(bright music) (upbeat orchestral music) (whisk sloshing) (mixer whirring) (upbeat orchestral music) - [Speaker] This whisk, can you see it?

- This looks great, guys.

Let's finish up tomorrow, I'm done.

(door rattles) (light playful music) (figurine whistles) (light playful music) (playful music) (bright playful music) (chopsticks tapping) (knives screeching) (rhythmic music) (pot drumming) (grate rattling) (upbeat playful music) (bottle pops) (glasses clanking) (bright music) - [Chef] What is a successful service?

The timing was right on the food, the flavors were developed properly, all guests left happy.

There's no better feeling in the world than going home with that.

(cutlery clicking) (machines humming) (lighthearted music) Hey, man, how you doing?

- Hey, chef, good.

How are you?

- [Chef] Safe, push good.

- Sounds good.

- [Speaker] Safety, please.

(lighthearted music) (both speaking faintly) (lighthearted music) - [Sous Chef Jordan] I love sous-chefing for Chef Paul, and it's really fun and it's different for me.

I've never been in that role before and it's a lot of fun, it's a lot of responsibility.

(lighthearted music) - So it's a grilled octopus with the frisee salad, with fingerling potatoes.

It's marinated in a soy Worcestershire mixture.

We make a sauce out of it.

- Chef, order in, (chef speaks faintly) (lighthearted music) (object pounding) (lighthearted music) (diners murmuring) - I just want to implement how important it is your end, you're just as important as I am, service is key here.

You get great food and lousy service and people are gonna walk away and empty.

- [Chef Schmidt] The restaurant environment is very dynamic.

- Yay.

- It is a wonderful experiencing working with a team of people, professionals, emerging professionals, people that are transient in their careers, going to school, it brings a wild walk of all lives type group together.

And then you're really like, it's a live performance.

(lighthearted music) (birds chirping) - Why cooking?

Because my mom raised me cooking with her, that was kind of how we bonded.

And I wanted to go to culinary school since I was in high school and become a chef.

And I began working in restaurants through high school as a dishwasher in a neighborhood Italian restaurant and I just fell in love with it.

I was kind of a punk kid.

I also was somewhat awkward and lost as a young man and didn't really know where I belonged.

However, when I first worked in the kitchen, I was embraced by the team.

I was just excited to be a part of whatever was going on.

But through my career, I realized that, that seeing somebody's interest and pushing them into new experiences and new responsibilities in the kitchen is what pushes us all to wanna nurture and to build the people around us.

(lighthearted music) - A professional kitchen perfect is the closest thing we have modern day to like a pirate ship where it's like every different, nobody cares about your past.

You're on the ship and we had a common goal and everybody's welcome and we all have to make this thing move through the sea together.

And misfits, we don't care about your back education.

You all have one common goal, and that's just to take care of every plate that goes out the window.

And that's what drew me to cooking specifically.

I graduated high school with a 1.7 GPA just by the, you know, tips of my fingers.

- So for me and for others that I can just see it in them, a lot of us weren't like your normal kind of square peg students all through high school, like we had trouble with attention or focusing.

You know, I'm certainly a full fledged ADD adult person, and when I was young, it, it was a little bit of a barrier but, you know, now I tell people it's my superhero power.

- This is actually something that's a great tool that you can use to your advantage.

Being able to multitask and get a lot of things done at once and focus in on many things going on at the same time as opposed to one task at hand, you know, bit by bit.

So in some walks of life is a disadvantage, but in the kitchen it's a strength.

- I love the controlled chaos, I love camaraderie and I was a much better fit back of the house than I was for front of the house.

And so I enjoyed that, I enjoyed the explosive service and learning, and I enjoyed the long hours and learning new things, and yeah, it was... (lighthearted music) - I started working in the kitchen when I was 16 in Japan, my town called Mito, M-I-T-O.

I just started cooking because I needed make money.

So I find a job in a neighbor's restaurant.

And since then, that I didn't became to right away love cooking right away.

You know, some chefs said, "I was born to be cooking," something like that.

Actually, I hated it a little bit, but next year I move to Tokyo and the cooking over there again and getting, getting started, like, I feel this might be my permanent job.

- I'm gonna fire the salmon.

All the guys were in the kitchen, all the fun, all the laughter was coming from the kitchen, and that's where I found myself.

It was exciting, fast, hilarious, a little bit wild, I like the chaos, I still like chaos today, so that fit me.

(lighthearted music) Hey guys, how you doing?

- Hey.

- Nice to see you again.

Salmon for you.

- Thank you.

- [Chef] You attract a very diverse group of people that are highly independent, usually quite creative and have a great sense of imagination, but don't necessarily fit into a conforming normal job.

So coming and joining part of a kitchen brigade or a team or a family, they almost become part of your family.

(upbeat music) - Detroit has a great culinary heritage.

It is a melting pot, we're a city that is gritty.

We work hard, we're innovators, entrepreneurs.

It was the culinary field that in many ways created the community that we have in Detroit, it is the culinary field that really created the industry of friends that supported each other.

So food became the glue that held in many respects, Detroit together and it created this friendship that went through all industries.

- I mean, if we look at Detroit, historically, the automotive industry, which was a magnet for people to come here.

What I love most about Detroit is how real it is.

I think it's the pulse of the Midwest and always has been.

(suspenseful music) - Yeah, I think Detroit's culinary scene today really has a rich history based on the history of Detroit, and I think that what the automotive industry brought was a lot of Eastern Europeans, Middle Easterns, people from the South, African Americans from the South, all that kind of blended into this cuisine that Detroit is.

(upbeat music) - At the end of prohibition in 1934, things started to take off because a lot of the restaurateurs who were pre-prohibition went underground with blind pigs.

After the depression, they all went legitimately into the restaurant business and it started to flourish and the economy started to take off.

