10 Questions: Chef Adam Silverman

Coqui Catering’s CHEF ADAM SILVERMAN is one of the most talented and committed professionals we’ve met in the last several years. He toils over his menus and brings a level of creativity to them (and catering clients) that raises the bar for many. We know because we worked with Adam and his catering firm to promote Vine & Dine: A Celebration of the Sea earlier this year. Since then, Adam has become not only a friend but a blog sponsor. Through that and his charitable work, we know his generosity and his heart for our community, as well.

As part of our effort to support our sponsors and, quite frankly, learn more about makes Adam tick (he’s a pretty interesting guy!), we delved into his background with one of our 10 Questions interviews. That revealing Q&A is below. Food photos are from the Vine & Dine event, which we reported on here. Enjoy and please add your comments.

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(10) What inspired you to become a chef? Was it always an aspiration or was it something that developed over time?

Silverman: Although I’ve always loved to cook, my original college career goal was astrophysics. I can back-trace certain events in my life that were instrumental in my becoming a chef.

First was my family. When our extended family got together (which was fairly often) everything revolved around food. By the time breakfast was being served, people were already working on lunch and dinner and there was always some job that would be done by the kids, so from an early age I was exposed to cooking.

Second was very close friends of ours in Puerto Rico. We visited them a couple of times a year starting when I was 2 years old. As soon as you got near their house the aroma of the food cooking hit you and it was amazing. And the flavors… sweet, spicy, fruity. Delicious, very different than the ingredients we used at home and nothing like the Mexican restaurants which were as close to that style of cuisine as we could get in my home town. I still remember the first time I tried fried plantains at their house and I was only 4 or 5 years old.

Third, traveling to Italy in fourth grade. We started in Florence and were there for Easter. Then a couple of days each in Venice and Rome before we drove all the way down the west coast stopping in one tiny town after another. Most of these towns rarely saw an American (or at least non-Italian) tourist, and all the Italian tourists were in Florence for the many Easter festivities. So we found ourselves staying in hotels where we were the only people and the Chefs would bring in food from their gardens to cook just for us. Again, the food was mind-bogglingly incredible and nothing whatsoever like the Italian restaurants we’d frequent back in New York.

Finally, there was my working in restaurants. My first job was when I was 15 and I loved the chaos. Orders flying in from every direction, this person called off work, that person wants a special order not on the menu… every day was a huge puzzle and the crew had to figure out how to put it together. When I got into college I was fortunate to work with some truly inspired chefs who sealed my fate by creating dishes that I never imagined could be made, let alone seeing it being done. If I wasn’t already cognizant of the fact that my life was steering me towards a career in the kitchen, I was starting to see the light. After the first 6 months I’d been working in one of the top restaurants in Columbus, OH, I knew that my passion was with cooking and even though I was still an astronomy geek (still am for that matter) I knew that I was going to continue working with food.

(9) Where did you get your culinary training? Was it formal or informal? What were some of the most valuable lessons you learned through that process?

Silverman: My training was all on-the-job. I’d had a few jobs in smaller, simple restaurants since high school. In college, my roommate got me a job working in the dish room with him at what turned out to be one of the top restaurants in Columbus at the time. I started working my way up the stations, first to food prep, then salads and desserts, on to steaming vegetables and saucing plates for the cooks and then finally doing the cooking myself. For a few years I worked two full-time restaurants, one in the morning and one at night.

I was thinking of going to culinary school at one point. It was our head line cook at the time who talked me out of it, pointing out to me that he had spent a week just learning the name of the Béarnaise sauce that I was making every day. After that, I looked at work as my school. I worked with a succession of Chefs and Sous Chefs from all over the world and I would soak up any information they could give me. I watched what they were doing, how they were doing it and then when I got home at night I’d try to recreate it. I came in early, stayed late, helped order, read reports, anything to fully understand the business.

The two most important things I learned about cooking:

1) Love, respect and know your ingredients. Feel them, taste them, play with them and see what they can do. When you understand and can bring out the best parts of each individual part of a dish, the meal itself is always going to be better.

2) When the going gets tough (and it will!) don’t panic and don’t just start throwing a bunch of food on the burners to start cooking, hoping to catch up. If your head is scrambled, your food will be too. Instead, put everything down, take one step backwards, breathe in, breathe out, then step forwards and start cooking again, this time with a clear head.

(8) Wine plays a big part in your career. How does that enhance your ability to design menus? Does it complicate your menu planning, given your knowledge of the myriad of wine options out there today?

Silverman: Oh, how I love wine. Wine, when paired with food, can be seen as an accompaniment or an ingredient. As an accompaniment it can be used to enhance or mute certain flavors in a dish (for example, a sweet wine will lessen the heat of a spicy dish while a deep, tannic red wine will increase that heat sensation). As an ingredient it can add a flavor into a meal that isn’t present in the food itself.

