American celebrity chef Mary Sue Milliken is in the country for a culinary diplomacy programme, where she will participate in fusion cooking at local restaurants, master classes and food entrepreneurship talks. She trained at Michelin, a two-star restaurant in Paris, before joining hands with some female chefs to found Women Chefs and Restaurateurs.
The co-chef and co-owner of the popular Border Grill restaurant in Los Angeles, a cookbook author, star of Food Network TV’s Too Hot Tamales, and season three finalist of Bravo TV’s Top Chef Masters sat down with The Express Tribune for an exclusive interview.
So how did it all start? “I remember my mother was a great cook and she introduced us to all the different kinds of foods when we were growing up,” said Milliken.
However, it was only until she was about 12 years old when Milliken tried a recipe after reading it in a magazine. Wanting to understand more about food, she started cooking more and worked at donut shops and pizza places. “When I was 16, I met a professional chef, he was very talented and could cook really quickly, that’s when I decided that I’m going to be a chef.” A year later, she went to chef school.
Later, she landed a job at a fancy French restaurant called Maxim’s that had branches in Paris, Chicago and Tokyo. “It was in 1978 and it was not the restaurant I liked to much, I really wanted to work in another French restaurant. I worked there for a year and then I got a lucky break working at Le Perroquet, a very nice French restaurant.” That was where she met her business partner.
Milliken has had some strong influences. “There have been some very strong female cooks and chefs such as Julia Child and Alice Waters,” she said.
So how does she score a work-life balance? “Luckily, I come from a German heritage, so I’m slightly organised. Before I had children I worked all the time.” Her husband is an architect and they have two sons together.
Milliken and her business partner, Susan Feninger, have been working together for over three decades. “You may not be the only one who gets all the attention; you have to share it with another person. However, the good thing is that in this way, you get to have a life,” she said.
Milliken takes pride in employing lots of people in the business and creating a work environment that helps them develop their skills. “I’ve received some awards, including Lifetime Achievement Award for the California Restaurant Association. They’re nice, but they don’t make me that excited. I feel more proud of the company that we’ve built, it is a good place to work,” she added.
She further said that the food industry has changed enormously since she first started out. “When I became a chef, there were no celebrity chefs on TV. Things have really changed now.”
However, food television, she said, changed the whole industry in the US. “That is probably the case here in Pakistan as well; the average people who are eating food in restaurants are getting more adventurous about trying out new things.”
She specialises in Mexican cuisine and ingredients are her inspiration in the kitchen. “It’s important that we get to use and play with good ingredients,” she said.
When asked about the biggest misconception about chefs out there, she laughingly replied “That we’re fat!”
Eco-friendly projects
Milliken is also a spokesperson for the Monetery Bay Aquarium, which has conducted a study on oceans and figured out what needs to be done to create an environment for fish that is sustainable so they only serve sustainable sea food. “At our restaurant, we’ve been involved in sustainability, so we are one of the founders of the chefs’ collaborative which is a group of chefs in the US who are all interested in sustainable practices,” she said.
Share Our Strength Programme
Milliken is an active member of the Share Our Strength Programme, committed to ending childhood hunger in America by 2015 with the No Kid Hungry campaign. “This is one cause that is close to my heart, because I touch so much food every day. I can’t imagine that there are people in a country like the United States that aren’t getting enough food. It’s not because we don’t have enough food, it’s because we are not connecting it with the children in need of it,” she said. She has been working for almost 20 years for a childhood hunger solution and would like to take it beyond the US at some point.”
Published in The Express Tribune, June 23rd, 2014.
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