But it wasn't until after World War II where the dynamics of the social cultural community and the industry really enhanced the restaurant business.

(serene music) My grandfather started in the trade, in the restaurant industry because of prohibition, put his cigar industry outta business.

(serene music) (machine beeping) That looks good.

- Thank you.

- Nice, nice, looks good.

So it was all of the immigrants coming in that came actually to Michigan as well, brought all their spice blends and they went to the Eastern Market in Detroit.

So at the Eastern Market is where all the spice blends came, and the chefs, that's where they would buy their spices and herbs, they would go to the Eastern Market.

- The Eastern Market in the early 1800s all the way to today has been a place where you would go find something you can't find from your big grocer.

(shoppers speaking faintly) So as the restaurant's scene evolves in Detroit, you know, you have many different dialects, you have Lebanese people, the Middle Eastern restaurants, you have, as we talked about, the Italian restaurants, you had Greek town, the Greek restaurants, and they were all, you know, I think the biggest thing that I see is that they brought a passion, they brought what they felt was the best from their homeland and I think that they really did it for love.

You know, I mean, when they were cooking their food, they were doing it as you were sitting at their table at their home.

(inspiring music) - People were going and picking up things themselves, putting it in their vehicles, bringing it back to the restaurants, spending an awful lot of time sourcing products.

As time went on and the broad line food distribution industry really evolved, companies like Gordon Food Service, we have done what I think is a really good job of listening to our customers- - Hey, Lina, (indistinct) is here.

- And making sure that we've got a line of the items that are important to fit their needs for their businesses.

- How you doing?

- Good, how about you?

- I'm doing great.

- Doing good.

- You got everything for us?

- Yes, I do, brought (indistinct) cases for you today.

- Sounds perfect.

Looking good, baby, looking good.

(invigorating music) - There was an incredible population of Italians here, so most of them were involved in the food industry in some way, whether it be grossest, workers at the Eastern Market opening up little mom and pop shops, restaurants, et cetera.

- There was a huge Italian move in the, particularly after the second World War, you started to see the Italian community, for example, in Windsor, doubling almost every decade.

And so you had these great social clubs.

Like there was the Caboto, which was one of the centers of the Italian community on the Windsor side, but it was a center also for Italians out of Detroit to come and celebrate their culture, their food, dancing, crushing grapes together, you know, things that brought back all that sort of cultural connection that they had with one another.

(bright music) - Oh my God.

- When I say that.

- My name is Rena Tonon.

I'm the owner of Cafe Cortina for 48 years.

Oh, the love story was, you know, I went to Canada and I went to a dance and I saw this, I spotted this young Italian handsome movie star, he looked like a movie star, and he ended up asking me to dance, and we both loved food and hospitality and family.

And we were going to be not only marriage partners, but we were gonna be business partners.

Adriano and I were married 28 years, and then he got cancer and he passed away in 1993.

(gentle guitar music) Today, Cafe Cortina is, we have an executive chef, Ernesto Antopio that is very passionate.

He has the same feelings for people and food as we did, it's genuine hospitality.

(gentle guitar music) - Great.

- All right, I might just do it.

- Just bring me... - [Speaker] He's thinking he's coming with me, I guess.

- I love that.

- Oh, that's fine with me too.

- Italy is here.

(Chef speaks indistinctly) Gracia.

- They (indistinct) Cortina.

- Absolutely.

- Never seen a patio like this, never seen a garden like this.

- Wow.

- And where can you go?

(diners speaks foreign language) - [Diner] This food is outstanding.

(cheerful music) (crowd speaking indistinctly) - Mascarpone cream with strawberries and a sugar cookie, and then we have a mascarpone cheesecake, with some crushed strawberries and cherry.

I'll bring another one out for you, okay?

- Thank you.

- úEverything is good today?

- Yeah.

- Thank you very much.

- Thank you.

- Thanks for doing this, appreciate it.

- Thank you.

(diners speaking faintly) - Well, for me, Italian cuisine would be the way my grandfather taught me from the region of Amelia Romania in Italy come with the richness of the cream, the bolognese sauces, the prosciutto, the tortellini in brodo all the riches of Italy come from that region.

(gentle upbeat music) Here's your lasagna, and margarita with arugula and prosciutto, and I appreciate your patience today, thank you so much.

And they decided to open up Da Eduardo on Mack Avenue in 1978, it opened.

And then Da Eduardo on Mack took off and my father and my grandfather and my mother worked day and night to make sure that that restaurant would make it.

It's a testament of time, it's a testament of our family, and I think my grandpa and father would be very proud, very proud.

(cars whooshing) (oil sizzling) - My journey to the restaurant business started off because of parents' personal love story.

They came from Abruzzo, Italy.

All these immigrants, when they came over, they really couldn't open back then in the seventies, it was difficult to open a true Italian restaurant, even in my dad's first menus and I go back and reflect to those often and there was like, you know, frog legs Roadhouse style, and he always had barbecue ribs on his menu and things like this that really weren't Italian, but they were just things he knew that his clientele really wanted.

Oupa!

(diners speaking faintly) (bright guitar music) - So Greek Count has been here for more than a hundred years.

In fact, Hollis Restaurant, which closed a few years ago, was a hundred year old restaurant back then.

We still have restaurants that are 50 years old, including this pastry shop that's 53 years old, we have the Pegasus and the Golden Fleece that are over 50 years old.

Greeks first came into the community here and lived in this community more than a hundred years ago.

(upbeat music) The kitchen staff is awesome.

We're so close and a lot of people say people, they're like your family, you know, people that you work with and they really are like family.

And five of 'em together have been working over a hundred years.

So we don't have anyone working less than 10 years and one up to 30 years.

(bright guitar music) - Yeah, when you think about Detroit's culinary heritage, you have to remember the impact that the Arab American community has had on it, going way back when the immigrants started coming here, you know, to work for $5 a day for Henry Ford.

