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Worldly chef chooses Columbus as home base

June 20, 2007 - Commercial Dispatch

For Gregg Frazer, corporate chef for the Eat With Us Group, it was a simple matter to create an award-winning dish capable of impressing noted judges such as The Food Network's “Iron Chef,” Cat Cora.

Frazer literally had just arrived in Columbus for his new position with EWU, when he learned about the June 3 competition, billed as the first annual Chefs of Mississippi Gala. “John (Bean) asked me if I wanted to do it, since I had just arrived. I said, ‘ Sure,'” Frazer says, shrugging. He points out that his capable team included Bill Mullins, Harvey's Columbus chef, Chef Jennifer Frazer, his wife, and Micah Moore, Harvey's Columbus team member and a culinary student at Mississippi University for Women Culinary Arts Institute.

That weekend, his team won first place in competitions in taste, presentation and creativity, with their Southern pecan and guava braised short rib with a Sciple Mill grit cake.

Creating a winner
“The concept for the competition was that they wanted a savory item - not a dessert. And, we did not prepare a sample for the judges. They came through the line like everybody else,” Frazer says. “I wanted to use local and regionally manufactured items. I think it is important to do that. So we used Southern pecan beer from Lazy Magnolia Brewery (from Kiln, near the Gulf Coast) and Sciple Mill grits. Sciple Mill is the oldest working mill in Mississippi; it's in DeKalb. We used white grits, and they actually drove them up to us. It's cooked a little more like polenta.”

Grits were chosen because the old-fashioned food is making a comeback across the nation, Frazer says. “People discovered how to cook them,” Frazer says. “The trend is toward comfort foods, but these were done a little better, a little higher order.”

For the competition dish, the grits were cooked with jalapenos and whole yellow sweet corn, then sliced into a cake and placed on a hot griddle until they became crispy and golden brown outside. Topping the grits cake was rib meat, braised in guava juice, and cooked so tender it fell off the bones. The meat was topped with crispy fried sweet potatoes. The pecan sauce and special yellow peppers completed the dish.

Years of cooking
If Frazer had to pinpoint a time when he first became interested in the cooking and food industry as a possible career field, he says, it probably would have been when he was about 14.

“I cooked at a canteen at camp in Pennsylvania - Camp Quebec,” says Frazer, a native of the New England state. “I liked it. From then on, I took little jobs in restaurants ...” Work as a table busser, dish washer or line cook occupied much of his spare time for several years during high school.

But, when time came for college and to prepare for a career, Frazer was not completely certain about his career path, nor sold on a career solely in a kitchen.

By then, he was gravitating toward business. He enrolled in the University of Vermont, earning a Bachelor of Science degree in management in 1997. But cooking continued to call.

“When I was in college, I took a year off to cook, in Boulder, Colo. And in the summers I would cook in San Antonio in an Italian restaurant. I decided to give culinary school a whirl.”

He attended the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., and continued to cook. “I would leave culinary school on Friday and drive from New York to Philadelphia. In Philadelphia, I would work Friday night, Saturday and Sunday, then Monday, I would be back in classes in New York.”

The Philadelphia, Pa. restaurant at which he worked was La Bec Fin. “It was one of the better restaurants, and I actually worked for free, just to work in the restaurant,” he says.

Frazer maintained the hectic pace, and in 1999 earned an associate degree in occupational studies/culinary arts from the prestigious CIA.

Payoff comes
The years of hard work would pay dividends. Soon, Frazer was working for The Four Seasons Hotel in West Palm Beach, Fla. He was asked to help with an international committee meeting at the Four Seasons in Hawaii to plan the upcoming Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia.

In Hawaii, Frazer worked for awhile as a personal chef on a private estate. It was while in Hawaii that he met his wife Jennifer, also an experienced chef, from London, England. “I met her on the first day I arrived. A group was going to the mountains, and she just happened to be one of us.”

In addition to several noted restaurants of London, Jennifer Frazer's experience includes working for Royal Caribbean Cruise Ships.

From January to December of 2000, Gregg Frazer worked as sous chef for the Regent Hotel in Sydney. The Four Seasons property at a five-star hotel further expanded his culinary experience.

West Coast work
From January 2001 to January 2002, Frazer served as executive chef at Pine Cone Restaurant in Point Reyes, Calf. During that time, he was featured in “Gourmet” and “Conde Nast” magazines, as a result of his emphasis on using local, organic produce. In California, interest in organically grown produce was becoming strong. Frazer says he worked directly with local growers to obtain many items and insure quality. In so doing, he became more interested in food distribution.

From October 2002 to April 2007, Frazer has been in Santa Fe Springs, Calif., where he worked as corporate executive chef for Foodservice Associates. In that position, he was a manufacturer representative for about 60 well-known food companies. He worked with local hotels, restaurants and universities to increase food profitability and help develop new menu items.

In February 2006, Frazer had completed a Master of Business Administration in marketing, earning this degree from National University in San Diego, Calif.

Settling down, down South
It is little wonder that the totality of Frazer's experiences made him the prime candidate for the position of corporate chef with the local EWU company. The company is poised for growth, with another restaurant opening in Tupelo and others planned, and presented what Frazer considered an ideal opportunity.

By Vicky Newman

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