About the Chef

I am an enthusiastic chef and writer. I find joy in the kitchen, and express myself to others through my cooking and the passion I have for it. The next smile earned from a meal well served is what drives me, and gives reason to my best efforts.

Recently I published my first cook book, 'Bistro Essentials', chronicling the classic bistro fare served at Laperaux, my French Bistro in Montgomery County, Maryland. My second cookbook is under way, to be called 'Taqueria Essentials'.

My particular skill set as a chef is the product of the total of experiences and training absorbed throughout my working life. I look forward to tomorrow's lessons, which are future touch stones; guideposts along a heavily traveled career path. I hope these words provide an appropriate overview of the chef I am today.

To close, I’d like to express why for years on end I've considered myself a ‘journeyman chef’ and why it’s the name of my business and website. In the introduction of my upcoming cookbook, ‘Mexican Recipes of a Journeyman Chef’ and before the first recipe is shared, I provide a definition of the term, as I will here.

Definition: 'journeyman'  a trained worker at a skilled trade.

The word does not come from journey: trip, but from the French journee: day, reflected in the basic sense of the word, a day worker.

So this word has and does still resonate with me on several levels. Consider the French origin of the word; throughout my career, with all my travels, working with and among the best chefs and professionals of the culinary world, I have always represented myself as a skilled worker, working at a skilled trade. And again, looking to the English, the word ‘journey’ seems all too appropriate when considering a chef that has lived and worked his entire career among five or six of the world’s most vibrant and exciting metropolitan cities.

Indeed, in a very real way, and in every sense of the word I am truly a journeyman chef.