(gentle upbeat music) That's really when the Lebanese immigrants started coming, as well as from other places in the Middle East, from Yemen, from Egypt, Venicia, too many to name.

- My name is Sammy Reid and I own this restaurant, the Venicia Restaurant in Birmingham, Michigan.

I have owned it since August 1st, 1971.

The Venicians are the original inhabitants of Lebanon.

They were on the Mediterranean shore of Syria, Lebanon, and Israel A toast.

- Samir, here's to you and everyone.

- Samir, thank you.

- Hey, pleasure having you guys.

When we are talking about Lebanese food, we are literally talking about a lot of vegetarian dishes and some meat dishes and some combination of meat and vegetables and meat and rice and meat and cracked wheat and all that.

We're talking about Tabbouleh hummus.

Our hummus is made fresh every single day.

We make it, we grind it with the tahini and lemon and garlic and serve it salt and pepper and serve it.

(gentle upbeat music) - [Chef Brian] There were no real independent chef-driven restaurants, fifties, sixties.

The reason for that is because all the great chefs either worked at a hotel, a country club, or on the coast a cruise ship, 'cause those were the people that had money.

Those were the people that were well traveled, and back then, the food was commonly referred to as continental cuisine, (oil sizzling) (gentle music) Dover Sole, rack of lamb, Caesar salad, these are the staple, you would go to any classic French restaurants and the menus were almost always the same.

- When I was coming up, there was three chefs that you would consider working for if you wanted to learn and develop your craft more.

And that was Milos Cihelka, Yvonne Gill and Duglass.

- When I started in the late seventies and early eighties, it was not fashionable to become a chef, especially in Detroit scene.

Well, back in the heyday of Milo's era, when you took a job with a European trained chef or someone of that level, there was no owner's manual that came with it, they didn't hand you like, "Here's the guidelines of the kitchen."

You had to fare and figure it out.

And they were intense, especially Milos.

I made Hollandaise and I was all happy about it, I handed it to him and he took one look at me, took the bowl, threw it in the garbage can, didn't say a word, and walked away.

So what do I do?

Do I act like a little baby?

Do I get all insulted?

Do I walk out?

You know what I did?

I went, "Well, I guess he didn't like that, I must have had something wrong with that."

He was one of the few or first chefs to get a gold medal with distinction, which means perfect score.

And here's a chef from Detroit, Michigan competing in international competition, that's France, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, all these guys, and he gets the highest award of anybody for individual platter.

He spawned generations of cooks and then eventually chefs, 'cause when you walk into that kitchen, you walk in and cook, and if you're smart and you last long enough, you walk out a chef, it's like a PhD.

Food is very clear, it's burnt, or it's not burnt.

That's the integrity of level of integrity that those European chefs brought to our generation and our generation brought to the next generation.

- I spent about 52 years in the business, and I started cooking when I was 13 years old.

When I worked in the business, I think the major change for me was when I started working for Chef Milos.

I learned more in six months working for Milos than a decade before working for all the other chefs, and it changed me, it changed my focus.

- I prefer bow hunting because anybody can shoot an animal with a gun, that's not that much of a sport.

But if you can get him with a bow, you have to really work at it.

I don't want you to go any closer, because they will smell your tracks.

- When you're referring to this history going back from the sixties on up, the history of a power chef, the guy who stands above the rest in professionalism, leadership, quality of food, innovation, you know, a very good cook, they know who you're talking about, you know, it's Chef Milos.

(bright music) (rooster crowing) (sheep baaing) Chef Milos' mentorship, you can't pay it back.

So I didn't have a father figure.

So when Chef came aboard to teach his discipline and his guidance, you can see, even though he was dang tough, he would guide you, he would teach you, he would show you or everybody else around you would show you.

He's done more things for me as one individual than anybody else in the professional world.

So yeah, I do look him as a father figure.

- So being a woman in not only the kitchen, but in the business was extremely difficult because we were not taken seriously although there were more women in the kitchen than there were men.

Carol Haskins was an extremely important part of my wanting to become a chef.

She was totally inspirational.

Yvonne Gil, I looked up to her like crazy.

She was so to me was a goddess in the chef world.

- So Yvonne was a very dominant woman from New Zealand who really kind of has a lot of responsibility for what we're talking about, putting Detroit on the culinary map, and she was wonderful with customers, but she was a tough, tough lady to work for.

(oil sizzling) - They had a sense of professionalism about 'em, but their expectations were so high.

So if you work for these chefs, either you dialed into that level of expectation or you didn't, and there were no gray area.

(gentle piano music) - Nougla, you're supposed to be in there preparing that fabulous dessert.

- Well, for what I had in mind, I needed some of your (indistinct) blossoms.

I hope you don't mind.

- Woo, well, anything you say, the kitchen is ready.

- But I was working at The Punch for 11 years, and then I went to The Great Dane, then I left The Great Dane after I think 11 years.

I opened Restaurant Duglass sometime in the eighties This is what I'm gonna make for you today, is a chocolate sac du bon bon, and it is a chocolate bag filled with layers of mocha, white and chocolate mousse filled with raspberries and sort of laden with a raspberry glaze.

And now for the filling, this is simply a meringue of egg whites and we slightly added a little sugar to hold it, and then you crown it with your frosted strawberry.

Voila, there you have a simple sac du bon bon en chair.

I think the chef had the golden mushroom, Milos Cihelka.

He was probably, I would say, when we were growing up, Escoffier was known as the king of chef and the chef of kings, and I would put Milos in that category.

Me, I was just creative, good looking and talented.

Milo was more than that.

- Grew up in, I was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia at that time, now it's just Czech Republic, and I escaped from the communist regime in 1950, which was a risky undertaking.

I had this friend in Detroit who kept bugging me and kept telling me to come to Detroit.