The beauty of wine is that there’s almost no limit to the flavors out there. Light, crisp, dark, heavy, spicy, smooth, floral, acidic, bitter, smoky, vanilla, buttery, etc. I think that pairing wine with food, when done correctly, brings the food to even new heights. The difficulty comes in picking just the right wine. It’s easy to say “This dish would go great with a Pinot Noir”, but which Pinot? An American one with a bold, fruit-forward flavor or a French one with a smooth, round taste. One aged for 1 year in new oak or one aged for 1 1/2 years in used oak?

There’s some good basic pairing “rules” for food and wine, but the more wines you taste, the more flavors you discover and the more options you give yourself. I don’t think that knowledge of wines makes menu design harder or simpler. It’s another aspect of the entire dining experience and you want to make sure that your wine selections are complementary to your food offerings (and vice-versa).

(7) Florence and the Pee Dee have some great food, but they have not necessarily been “known” for their food in the past. Is that changing? If so, how and why?

Silverman: I’ve been living down here for almost 7 years now and even in that short a period of time I’ve seen many changes. Restaurants have come and gone and new concepts arrive. We finally have an Indian restaurant! The culinary world is always morphing. As new, young Chefs come up through the ranks, they bring with them a fresh look at ingredients and concepts. As S.C. tourism grows, it attracts even more new Chefs and restaurants. Also, as new businesses and corporations come to town we gain residents from around the country/world who may be seeking out restaurants offering something closer to what they’re familiar with.

An interesting side-effect of the downturn in the economy is that more people have turned to growing their own gardens or purchasing from local farms, which encourages the farmers to grow a wider variety of produce. As the Pee Dee continues to grow, I think we will see an ever-increasing variety of culinary offerings and that’s something we can all be happy about!

(6) Fresh, seasonal ingredients play a big part in your menus, as evidenced by the Vine & Dine Event not long ago. Do you have any advice for the home cook who wants to use fresh, local ingredients but isn’t sure how to know what should be available at any given time and where to find it?

Silverman: There’s many farms in the Pee Dee region that are growing an amazing diversity of produce. If we include meats, seafood, poultry, dairy and grains you could stock your house with virtually all your food items and never have to set foot in a grocery store.

First, stop by the Pee Dee State Farmer’s Market right here in Florence. There’s great products all around and any one of the farmers will be happy to talk with you about what they’re growing (or plan to grow) and when it will be ready for market. If you’re looking for something you can’t find, again they’ll more than likely know who, locally, is growing or producing it. Some farms (such as Trinity Farms in Timmonsville) and businesses (such as Foodscapes in Lake City) serve as network points, selling products from many different regional farms. It’s worth driving out and talking with the people growing and producing the food. They’re always happy to take the time to talk to you, show you around and since they’re the start of the consumer food chain, you’ll find that you spend much less for an infinitely better product. They’ll also let you know when products will be available for purchase and what will be coming up in future months.

(5) Coqui Catering, which hosted Vine & Dine, is your catering firm based here in Florence and one of our sponsors here on PeeDeeFoodie.com. Tell our readers a bit more about it. Where does the name come from? What’s your vision for the business and what it offers to event planners and diners? What types of events have you catered so far?

Silverman: The name Coqui is personal for me. The coqui is a Puerto Rican tree frog. A tiny frog that could fit on the top section of your thumb when fully grown. But it’s loud! You can hear them from almost every spot on the island. They’re also, I believe, the only frog that doesn’t go through a tadpole stage, being hatched from eggs with feet and only a small tail. Growing up, my brother and I loved them and spent many hours running around catching them. At night, the chirping of the coqui was an island-wide lullaby. I frequently use tropical ingredients and styles in my cooking so I wanted to have a name for the business that reflected the influence. As soon as I thought Puerto Rico, I thought of the coqui. It’s small but makes a bold statement, it’s different than the rest of the frogs out there and that loud voice can also be soothing.

We’ve catered everything from dinner parties for four couples to box sandwich lunches, fancy weddings for a few hundred people, business luncheons, hors d’oeuvres parties, wine dinners for as many as 60 people, corporate events, bridal showers, ground breaking ceremonies. Anything where food is needed, we can be there!

While we do have a catering menu to use as a starting point, each individual menu is developed in direct contact with our clients specifically for that function. We also recognize that there are many other services needed for some functions (photographer, music, rental items, specialty cakes, etc.). We can network you with many of the top people in the region, people who have proven themselves to us time and time again as providing the best services or prices in their respective fields.

(4) Given your catering firm, as well as your training and experience, are there any food-related trends are you monitoring nationally, that you think foodies will see come to our region over the coming year?

