Q and A with Chef De Cuisine Cliff Phillips
Q: How long have you been with FEED?
A: I was lucky enough to be able to come on board around this time two years ago. We were still in the menu development phase, which is a dream come true for the Chef de Cuisine of any large-scale restaurant like FEED, because that allowed me to be a part of creating the menu instead of trying to realize someone else’s vision.
Q: What are your primary roles in the restaurant?
A: As Chef de Cuisine, it’s my primary function, along with my teammates Don and BJ, to try to keep our heads above water when it comes to the preparation and fabrication of all menu items. We make everything from scratch, and I do mean everything! That’s no small task at our volume. Our week is equal to a lot of other restaurant’s month. It’s not unusual for us to average 700 people a day.
Another large role that I play is that of Papa Cliff. As an experienced member of the team, I have a strong desire to pass on what I’ve learned through my years in this business. This isn’t just a career, it’s a calling, and I feel compelled to honor those I work with by helping them in any way that I can. I always advise the next generation of chefs to try to learn from other people’s mistakes, and I’ve got 40 years’ worth of stories of what to do and what not to do.
Q: What is your education/work background?
A: I graduated from the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, NY, but I feel like I’ve been gifted with ten times the knowledge from the people I work with on a daily basis. When it comes to the education of a chef, I look at it as a lifetime of experiences. It should be an ongoing process that’ll never end or leave you wanting, you should always be looking for new sources of inspiration. And a busy day full of challenges always teaches you something, even if it’s just that the kicking you take today makes you stronger tomorrow! I guess that’s why serious kitchens are called brigades.
I’ve worked in so many areas of the restaurant business, it’s hard to list them all – I was the back of the house opening coordinator for new acquisitions for Applebee’s/Apple South, I owned my own fine dining restaurant in Spartanburg, I had a food truck in NC, I was the Executive Chef for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers/Raymond James Stadium, I’ve worked in catering, college dining, country clubs, and natural food stores. There’s not much I haven’t done in this business!
Q: How did you come to FEED?
A: How did I come to FEED … well, it’s an adventure that will be told time and again at the long table in the great hall of Valhalla. It all starts in Asheville, NC where Chef Charlie and I were competitors at restaurants that were across the street from each other. He was at Laughing Seed, and I was at Jerusalem Garden Café. We were both going for the same demographic groups – tourists, hippies, and street buskers that were looking for tasty, imaginative vegetarian cuisine and simple, authentic dishes from exotic regions of the world. Fast forward ten plus years, and mutual friend John Swann got the two of us back in touch. I got to know John while working at his natural food store, Katuah Market, in Asheville, and he was instrumental in the birth of Earth Fare and Greenlife. Charlie had worked for John Swann at those stores, and had also made the move to Chattanooga years earlier. When we heard that Charlie was about to get FEED up and running, and he was looking for killers, John made sure that the two of us met back up again. And the rest is history in the making!
Q: Are you from the area? If not, what brought you here?
A: I’m not from Chattanooga, but grew up primarily in the South. Coming from a military family, we moved around a lot! And it was going to take a special place to drag me away from Western NC. We wanted to be where there were other industries besides tourism, but finding an area that lets us enjoy the lifestyle that we desire, to us was even more important than a thriving economy. Which kind of leads into…
Q: What do you enjoy doing in your spare time?
A: It’s funny, the biggest criteria for my wife Mara and I to relocate was how many days a year can we kayak? How close is the water? We love to be out on the lake, or paddling up the river to North Chickamauga Creek. It’s what keeps me from going insane in this crazy business/lifestyle. It really is not just a job, it’s a lifestyle of long days and early mornings. And those hours spent paddling and exploring this beautiful area make us so glad that we came to Chattanooga, we love it here! It’s a grown-up Asheville!