Making the Chef: Contest no-brainer for winner
By Casey Gillis on Jun. 03, 2009
Throwing her hat into the “Making the Chef” competition was a no-brainer for winner Michelle Hamrick.
The super-competitive chef, who has been cooking since she was 12 years old, has tried out for Fox’s “Hell’s Kitchen” three times.
“In my situation, I have to work so much. It’s hard to get your name out there, to get that break,” says Hamrick, who has spent the past four years as head chef for At Home Gourmet, a take-out service based in Wyndhurst.
“I wanted to win this more than I would’ve wanted to win ‘Hell’s Kitchen.’ I would much rather pursue my dream here with my family,” she says. “For me, it was the perfect scenario.
“They’re not just looking for a chef. They’re looking for someone to run the whole restaurant,” adds Hamrick, who has worked on both sides of the restaurant business as a manager and a chef.
“So it was right up my alley.”
Holiday Inn General Manager Tony Camm says Hamrick just had the whole package.
“Her initial entry dish was fantastic, and her personality was great,” he says. “She really came in with a dynamic business plan and a total focus on exactly what she wanted to achieve.”
In the new restaurant, which has yet to be named, Hamrick will serve up gourmet comfort food, or what she calls “ordinary food made amazing.”
“I want people to try things they normally wouldn’t try,” she says.
“Because of my (cooking) background, I don’t have a signature style. I cook everything from Mexican to Italian to Asian. And I have a German/Irish (heritage), so there will even be corned beef and cabbage on there. But with a twist. Everything is American cuisine, but it has a lot of other flavors. It’s just stuff I learned along the way.”
Hamrick’s journey to the kitchen began when she was growing up in New York. (She was in high school when her family moved to Appomattox).
“My dad did all the cooking,” she says. “He was a professional firefighter, and he was used to cooking for all the firemen. So he’d come home and cook for his army at home. It got to the point where he let me make the grocery list and plan all the meals for the whole week.”
Hamrick never had any formal training, but has worked in the restaurant business for 10 years.
“I always had two or three jobs,” says the single mom, who owned her own florist business and later worked as the regional manger for a dollar store chain before getting her first restaurant job, as a hostess at Applebees, in 1999.
Hosting led to waitressing and then bartending, and she was eventually promoted to manager. She spent six years there, but soon found herself itching to do something different.
“I wanted to be more creative,” she says. “(At Applebees) you’re basically line cooks. I wanted to create.”
She took jobs cooking at other area restaurants before starting with At Home Gourmet, where “the sky was the limit,” Hamrick says. “They allowed me to create and even use some of my own recipes.”
But one thing was always missing: “customer interaction,” Hamrick says. “I’m a restaurant girl.”
She’ll be getting that interaction come July 1, the Holiday Inn restaurant’s target opening date (that could change, depending on how renovations go).
The menu will be seasonal, with daily specials. Her Moroccan-style salmon will definitely make the cut, and other items she’s considering include a shrimp and grits entree, a macaroni and cheese trio appetizer, a gourmet hamburger and plenty of a la carte sides.
They’ll serve lunch and dinner (Holiday Inn handles the breakfast), as well as a late-night menu for people hanging out in the new bar and lounge.
“She kind of changed the whole competition for me,” Camm says. “I was looking for someone to just do dinner. … But she has a plan for everything.”
Also on Hamrick’s wish list? A full-time baker, who will make all the desserts and breads on site.
She says the menu will be affordable and estimates that the average price of an entrée will range between $10 and $15.
“I want it to be a place people will come and eat every week,” Hamrick says.
“If you have casual dining and upscale dining, I’m going to be somewhere in the middle,” she adds. “I want people at Friday Cheers to feel like they can walk in in their shorts and T-shirts.”
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