Silverman: Trends come in two styles: long- and short-term. Short-term trends can either be a specific dish or ingredient. For example, you may remember a few years back when it seemed that every restaurant suddenly had “airline chicken breasts” on their menus. By the next year that was done, much like Cabbage Patch Kids or Tickle Me Elmo. Long-term trends don’t fade away within a year, and they can be cyclical. Think “low-fat” or “low-sodium”. Seasonal trends would be more like light, crisp dishes in summer, heavier dishes with rich sauces in the winter.

The biggest national trends we’re seeing right now are less about specific ingredients and more about purchasing fresh, local ingredients and eating things outside your normal comfort zone. As your earlier question about the topic of local farms shows, this is a trend already hitting the Pee Dee and one that I see being long-term. Once people get used to using freshly harvested ingredients it’s hard to go back to store-bought produce that’s been sitting in various warehouses for a couple of weeks before it gets to your table.

(3) On a more personal note, how involved in your business is your family? Is Coqui Catering a family business?

Silverman: Coqui isn’t necessarily a family business, but you could certainly call it a married-to-the-family business. My wife is also a long-time restaurant professional and Chris’ wife and mother-in-law are florists by trade so they all help out regularly. My sisters-in-law also help out from time to time, but that’s about it for family. The majority of people who work events with us are all local restaurant employees with a passion for excellent food and service.

Silverman: My first two mentors were Chef Bob Keene and Chef Chris Needles back in Ohio. Both were great people to study under for two very different reasons. Later came Diane and Steve Warren, also in Ohio, and then Matt Blau in Vermont.

Bob was a culinary artist. His “gurus” were many of the same Chefs who’s dishes were, and still are, an inspiration to me: Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Robert Van Aiken, Charlie Trotter, Thomas Keller. We called Bob’s dishes “Keene Cuisine” and he made dishes every day that had our jaws dropping.

Chris wasn’t the most creative chef by any stretch of the imagination. His food was good, consistent, flavorful but it wasn’t inspiring. What Chris lacked in culinary vision, he made up for in his ability to manage people and a kitchen.

Steve and Diane taught me the behind-the-scenes aspects of the business. Balance Sheets, P&L statements, forecasting models, etc. They had an open book policy where every employee was encouraged to scrutinize their reports because if you knew where the money was coming from and going to then you could help find ways to save more of it. I probably learned more about business from them in 1 1/2 years than most college students learn in 4.

Matt Blau brought it all together. A recipient of the James Beard Award of Excellence, he was creative, a good manager, understood the necessity for farm-fresh ingredients, and loved food with a passion. He knew his numbers, how much every ingredient in the place cost and how much he had to sell it for. He knew what was lurking in the back corner of freezers and how to make something incredible from it.

To the two most important things I learned that I listed earlier, I’ll add a third one from Matt: Being a Chef isn’t about moving fast. It’s all about economy of movement so you accomplish more, with less effort. Have your prep done, put things in easy to reach places, grab multiple things from the refrigerator at one time so you’re not running back-and-forth over and over. As I tell my employees now, “Use your head to save your feet”!

(1) Finally, by way of giving back to the community, do you have any area non-profits that you would like to tell others about or that you have worked with in the past? We’ll be happy to post a link to them here.

Silverman: I’d feel bad listing my favorite charities because I don’t want to forget any of them and I don’t want to snub those that I don’t know about or haven’t been involved with. Some specific ones that we have worked with are Hope Health, the Humane Society (Bon-e-Fit), CARE House, Chris and I have both served as guest judges for the Pecan Festival, and there’s been a bunch more. Some of the events that we’ve participated in while working for various restaurants include the Taste of the Symphony, Diamond Dining, Taste of Florence, Best Chefs, Lake City on Parade, Pee Dee Speech & Hearing [Gala]. Our next community event is a food/beverage pairing benefit coming up for Hope Health on Sep. 22nd.

BONUS – Are there any events coming up soon that you’d like to tell our readers about?

We were planning a wine dinner for Aug. 31 but Chris had a family emergency back in Ohio so that’s iffy right now. We’ll know by tomorrow if we’ll still be doing it. The next definite date is the last Wed. in September and then we’ll get back on track with doing monthly wine dinners, always on the last Wed. of the month. Look for the October one… Halloween is always the wine dinner where I go all-out!

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Editor’s Note & Disclosure: PeeDeeFoodie.com™ would like to thank Coqui Catering for supporting our blog, as well as our attendance at the International Food Bloggers Conference (IFBC, August 26-28, 2011 in New Orleans). We encourage you to contact Coqui Catering to discuss ideas for your next event.

Tags: 10 Questions, Chef Adam Silverman, Coqui Catering, Florence

Category: IFBC, Interviews, Meet-Ups, Sponsored Posts