Chef Spotlight -  Michael Smith, CEC
Corporate Executive Chef, Segment Sales- Custom Culinary, Inc.

• Years in the Food Industry: 25+                       
• Residence: Livingston, NJ                     
• Memberships: American Culinary Federation, Research Chefs Association, Chaine des Rotisseurs                 
• Recognition: Achieved Certified Executive Chef, two-time winner, VICA National Culinary Arts Competition

Q. Where do you get your inspiration?
A.  There is no greater reward than seeing a menu item you created on a national chain menu. That’s what keeps me going, keeps me creative.

Q. What's your favorite food?
A. I have two real passions: Asian food, of any kind—I could eat it seven days a week. And wild game; hunting and fishing are my other passions.

Q. What's the best advice you have ever received?  
A. My first culinary teacher always used to say, “As long as you’re green, you’ll grow.” I’ve taken that to heart: You can learn something new every day, from every person.

Q. What’s always in your pantry?
A. As long as I have sambal [Malaysian chili sauce], nam pla [Thai fish sauce], and good olive oil, I can get by. Oh, and garlic.

Michael Smith is all about change and challenge, which is no small achievement considering that he’s known one thing since he was a little kid: that he wanted to work with food. The latest challenge—the one Smith figures is what he’s always been meant to do—is working on chain accounts for Custom Culinary, Inc., a company that will allow him to make the greatest contribution to how America eats.

“I used to watch The Galloping Gourmet with my mom when I stayed home sick from school,” says Smith. “When I saw Graham Kerr inviting someone in the audience to taste what he’d prepared, I knew right then that cooking was for me.”

Around the same time, Smith’s father opened a restaurant (the family eventually had five, all in Reading), and the son went to work for him at the age of nine. “My dad actually tried to discourage me from getting into the business, because of the long hours and the way it takes over your life, but I couldn’t shake the passion.”

Instead, Smith dove in, taking an apprenticeship at a local French restaurant at age 15. From there, he moved on to the Culinary Institute of America, graduating in May 1983, with culinary skills further honed.

Career diversity is what suited Smith to making the switch over to the manufacturing side. After culinary school, he went to work as the chef at a high-end kosher catering operation in New Jersey. “Because of the restrictions of the kosher diet, you really have to learn how to use ingredients, and how to develop flavors,” says Smith. “It was the single most important lesson I ever learned. There’s not much you can do to ruin foie gras and cream, but you really have to be able to use ingredients wisely with a restricted diet.”

The desire to do more with less was also what led him into retail foodservice, where he helped the Foodtown chain move forward into the burgeoning prepared foods marketplace. There, he developed an appreciation for what foodservice can do in partnership with commissaries and manufacturers. “You can learn an awful lot in operations like that, if you pay attention.”

The experience brought him to Knorr (Bestfoods) and eventually to Unilever Foodsolutions as the company’s first chef dedicated to the development of proprietary products for national accounts), working hand-in-hand at the bench with the food technologists. “It’s the classic case of art versus science,” says Smith, who had found his ultimate career pathway. “The chef is there to guard the integrity of the food, to protect the gold standard, and the food technologist develops the formula to work in any setting and format. It’s a real team proposition.”

After 14 years, it was the prospect of working on a new, dynamic team that inspired Smith’s decision to join Custom Culinary, Inc. “I wanted to be part of a young, changing organization with great vision and the ability to make a bigger impact.”

Smith is particularly excited by the prospect of joining a company with a culture that’s creative, high-energy and open to challenge. “It’s important to me to work with people who are not risk-averse, and who see the opportunities that are out there,” he explains. “Especially since the acquisition of DM Foods, Custom Culinary, Inc. has extraordinary capabilities, especially on the culinary side. The whole mindset of this company is around cooking and food, not just manufacturing.”