So it was in '52 or '53, and at a rooster tail, they agreed to hire me.

I worked at a rooster tail for about nine years.

And then I heard that the chop house wanted to change their chef.

I was there about two years at the chop house and then I worked at Gold Mushroom.

I hired cooks and all that, and I was very tough to work for, yes.

I expected the best from everybody, I wanted the best in quality, and I expected the best in, you know, speed, put it out and all that.

They didn't last, they didn't last.

If they couldn't hack it, they didn't last.

And most of them, I trained myself from beginning.

They all worked for one reason, they wanted to become chefs.

- When he retired, I was very, very blessed that he gave me his knives, which I don't use 'em, you know, that's his knives.

I just keep 'em nice and store 'em and every once in a while, I'll show somebody like yourself, them, and say, "Hey, these are his knives."

- When I was coming into the scene of culinary in the late seventies and the eighties, it couldn't be a better time to be a young chef in America.

And I say America because of the fact that the cuisine was changing, it was evolving.

(serene music) - The eighties in France brought in a new style of French cooking, and hence it was called nouvelle cuisine.

So the portions were brought smaller, focus on ingredients and flavors and precise amounts really came, you know, into focus.

So the great chefs of France, though, Roger De Gervaise, Elaine Sheppal, Freddie Gerardier, the (indistinct) Brothers, and you keep on going down the list of the three star restaurants were heavily celebrated, you know, they were followed by television and everybody else on what they did and such.

Now in the United States, that was happening kind of simultaneously.

- That new style of cooking and that inspired all of us.

It inspired the chefs that were already leading the kitchens in Detroit, and it definitely inspired us young chefs.

(serene music) - And then came, you know, Jacques Pepin, and what was great about his books is that he concentrated on the basics and the fundamentals of cooking.

- I'm going to show you two type of omelet, a kind of country French omelet, which is basically the way we do it in America and then a classic French omelet.

One is not better than the other, is just a different technique, a different taste, a different look that you have in it.

- We didn't have the internet or the phone.

We read "Gourmet," we read "Bon Appetit Magazine," there was no Food Network, so we just read these things.

And then the books from Europe, you know, all the great chefs in Europe were writing books.

Michelle Gerard, the Great chefs in France, Andre Salter's cookbook came out from other (indistinct) in New York City, Paul Bocuse of course, I mean, we would look at that and be influenced.

(gentle music) - How was the fish?

Was that good?

Wasn't too strong?

What they were bringing to us from France was not only the type and style of food, but they came out of their kitchens, they were introducing themselves to the clientele.

That was never seen before up until the early eighties.

Whereas the maitre D was always the face of the restaurant, but now chefs were coming outta the kitchen.

(diners speaking faintly) - Madeline Farfan, what can you say?

I mean, she's been part and parcel of the wine scene in Detroit for 40 plus years now and she's incredibly knowledgeable, incredibly talented, incredibly kind, and almost everyone in the food scene in Detroit knows and loves Madeline.

- A somellier is, you know, as the French would define it, because it's their word, is a wine professional who specializes in beverage sales and service, and actually, I would say probably the British would define it that way because they really took sommelier to a professional level.

They were originally called wine butlers in England.

You're gonna say a dry southern French rose or a dry rose from Provence.

Isn't that easy?

That's it.

So they know that it's not a sweet pink wine, and that it comes from southeastern France, easy peasy.

I'm a master sommelier, which means I took an exam that tested my tasting ability, my serviceability and my theory.

When I passed, I was the first American woman, the second woman worldwide, I was the sixth American, then I went to work at the London Chop House and I got to work with Jimmy for a short period of time.

But it was a joy to work with a chef who was fluent in wine because Mr. Gruber had taught him and taste and also, drum roll, the first chef I ever met, and I mean, nationally, who knew how to and was willing to adjust the food to make the wine taste better.

I mean, Jimmy's really a chemist in that respect and he was gleeful about it.

So it was wonderful working with Jimmy.

- Yeah, that's unusual situation.

He was the first Michigander Detroiter to win a Beard award, which was huge for us at the time.

He was a media darling, which was great for the rest of us because he brought media attention to what we were doing.

- Jimmy Schmidt, what can you say, like the downtown guy, I mean, he was doing stuff like back when nobody was doing stuff.

He would do like crazy dishes and now people would be like, "Wow, he was so far ahead of his time."

(playful music) - You are in the famous London Chop House, which is one of the pillars of the Detroit dining scene.

The London Chop house was really the center of activity, all fueled by the auto industry.

All the icons of the auto world came here to meet and greet and do deals.

The London Chop House was founded in 1938 and Lester Gruber pronounced himself as a saloon keeper.

So he was all about serving drinks and people having fun.

Later it started to evolve, he brought in better culinary talent with Pancho Valez, which was his first really famous chef.

In Lester's quest for the best things in the world, including wine and spirits and cigars and everything, he brought in Milos, Chef Milos, who was a great European, fully accredited, amazing chef.

And he really came in and put the London Chop House on the map of a fine dining establishment.

I originally found my way to the London Chop House when I was 21.

I'm originally from Illinois.

In 1984, it was time for me to move on.

I moved to Denver, Colorado and opened up the first Rattlesnake Club.

We won a lot awards, but I missed Detroit and wanted to come back here and had been working on a project before I moved, but had not come to fruition.

So the second outpost of the Rattlesnake Club became the Rattlesnake Club Detroit, which was located in a very special Albert Kahn manufacturing building.

At the same time, Detroit was going through this similar growth phase, and this phase brought about the Keith Famies, the Brian Polcyns, the Jimmy Schmitz, the Ed Janos, and this new breed of chefs struck out on their own to open their own restaurants and really using the foundation that they've learned at the great icons of Detroit restaurants but we were generating this style of restaurants at the same time as both coasts.

- For me, there was a list of individuals that you stared at from afar in that time for me as a young cook wanting to understand it all.

