PITTSFIELD TWP. — Eat fresh, eat seasonally and enjoy.

That’s the gospel according to Michael Symon, owner of Lola and Lolita restaurants in Cleveland and one of the hottest chefs in America.

Symon, who opened a $4 million restaurant called Roast in Detroit two weeks ago, was up at dawn Saturday to appear at the Lorain County Joint Vocational School.

In a cooking lecture punctuated by his loopy laugh and quick wit, Symon enthralled about 350 culinary arts students from as far as Grand Rapids, Mich.

By 9 a.m. or so, he was tossing quartered brussels sprouts into hot oil to make a dish featuring capers, walnuts and anchovies in a vinaigrette.

When the pot boiled over, comedy ensued.

“Oh, Mama!” Symon called out. “This is all part of the entertainment — we’re going to catch the school on fire.”

But the oil settled down, and Symon moved on to plating the food and talking to the students about the restaurant business.

The hours are long, and you take a lot of chances, said Symon, 39, an Iron Chef and host of “Dinner Impossible” on the Food Network.

He said the “hardest, most frightening moment” for him came in 1997, when he and his wife, Liz, opened Lola in Tremont on a shoestring budget of $140,000 — liquor license included.

In addition to help from his wife and his father, who does the business’s books, Symon said his trusted staff has grown to 170 people at his three restaurants.

A work week of 70 or 80 hours is typical, but if you really, truly love working in a restaurant, it is a great job, he said.

“Not one day have I felt like I’m actually going to work,” Symon said.

But he warned the young cooks that bosses can sometimes be rough.

He related how one boss told him during an internship, “You’ll never make it in this business — you’re not good enough and not quick enough.”

Another chef used his rear end for a pincushion, he said, when Symon didn’t make salads quickly enough at a famed French restaurant in Philadelphia.

“He stood behind me with a pasta fork and kept stabbing me,” Symon said. “I almost killed the guy.”

Most recently, he said, producers of “Dinner Impossible” have enjoyed giving him fits.

The whole idea of the show is to see if he can fail, he said. For example, Symon, known for his “meat-centric” cooking, was instructed to make a vegetarian barbecue. He had to turn tofu, tempeh and seitan — wheat gluten — into something 150 cowboys would want to eat.

“I’m all about vegetables — I just don’t like fake meat,” Symon said. “I think PETA stands for People Eat Tasty Animals.”

On a more serious note, he said he honors animals and believes in using every part — including the innards.

“If that animal’s good enough to die for us, we’re going to use the whole thing, head to tail,” said Symon, who uses ingredients such as sweetbreads — the thymus glands — in several recipes.

Symon said simple, fresh cooking is often the best, and he thinks the secret to tasty cooking is a balance of fat, acid and salt, and using the very best ingredients.

One of the best meals he ever had was fresh-caught fish cooked over an open fire in Greece, he said.

Growing up, Symon said he had the advantage of being around a Greek-Italian family that loved to cook.

“My mom cooked dinner for me every night,” he said. “I had McDonald’s when I was 15 years old and asked, ‘Why do people love this stuff? It’s god-awful.’ ”

Symon fell into cooking in high school after his chance at a wrestling scholarship went down the drain. He suffered a serious arm injury at St. Edward High School and enrolled at the Culinary Institute of America, where he was voted most likely to succeed.

Some CIA instructors also took part in Saturday’s program at the JVS, and Symon paid them homage.

“They are the legends in the business,” he said.

Tim Michitsch, culinary arts instructor at JVS, said he was tickled with the turnout and presentations.

With his new restaurant opening, Symon is “pretty much living out of a suitcase” but was eager to take part, Michitsch said.

“He said, ‘Absolutely, let me get it on my calendar right away.’ ”

Contact Cindy Leise at 329-7245 or cleise@chroniclet.com.

 

---

Print this story
Report an innappropriate comment

---

In order to comment, you must agree to our user agreement and discussion guidelines.
You must be registered and logged in to post a comment. If you aren't already registered, click here.
If you are registered, click here to log in.
Need help? Email Us.