Each year the Restaurant Association Metropolitan Washington (RAMW) honors extraordinary professionals within the Washington, DC area restaurant industry at their Restaurant Awards Gala, “The RAMMYS.” Prominent restaurant employees, chefs, and local restaurants are celebrated and recognized within thirteen award categories. In 2009, the five finalists for the "Rising Culinary Star" award are Cedric Maupillier from Central Michel Richard, Daniel Giusti from 1789, Mike Isabella from Zaytinya, Shannon Overmiller from Majestic Cafe, and Anthony Chittum from Vermilion. As part of the "Rising Culinary Star Series," each chef will be featured in an exclusive interview depicting their personal history, culinary experiences, and future aspirations. Chef Tony Chittum was part one of this series. Part II featured Dan Giusti of 1789.
PART III: Chef Cedric Maupillier, Central Michel Richard Restaurant
Lisa Shapiro Question: You started working at the age of 15 at the bakery, but at what point in your life did you know for sure that you were going to be a chef?
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Cedric Maupillier Answer: If someone were to ask me who I should thank for introducing me or choosing this career, I would thank my mom. I would thank her for driving me every weekend to my grandmother’s house which was in the neighborhood of Marseilles in the south of France in Provence. I spent a lot of time in my grandpa’s beautiful garden. I watched and learned. My Grandfather would water the garden, so early in the morning or late at night when the sun was disappearing, so it would not burn the leaves. My grandmother always prepared a very large meal for our family and neighbors which was 12 to 20 people. I helped to prepare what we had in the garden and the squab, pigeon that my granddad hunted. That was my main inspiration - my grandmother. Then I decided that I wanted to try to recreate that beautiful feeling - sharing with people good food. I really decided to become a chef because of that feeling. It’s really funny because I remember how my grandmother always said, ‘I hate cooking, I hate cooking’. I said to her, ‘If you hate cooking so much, why don’t you make your food taste bad and you wont have to cook anymore.’ (laughing)
Q: If you could give some advice to cooks or someone who’s interested in getting involved in cooking, what advice would you give them to inspire them when they are just starting out?
A: There are two ways that I see cooking: First, there is the cooking like family style and then there is the kind of cooking where you cook in a restaurant - business style cooking. That’s where more than love is needed - numbers are involved too and that’s my experience in cooking right now. When you begin cooking, you have to forget about everything that you see on TV like on Top Chef and Star Chef. You have to be ready not to be good at the beginning. You have to accept whomever mentor or leader that you can learn from and you have to accept failure. It’s dangerous - you can cut yourself, you spend a lot of time on your feet; standing for long periods of time. So you have to accept all the negative. A new cook needs to realize that cooking is not just what you do at home. In the restaurant industry, the cooking is numbers - time is money, people are money, food is money, and customers are money. It’s a business. You always have to have love when you are cooking, because that’s what drives a chef to become a good chef with good food. If you don’t want to share what you are going to give to people, they will feel it. You should cook what you think you would like to eat yourself. If you do something and in the end you don’t like it, trust me, 95% of the time, you’ll give it to someone else and this person will feel that you didn’t appreciate it or you don’t like to do it. Maybe that’s my advice - just try to do the profession or in life, something that you like to do. If you want to be a cook, cook what you like to eat, and with love and passion.
Q: Would you say that it’s more important to get a culinary education or to gain experience by working in a professional kitchen?
A: I would say number two because you don’t learn the field in the school. What you learn at school is very important too, which 
serves as the foundation of the work that you are going to do. At school they prepare you and give you good training and a variety of experiences that you are going to need in the future, but what you learn afterwards, while working is where you are confronted with situations that school sometimes doesn’t provide the answers for. Culinary school is very expensive too and young chefs only make $10 to $12 maximum an hour and probably get no insurance. You have to pay $30k to $60k a year for school and then by the time he/(she) is 40, you haven’t finished paying for school yet. I would say if you want to become is a chef, don’t waste your time at school. There are other ways to learn. You can learn about wine and food anytime. You can always learn more on your own and save money. If I had to redo everything again, I would probably not go to school and I would probably be more experienced by now. So before you go to school, I would work in a restaurant for one year to be sure. Then afterwards you can decide if you want to go to school. If you want to become an Executive Chef then you can go back to school. I see students now and I am sad for them that they spent so much money and what they bring back from school is just pieces of education. I believe that school is good for anyone. You know what you want to do in your life? You have time to learn everything that school gives you? But work as soon as possible and when you want to get more information, get it yourself.
Q: What is your favorite or most frequently used ingredient? What dishes do you seem to put a lot this ingredient in?
A: My mistake is always to put an extra pinch of salt. I think that this has been the main ingredient in food everywhere for a long long time. Historically, people have fight for salt. Salt is one of the foods that we use to flavor the food but it is also so important for the human body to survive. You know, your body needs salt and we learn not to use salt to rob the flavor. So that would be my main ingredient, my main spice, my main food but my biggest mistake also. I love salt. Sometimes when you love it, you use too much of it. Also, I would say that tomato is one of my favorite ingredients especially this time of the year. I have fond memories all the time from my grandfather's garden of how I would pick the tomato, how they are so warm, so plumpy. I love the smell of tomatoes. They are delicious. The tomato is from China, it’s a fruit but usually used in everything from cold soup, tomato sauce, the baste of duck sauce in French cooking or the stock, or use in salad, or you know use ice cream and sorbet out of tomato and it’s a very versatile product and its beautiful, its essential, its red and soft and shiny. All kinds of tomato, we don’t have much in France, we have huge tomatoes here, scary tomatoes sometimes.
Q: What is your best or signature dish? Do you have one dish that you think you make the very best and nobody else could ever make it better?
A: That would be so difficult to say. I am very humble when it comes to my food. I don’t think that I am better than anyone. I just try to do my best at each dish that I am doing at the restaurant. I try to bring the best out of them. Some days I love them; other days I am disappointed. The food on the menu at Central; I take it very personally. Like right now for the summer, we have a nice Italian dish, people love it and I use always the same amount of tomato, bread, onion, Tabasco, and salt and all of the other ingredients. I will try to make it and some days the flavor is different and I am frustrated at myself that I cannot produce consistency, regularity on everything, everyday. That’s what a good restaurant is in the end. If you go to the restaurant and you love the dish one day and then you come back two weeks later and you bring five or six friends and explain the experience you love by yourself and you promise your friends that it would be the best that they would ever have. If you can please them all now, then you have reached something that is very important - and that is consistency. That’s very fragile product.
Stay tuned for more from Cedric Maupillier from Central Michel Richard! The Rammys will be held on Sunday, June 7, 2009. There will be a follow-up feature about the winner of the Rising Culinary Star award and coverage from the Rammys awards gala.
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