And you would see these individuals from afar, but their pedigree always came through the pillars of some of the individuals you named.

And the closest thing you could do was try to, you know, look at them from afar and see how you could get close to them.

They were using their canvas and their platform to really make a statement for the city in the metropolitan area and I was just fascinated from the start.

(bright music) (invigorating music) - The Michigan chefs cuisine was a very critical point, and to have chefs come together in professionalism and it's created a good atmosphere for people, a comradery.

If you weren't in part of the club, you didn't belong in the Detroit.

And so Chef Milos was kind of appalled that he would go, that people would come from work and they'd play cards and drink beer is what he said.

And he treated the Michigan Chefs de Cuisine, there was a group of about 12 who started it and very kind of strict and very professional when you do that.

I can only say professionalism, but it was, they got together and we had educational speakers and we would create food shows, we created some of the greatest value of the Michigan Chefs de Cuisine is that the comradery between chefs and networking with them.

But Chef Milos was the driving force of my creating the association and letting it thrive.

We thought so much of 'em that we created this, the Chef of the Year Award from Chef Milos actually about 26 years ago we did, and I was the first recipient of the Chef Milos Award.

- It helps bring us all together and just show how outstanding this community is, probably one of the best, if not the best chefs organization in the United States.

- Yeah, it was a shocker winning Chef of the Year, you know, for the Michigan Chef de Cuisine chapter.

I think it's even more humbling when after I got the award and accepted and then took it home, on the back of, it's a long list of all the chefs that have won over the years and I'm blown away.

These are chefs I looked up to, these are chefs that I wanted to go work for, it's amazing.

To be a part of that now, being part of that group, I mean, since the seventies there's only been a small group of us that have won it and been recognized by this chapter that's recognized across the nation.

It's truly humbling.

Recently, a few months ago I competed at Michigan Culinary Institute of Michigan, (indistinct) Port Huron, where I competed against three other chefs for the central reading title and I won it, it was great.

(invigorating music) - Hey class, look at this nice produce we have from the Canadian greenhouse across the border.

Been great partners with us for years.

This is like the epitome of garde-manger, beautiful cold produce, beautiful tomatoes to use cucumbers, bell peppers, that we're going to work into our five nice composed entree salads today.

I think we're good to go.

- Yes, chef.

- Alright, let's do it.

(bright music) So if you look back over the past 40 years of OCC and what we've done in our culinary department, the graduates, the list is just, to put a number on it, it's in the thousands.

This group of students, one, two, maybe 3000 of students that are in the industry now that OCC graduated, have gone through our program, have shaped and molded the Detroit scene.

They're doing some great things, not only in Detroit but nationally.

Real quick, three minutes left.

(bright music) Meyer lemon oil, hit a little splash on each one.

Class, your plates look beautiful today, nice work.

We are lucky enough to have a guest chef with us today.

Chef Kevin Enright, he's the person that helped shape this program.

He taught here for 36 years.

Chef, what do you think?

- Let's give it a little try here.

Yeah, let's see what this combination does.

Oh, delicious flavors, does go well together, great cheese, nice, creamy, very nice selection of ingredients and flavors.

(invigorating music) Very good.

- I agree, nice work.

(gentle upbeat music) - Detroit had food critics but they were growing like we were, they were learning about food, everybody was learning about this new food, and we lived to see who was gonna get written up on Friday 'cause they were gonna get all the business that weekend.

- Well, the food critics in Detroit was Sandy Silfven from the "Detroit News," Molly Abraham from "Free Press," Danny Raskin from the "Jewish News."

They were a big influence on us because they evolved with the times at the same time we were.

And when we were hitting things out, that generation, you know, Ed Janos and Keith Famie, Jeff Baldwin and myself, all of a sudden they were eating this food and they were like, we became their darlings, which thank God for, because they would write nice things about us, people would read the newspaper and say, "I wanna try that place."

And you know that when you got Restaurant of the Year or something like that, it translated to a good amount of sales, and sales are good.

- Make the best food you can, make it the coolest you can, try to one up everybody, you know, we're all buddies, but we're all trying to one up everybody.

That's where the food became fun.

- So there was this whole growth stage of going through all of the critics growing along with us, and really, the critics were very important for our growth of the quality of our food and understanding what uniquely we are doing here in Detroit.

(gentle serene music) - Straight up Chianti Classico Riserva, it's from (indistinct), and again, it's part of that Gallo's Lux portfolio, their Uber fine wine portfolio.

Detroit, Michigan, in the early eighties was not considered like a place that people would fly to for vacation, but we had a wine store, Merchant of Vino was named one of the 10 best wine shops in America that year.

That was a good springboard for Eddie, who was, again, he is a master at relationships to bring some of the world's greatest winemakers to Detroit, who otherwise would've just flown over the city.

(gentle music) - When we got a wine maker to come in, and whether we did it at Tampa Wingo, whether we did a Chez Raphael, where were the Golden Mushroom, we did many of them.

We used to pick all the restaurants to do our wine tastings, and what those chefs used to go through to match the wines with the food that we were presenting and that elevated the tasting and it was beautiful because all these chefs and all these wine makers were, especially the wine makers, were totally impressed with what our chefs in Detroit were able to accomplish.

(gentle upbeat music) - And we were challenged with feeding these people and creating menus around their variety of wines.

And that created a whole different aspect of what the restaurant business was.

(gentle upbeat music) - There's a generation of chefs, Keith Famie, Ed Janos, Jeff Baldwin at the Van Dyk place, the Whitney, myself, Pike Street, Jimmy Schmidt at the Rattlesnake, there's a handful of chefs that really impacted the food in Detroit.

And part of it was we were the young people coming up through the ranks, but we had something great happen to us at that time.

