening, I was having cocktails and canapés at the home of Julia Child. We talked for thirty minutes and she really seemed to take an interest in me. It was amazing.
I decided that night that cooking was my life. It was destiny.
Chef John Hogan of Keefer's Restaurant, Chicago
I have always loved food. One of my first memories of food is eating clams from a bag.
I wasn’t quite four years old yet, it was 1960 and we were on a family vacation in York Beach, Maine. I even drew little pictures of the local restaurants and one of them said, “Open. Clams Today.” My mom kept the drawings for years, and then framed them. They’re still hanging in my home now.
And at the same time I was stocking up on G.I. Joe action figures, my godmother Agnes Bridget Eileen Kelly was encouraging me to cook. She would bring me gift boxes from Marshall Field’s. They were filled with cake mixes, jams, preserves, pancake mixes, syrups, chocolate sprinkles, and other things for me to cook with in the kitchen.
As long as I can remember, I was cooking food. But I liked sports, too. We used to play wiffle ball in the backyard and I would come inside between innings to help my mom
stir and taste the soup, or whatever it was we were having for dinner.
Later, after high school, I attended Dumas Père Cooking School in Glenview. It was
an intensive, ten-week program designed mostly for housewives interested in French cooking. I felt a little bit out of place but the owners took me under their wing. I stayed late and absorbed everything I could like a sponge.
But it was perhaps my 1983 visit to France that convinced me that cooking was going to be my life’s passion and work. I was 23 and this was my first trip out of the country.
After flying to Paris, I took the TGV (you know, the high-speed train) to Marseilles and then a bus to Cannes, about twenty hours of traveling straight through. I had to walk two miles up a steep hill to the medieval town of Mougins—with a duffle bag and my broken luggage in tow. Remember luggage when it was square and lacked wheels? Well, that’s what I had. I had tied it to a little rack with wheels but it kept coming off the rack. Total disaster.
Anyway, after a day of traveling, I finally spotted the hotel, Le Vaste Horizon, where I was going to stay. When I got there, they told me they had sold my room. I was stunned. And so tired, that I broke down and embarrassed to say that I started to cry.
The manager of the hotel told me to relax and gave me a glass of champagne. Looking back, two glasses would have been better. After I calmed down a bit, he gave me the key to his Renault. He gave me some directions to another inn and told me I could have my room the next night. As I hadn’t been a very good French student (more about that some other time) I didn’t really understand his directions. I drove through the countryside, making several wrong turns–and eventually spotted a roadside motel in a village called Valbonne. I slept like a log, returned to Mougins the next day, and enrolled in cooking school.
Here again, housewives interested in learning how to cook for their husbands surrounded me. I couldn’t believe it. I had already learned the basic skills the school was teaching, so I complained. I was really beginning to think this trip was a bust.
The school’s director felt pretty bad about it. While promising to help me get a job at a restaurant, she also said she had a special surprise for me. “Dress nicely,” she told me. That evening, I was having cocktails and canapés at the home of Julia Child. We talked for thirty minutes and she really seemed to take an interest in me. It was amazing.
I decided that night that cooking was my life. It was destiny.
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ho that is too funny…running home to stir the pot for mother…sure don’t remember that at all….what planet were you on¿ that is too funny, peanut butter sandwiches maybe….but I must admit can cook….learn how to clean up after your self would ya! went on fishing trip with him, made a mess and would not clean up, expected everyone else to clean up his mess, I dont think so..good cook, but very much a attention getter too. Self over promotion runs in the family I do know!
Taz,
Those who cook, cook.
Those who can’t, clean up.
Take care,
John