A World Apart

Chef Jean-Louis

Hotel Royal Plaza, Lake Buena Vista

by Alicia Callanan Mandigo

Chef Jean-Louis has lived a world apart from his native Haiti for some time now. The current images of Port Au Prince in physical ruin are a bit symbolic of the feelings Jean-Louis has had about Haiti for years. The Port Au Prince of his childhood was pristine and idyllic. Families were strong, neighbors were caring and supportive, and there was no street crime. It was a happy environment that spawned a love of cooking.

:"On the first Sunday of the month, we would host a lot of people, and that's when mother would cook. I would help, and by age 12, I was cooking for the whole house. We were a family of 15," says Jean-Louis. It was a full-fledged education in which Jean-Louis would go to the market and choose fresh produce and live chickens, which he then slaughtered, plucked and butchered. Those skills of which few young chefs can boast. The need for a formal education, however, would eventually take Jean-Louis about as far from Port Au Prince market as a person can get.

Jean-Louis arrived in the United States in 1972 to attend high school in up-state New York. That led to his first job, working in a mom-and-pop Jewish deli. Everything there was house-made, he says, even the pickles. It was such an eye-opening experience that to this day he still can't tolerate a cooked pickle. He continued to work as he pursued his education, taking jobs at places like the Safar Bistro on Newbury Street while attending school at Northeastern University in Boston.

Certainly those cold-snowy-Jewish-deli-New-York winters were a world away from his native Haiti. What he didn't realize at the time was that his adventures as a chef and as a young man were just about to begin.

"That's when people were spending money," says Jean-Louis, "as a chef, I was able to have anything I wanted. If I wanted Beluga caviar, I could import it. We did really big events, and a the time everything was made in-house. That was the pride of a chef. Nothing was pre-made."

And where was all of this high-living taking place? New York-New York Disco, where Jean-Louis was Executive Chef. Jean-Louis would make it all the way to the last days of disco, catering for most of the city's big clubs, including Studio 54. When asked if he'd ever takin a spin on the floor at Studio 54, he responds wih a baritone belly-laugh and a "yes". "It was a different time," he says, "you could go for days without sleeping".

Eventually the party that was the 1970's ended, and Jean-Louis returned to school, attending Bunker Hill and New Hampshire College. He went on to serve as a lecturer for the Hospitality school at the University of New Hampshire, which at the time was ranked third in the nation for hospitality.

There were early awards in his career, including Best Chef of the Seacoast, and an ACF Silver Medal. Since those days, the industry has recognized him so many times, it would be impossible to list his accolades. However, in 1999, he felt he'd reached a point at which he could no longer grow, and so he relocated to Orlando and joined the Kessler family of restaurants. He spend 9 years with Kessler before joining the Hotel Royal Plaza.

His native Haiti sits a mere two hours away. It is a country with a proud history. It is the world's oldest black republic. It fought in independence movements throughout South America and sent a battalion to Savannah to fight for the American Revolution. John J. Audubon was from Haiti, as was author Alexandre Dumas. But Haiti is now another world to Chef Jean-Louis. And in some ways, so is the restaurant industry. "The industry is killing itself," says Jean-Louis, "everything is corporate driven and made to be fool-proof. It doesn't need chefs anymore, it needs kitchen managers and general managers."

While he says he doesn't expect to return to Haiti, it hasn't left him. Nor have the glory days of being a chef. "I've always had a dream of going back to Haiti and opening a culinary school," says Jean-Louis. It is a dream that sits in his geographical backyard, an entire world apart.

Alicia Callanan Mandigo is a freelance writer living in Winter Park, Florida.