We had like nouvelle cuisine coming out of Europe and we also had California cuisine, we had Wolfgang Puck hitting the scene, Alice Waters hitting the scene, Jeremiah Tower on the coast.

So that generation, my generation helped really bring a forefront of creative food.

(energetic music) - We were all kind of misfits coming out of the sixties and the seventies, so early seventies, you know, sex, drugs and rock and roll were what was going on back then, and, you know, we all got caught up in it.

Immediately was getting notoriety, I was only 21 years old.

This was by the time I got off of work, everybody, including customers and everything were, they had all the money and all the drugs and you know, there was a lot going on back then.

I actually missed a shift after, which had never happened to me, I kind of like blacked out on a Sunday morning shift, I didn't even wake up until the following Monday, and I realized that, I never missed a day of work ever.

And you know, I just realized it was time to get ahold of myself.

Sorry, can't believe I'm crying about it, but yeah.

- Obviously the seventies, eighties, drugs were very prevalent in all manner, and of course they came into the restaurant industry.

- The late seventies, even the early seventies and up into the eighties was a whole different story, the whole, we were coming out of war, we were coming outta Vietnam, we had Club 54 in New York and everybody talked about it, it was go, go, go, party, party, party, you worked hard and you played hard.

- And I used drugs, I used alcohol, and sometimes I abused alcohol and sometimes I abused drugs.

Never I would walk up to the ledge, but I was lucky enough to never go over.

- Alright, so the culture of the kitchen in the restaurant business in Detroit is no different than any other place in the country, there's a dark side to it, I mean, you work when everybody else plays, okay, you work Saturday night, you work Friday night, everybody else is out, okay?

- Can you go pick up after this?

- Yeah, I'll run to the store.

Do we need anything else, Joe?

- [Joe] Probably at least a case of heavy cream.

- I was just gonna say heavy cream, that's crazy.

- When you're afraid of butter.

- Life married to a chef can be very, very incredible and also very difficult.

It was a very difficult time because there was no balance.

And when there wasn't any balance, people could make wrong choices.

And when you raise a young family and you're trying to do both, a strong career with strong family values, sometimes it could get very difficult together as a couple.

It shows the incredible force that someone can have when they know that they have the love of food, but they also have the love of their family and Jeff made a great choice and a decision to stay clean, and here we are today.

(Jeff speaks faintly) (gentle music) (chef speaks faintly) (serene music) - How did chefs come out of the kitchen and into society is multifaceted.

The biggest factor I think is, and it was us young chefs, young at the time, that were given the freedom and the permission to go wild in the kitchens.

- We were all taught at a young age working for these chefs to give back.

If you have a talent and you can use that talent in some way to give back, you should do that.

- I remember I met Elizabeth Campbell and Doug Campbell and her mother who started this community living center.

So I said, "Well, let's give a party."

And I said, "I'm gonna call my buddies and see if the chefs can come in and we can get someone to sponsor the food.

Let's get all the chefs involved and we'll do courses."

And so, geez, it was just, it was a bonanza.

I mean, I remember having Milos there, a lot of the guys came in.

- But what was exciting about Sarah Fisher was the chefs went all out to create their own vision and their own talent of what they served.

(inspiring music) - The Sarah Fisher was one of the first ones where all the chefs would come together and cook and people would come out of the woodwork and the tickets would sell out in five minutes, all to come and eat for charity.

(inspiring music) - And I think finally people were putting, like connecting all the dots that if you bring a pack of chefs, you're gonna bring a pack of people with it too.

(inspiring music) - And we did multiple dinners for a couple years straight, we were raising a nice bit of money and money was given to the Capuchin Soup Kitchen.

You know, we chose them as our charity because they were ground level hitting the ground, touching people's lives in Detroit area.

- Well, I'm George Vutetakis, longtime chef, vegetarian.

I had the great fortune of being in this wonderful Detroit community as chef and owner of In-Season Cafe, which actually lasted for 40 years.

You know, when we started In-Season Cafe, we looked at the immigrant communities around the city and we developed our main menu around, you know, the Italian, the Mexican, the French, I mean, there's so many different communities and the Great migration, African American and soul food cuisines, all these had an effect and input into what we did.

But another thing that was there, was a very strong organic food movement going on, and this was grassroots.

And so in that sense, we were farm to table right from the start, that was the original concept.

It was about the ingredients, it was about respecting the cuisines that the ingredients were used in and being using traditional methods of preparation.

So in Royal Oak, what ended up happening is that with Keith opening Les Auteurs, that was really a change in what was going on in Royal Oak.

It was really brought Royal Oak to the center of the map, everybody was looking at that.

And that was born out of the next generation of chefs, right?

So Brian Polcyn opened up Pike Street, Rick Halberg opened up Rick's and there was Touche, I mean, there were all these different restaurants that opened that were really focused on the dining experience and the food.

(gentle piano music) - We are always looking for the best food that was out here, always the most creative stuff, the chefs who are doing something new, something different, but also using the restaurants again as the living room.

So Les Auteurs had a full selection of crayons, big boxes of crayons.

And so when I would go to the restaurant, I would pick some current subject, something usually that was in the news, and I would spend hours making a big drawing.

We'd have a few drinks, spend the time more than just doodles on the table, they were a lot of fun.

- Yeah, Les Auteurs was, it brought me hope, it was the first place that allowed me to shine, it allowed me to cook openly, Keith was, his energy was like, you know, it was like the way he put his towel on his side of his hip and just that style of just how he encouraged out of the box thinking, how he encouraged me to keep going, do better.

Yeah, I mean, when I first started there, I had no clue of what it meant Les Auteurs.

I didn't understand, even though there was training and you needed to understand what it meant, I had no clue of what that meant.

And one day I remember sitting in the dining room and looking at these paintings.

He was sitting, he would look at those paintings.

He, "Do you know what this all means, Sean?

I said, "No."

He says, "These are the authors, this is what inspires me in this restaurant, this is why I drive here every day, this is why I started all of the things that I've done."

And then we would go line, you know, person by person and talk about them.

It was a canvas, it was really a canvas towards Detroit chefs believing they could take fine dining, still place it on a canvas, but let it feel comfortable.

So the emotions come because it's a full circle.

You know, Detroit's, it's been good to me, Keith was good to me and that's why those emotions come because it's an embedded family that I think most don't know.

(pensive music) - So back in the the eighties, early nineties, maitre D's were really famous in a lot of the restaurants here in town.

And it was equally as important, was the service, as was the food.

And the maitre D was responsible for that, maitre D was the face of the restaurant, was the reason why people would come.

- The maitre D that I had the most respect for was Achille Bianchi when he spent his time with Chef Keith Famie at Chez Raphael.

- Achille Bianchi was probably one of the most professional maitre D's in our city for forever.

I was so fortunate to work with Achille at Chez Raphael when we ran Chez Raphael for the Wisney family, but there was nobody like Achille.

He could remember everybody's name.

What we did together, what we did together as a team was special, it was magical, and the way he took care of customers, nobody could take care of a customer like Achille.

(pensive music) - A wonderful restaurant called Tribute that was really magical.

And from the moment you entered it, you know, everything about it was special, modern, but warm.

You know, very much au courant in terms of cutting edge cuisine thanks to the chef Takashi, but Mickey could work that room like nobody.

And Tribute was special from the moment it opened to the moment it closed, I just think of it as something that was timeless.

- You know, I met the Mickey as a person and blow me away and they're talking about money is not kind of object.

We wanted to have best chef, best service and the best atmosphere and the best, everything best.

You know, I got the sense of, "Okay, this is a very serious vision."

(gentle music) - And I will be very remiss if I didn't mention Jim Lark.

Actually, Jim and Mary Lark and their daughter Adrian, who I, very different style of restaurant from Tribute.

The Lark was, you know, French inspired, French country inspired, very warm, very cozy, but brilliantly executed.

(pensive music) - Jim and Mary Lark really brought so much to the Detroit restaurant scene for years being at the top of the restaurant scene.

And that's not easy to do it day after day, week after week, year after year, the amount of enormous amount of pressure they had on them and on me and the chefs that worked there to keep that.

The customers come in and they have a certain expectation level of what they want for the restaurant, and you have to live up to that no matter how you're feeling that particular day or whatever.

(invigorating music) - All right, so our timing is still gonna be, as we talked, pre-service or in the classrooms, we're still gonna be 5:30 guest arrivals, pan one is going out at just before six o'clock so we're set, pan two, you come back immediately set that up and then fire your third rotation.

So we're staying ahead on that because like we said, this will be everybody going kind of at once.

All right, so we'll execute everything we did yesterday and we'll be nice and smooth.

(invigorating music) Get you the regular traditional falafel maker, we'll get this to hold together.

(invigorating music) (oil sizzles) - There we go.

(invigorating music) - Not a quiche, it's a pie.

- Okay.

- This is what's holding it together.

That's too much.

Nice, nice.

(invigorating music) Wait a minute.

(invigorating music) How do we do it, how?

It's that good, congratulations, nice job.

Alright, clean up, let's go.

- Well, back in the sixties, if you think about it, prior to the early seventies, a chef was considered domestic help.

- From its inception in 1961, this small college has inspired nearly 5,000 students to be professional workers in the chef field and restaurants and food and beverage management.

And over those years we have had 11 master chefs as instructors here at this university.

Well, Chef Herman Bridoff was the founder of the high schools down in Detroit, Chadsey High School in particular.

He brought his son, Bob Bridoff to come in here and run it and brought in three of his most trusted people to start running this program.

Chef Gabriel came in and brought in all that experience at the world level 'cause he competed in worlds, he competed at the local level, he had a large connection with the American Culinary Federation.

He brought in Chef Dan Hubler as the next full-time faculty member.

And then after chef Dan Hubler came in, then we got Chef Leopold Shaley to come in.

And then chef Kevin Growski passed his master chef exam and he came in, and then Chef Decker came in from Auries and worked here when Chef Tuck retired and he passed his certified master pastry chef.

And to me that was really the first fab five to have all that firepower at one school, five full-time master chefs, all at the same time, full-time teaching our students was a huge factor in what made not only our students successful, but help fill those positions in our community at the country clubs and at the fine dining establishments.

Just back up with this one.

Bring it up on your left hand like this, voila.

Well, and in doing so when you get there, it really created this whole new breed of professionals coming into our industry from the educational format.

So if you want to make it savory...

The culinary program here at Schoolcraft College is the football team of the college.

We put this in the ring.

Well, you know, I've been teaching here for over 35 years.

One of my loves is baking, but I love food.

I like cooking everything.

I teach many topics in this school, Mediterranean, healthy cooking, vegetarian, all kinds of topics, but baking is my core.

I was a baker in the Navy, I love making artisan breads, you know, I have a sourdough in the fridge over there that's 34 years old.

Yeah, this is Oscar, this is technically, we call this the chef of the kitchen.

And basically I can make bread just with using this to make it rise without yeast or anything, that's what makes bread good.

But I love sharing my knowledge with the students, I love what I do here, it's exciting to see my students that are running restaurants now, owning restaurants like Jim Alpe, the corporate chef of all the Andiamos was one of my apprentices, and Sean Loving at the DAC, one of my first students, you know, 18 years old and good attitude, wouldn't leave me.

And he, you know, today, as far as I'm concerned, he's got one of the biggest and one of the best chefs job in the state of Michigan, the DAC.

That is like prestige, and from what I hear, he is doing a great job.

- Marble, getting that crystallization.

I would not have anticipated at all that the job would be what it ended up being for me.

It's been really a blessing in my life, Schoolcraft College.

(invigorating music) You see them start from no confidence and develop skill sets and develop confidence.

There's something very enriching and gratifying by watching someone develop and develop more and more each year.

Perfect.

Just gray out at us.

- I see a massive chef as somebody that's always trying to get better and not be happy with what you did today, but try to do something more.

If you have that title, that moniker, people look at you different, they're always expecting something that they may not expect from someone with another title than that.

I've always taken that responsibility seriously and tried to push myself in that regard.

(invigorating music) - Tonight we are really fortunate to have a special dinner, which is part of our Mediterranean cuisine for the evening.

(diners speaking faintly) It is so important for the students to know it's not just about having great food in a restaurant, it starts at the front door, which is what we strive for here at Schoolcraft.

- Tonight is Eastern Mediterranean for us.

So cuisines of Greece and Middle East, North Africa, great foods, great flavors.

Then we'll have dessert planters coming out to the table when everybody's full and stuffed.

Special thank you to all of you for coming out to support us here at Schoolcraft.

- Cheers everybody.

- It's really for all these students that we do these events and it's your support that makes all this happen.

(diners applaud) (engine revving) (car beeping) - Gonna help you unload.

We're gonna age these in extra 14 days, so the event's not for a couple weeks, but we're gonna take these and age them.

So we'll hang these in the aging cooler.

Thank you very much sir, beautiful, I appreciate it.

Yep, have a great day.

- Yep, thank you.

- So for the upcoming dinner for Legends of the Stove, I'm making the rack of lamb Genghis Khan.

We start off with the lamb rack, we're gonna take it to another level where we're gonna do dry aging, dry aging where we still have those enzymes which break down the meat.

But in addition, we're letting it hang at about 60 to 80% humidity from 34 to 36 degrees for a period of time that those enzymes break down the meat and you have evaporation.

Seeing that meat is 72% water, the more it evaporates, the more it concentrates the flavor it needs.

- So as you heard me say, we're getting ready to pack up to the DAC and the DAC is significant in the culinary scene in Detroit.

But what's important to me is that Chef Milos was a great chef of the Detroit Athletic Club and he was one who taught me charcuterie, that's what I'm doing.

I've been practicing in more than 40 years, and I wanna showcase that because charcuterie is that craft of the food part of our kitchen that has the most soul.

And any chef that really is true to himself knows that the craft of charcuterie is very, very special.

So what is charcuterie?

Charcuterie is the art of preserving food before the refrigerator.

How long has the refrigerator been around?

150 years, food's been around slightly longer than that before the refrigerator.

We also smoking the Canadian bacon smoked hams.

Terrines, I'll be featuring terrines too, chicken duck pie.

Also, this is a terrine mold, so any of the meats to go in here and get baked is called a terrine.

So that's what we'll be show showcasing with condiments also.

(gentle music) - The DAC was formed back in 1887, it was purely an athletic club, Detroit Athletic Club, and clubs like the DAC created and developed the athletes who would go on to the Olympics.

So the culinary tradition in the United States was basically European, and they found their home within the kitchens.

The waiters were career and professional waiters.

They were in for life.

And because of it, it created a certain culture.

(oil sizzling) - You know, the dinner at the DAC for the Legends of the Stove is historical, it's gonna be historical.

I mean, to bring together chefs of at least three different generations, the Milos and guys like myself in between, and then now the younger generation, I think it's a phenomenal benefit.

- I was one of the chefs invited to the Legends of the Stove down at the Detroit Athletic Club, very historic club and, wow, a very humbling experience.

To this moment, still don't know how I got selected.

- The thing that is quite unique about Detroit is because it wasn't a very large population of us, they all desired for each other to be successful.

It wasn't a jocking for who's number 1, 2, 3, as some cities are.

The city here, Detroit really thrives itself on brotherhood and sisterhood together, who needs who at what time?

It would be nothing to go up the road and get some flower or something from someone because you needed it.

It's just still a together type of group.

Even as it's grown itself, I still feel a brotherhood amongst today's new torch carriers and new chefs out here.

I still feel like, you know, they're gonna stop and say hi and they're gonna show me love and want me to pop up with them.

So even though it's evolved, it still has the same roots that was put down by all the chefs.

(invigorating music) (oil sizzling) (crowd murmuring) (invigorating music) - It is my distinct pleasure to welcome everyone to this extraordinary event celebrating the culinary history and elegance of Detroit.

Today we gather in the heart of this vibrant city and it is an honor to have this event celebrated at the DAC.

(invigorating music) (crowd murmuring) - It's nice to see you too, man.

(invigorating music) (crowd murmuring) - Everybody look and smile, one, two, and three.

(bright music) - It's about time he showed up.

- He's an easy rider.

This is like pale rider.

(all speaking indistinctly) - Today we came to Canterbury on the lake to visit Chef Milos.

(all speaking indistinctly) - I told you.

- He's 93 years old, I've known him for almost 40 years.

He's just been a great mentor to so many of us, he's like a father I'd never had, he's done more for me than you know like I said, my father.

- Technique, method, that's what we were always taught, but the real thing is about thinking like a chef and a businessman you taught me how to be a businessman.

- I'll tell you one thing Milos said that always stuck with me, "Cook like you're cooking for your life," that's how serious it was.

(bright music) (upbeat music) ♪ Dedicated, daring and defiant ♪ ♪ Coming from around the whole wide world ♪ ♪ Taking me to the lands of long ago ♪ ♪ I close my eyes and feel this journey ♪ ♪ You are dying on ♪ You can play with fire as you ♪ ♪ Share all you know ♪ No two are the same but you're ♪ Legends yes you're legends ♪ You can play with fire ♪ As you share all you know ♪ No two are the same, but you're all legends ♪ ♪ Yes, you're all legends of the stove ♪ ♪ Legends of the stove ♪ Legends of the stove ♪ You start a fire in me