The Culinary City

Some of Metro Detroit’s top chefs share who inspired them as they embarked on their culinary careers.

WHY DOES IT seem like there is an abundance of talented and accomplished chefs from Detroit?

“I think we can sum it up in two words,” says Chef Randy Emert. “Milos and Leopold. They pretty much are the beginning of it all and they raised the standards in Detroit when they came here.”

Emert, who is the chief culinary officer at CCL Hospitality Group and Unidine and whose culinary resume includes executive chef at Great Oaks Country Club and instructor at Schoolcraft College, is referring to Milos Cihelka and the late Leopold Schaeli. Both would become Certified Master Chefs, the highest distinction a chef can achieve. Their legacy and impact on Michigan’s culinary scene endures today, shaping the careers of generations of chefs.

Many of today’s top chefs came up in Cihelka’s and Schaeli’s kitchens at the Golden Mushroom and Machus Red Fox, which instilled in young cooks high standards of excellence.

One of those chefs is Omar Mitchell, who was 15 when he did a six-month stint at the Golden Mushroom working alongside chefs like Steve Allen and Brian Polycn. He says his experience at Cihelka’s famous restaurant is what inspired him to open Table No. 2 in Detroit’s Greektown neighborhood, focusing on classic food made from scratch highlighting the best ingredients—and, most importantly, not taking any shortcuts.

“[Working at the Golden Mushroom] is why my goal is to become a Michelin restaurant with Table No. 2,” Mitchell says.

His job there as a teen “was an eye opener for me because I didn’t grow up with the opportunity to be able to explore fine dining as a young kid. And so when I went to the Golden Mushroom, I was, like, ‘Wow, this is cool.’ It’s, like, the same [awe and excitement you have as a kid] at Cedar Point,” he says.

When Cihelka walked into the kitchen, Mitchell says, “you stood straight up and didn’t talk and just listened. Milos was way ahead of his time. He was doing things that were crazy back in 1992. I remember he made a rose petal ice cream … that was infused with rose petals. And he was catching his own pigeons and smoking them. He had his own smoker in the back of the restaurant. It was cutting edge. It was unbelievable.”

While Cihelka inspired his Michelin ambitions, Mitchell credits his instructors at Golightly Career and Technical Center in Detroit—including chefs Margie Gibson, Joseph Mucaria and Claude Thomas—for teaching him the fundamentals.

The skills he learned as a high school student there prepared him for Johnson & Wales University in Rhode Island, one of the most prestigious culinary schools in the country. On his first day there the chef-instructor told the students to cook. Mitchell made a chicken dish with beurre blanc.

“Everyone was completely impressed by the plate that I did,” he recalls, [and it’s] “because of my experience from Golightly.”

Vocational education has played a key role in other chefs’ formative years, including Shawn Loving, a Certified Master Chef who is the executive chef at the Detroit Athletic Club (DAC). He too got his start in culinary arts in high school taking classes at Golightly. While there he met Chef Richard Benson, who informed him about a scholarship opportunity at Schoolcraft College through the vocational school system geared toward minorities in the Detroit area.

“I took advantage of that scholarship and that’s when the mentorship started taking place for me,” Loving says.

Loving says the number of culinary schools—including Schoolcraft College, Oakland Community College, Macomb Community College and Henry Ford—as well as the support for vocational schools and skilled trades are reasons for Michigan’s rich culinary history and legacy of talent.

Schoolcraft is where he met Chef Jeff Gabriel, who “always gave people a chance,” Loving says. “It always resonated with me how he gave me a chance. I wasn’t really the sharpest in terms of a lot of the things that I wanted to do. And there were probably more students around me that were sharper, but I was really hungry to learn. He took me under his wing and he just showed me the chef life, how to have a personality as well in the business, not just cooking.”

Loving also credits teachers at Schoolcraft, including Joe Decker, a Certified Master Pastry Chef, and Brian Beland, a fellow Certified Master Chef, whom he considers “a great brother of mine.”

“These are individuals that really gave me continued inspiration, helped me to understand that you have to push and be better every day,” Loving says. “Don’t settle. Shoot for excellence.”

The most important aspect of mentorship is never forgetting where you started

“Every time you’re in front of someone, you’re impacting them in a certain way. Sometimes it goes well, sometimes it doesn’t. It’s not always perfect,” he says. “But when you see that it works, when you see a Terence, when you see a chef become a chef, you want to be connecting with them at the level of their dreams and their desires, and you see it happen. You realize more and more that you can’t let go of the word mentorship. It’s the only way to keep our profession alive.”

Loving is referring to Terence Tarver, executive chef at The Inn at St. John’s, who regards Loving as his own mentor.

“He kept me going on the right track,” says Tarver. “He’s always been there to help guide me as well as [look at the] big picture.”

Tarver went to Herman A. Breithaupt Career and Technical Center in Detroit and got a job at a young age at the Golden Mushroom, where his cousin Lorenzo Spratling was sous chef.

“Even as I progressed through all the stations there and I left there—one the last two chefs out of the building—it was very humbling,” Tarver says. Earlier this year Tarver was among 26 chefs participating in a charity event called The Legends of the Stove as part of the documentary Detroit: The City of Chefs by Chef Keith Famie. Each chef prepared a dish alongside their mentors and their mentors’ mentors.

“And then I was on the stage with [all of the chefs] at the DAC, it was a remarkable experience. I don’t know how I got to that point or how I got invited to be there with other chefs. That was fantastic. Very humbling,” Tarver says.

It was also a full circle moment for Loving to be able to host this group of chefs.

“They were instructors of mine who mentored me in some capacity in my career. And they worked [at the DAC]: Jeff Gabriel worked here, Dan Hugelier worked here, Milos worked here,” Loving says. “[As a chef younger than them], I was more of a line cook and had not grown to their level. And then to be able to host them and have my own large staff and operate this property after Kevin Brennan, that’s big for me to see my mentors come to where they worked.”

Famie was a mentor to Emert, who worked for him at Chez Raphael in Novi, where it became clear to him he wanted to become a chef.

“He really inspired me because he was young and he had been to Europe and he was a great chef, great mentor. Just had all the qualities of the chefs … he had very high standards,” Emert says.

Emert also went to Schoolcraft, where “everybody brought something different” in terms of mentorship and valuable lessons.

Brian Polcyn taught him business lessons such as not letting things go to waste and negotiating, and also that flavor comes first, then presentation.

“He would always say ‘Focus on the flavor first. It’s got to taste good, and then do the presentation.’ People eat with their eyes but if it doesn’t taste good, there’s a problem,” Emert says.

Today in his role as chief culinary officer at CCL Hospitality Group and Unidine, the first thing he does after saying hello to his staff is grab a bunch of spoons to taste everything because it was ingrained in him that flavor is the most important thing.

“These young men and women are pioneers of not asking for permission.”

—KELLI LEWTON

He also cites Steve Allen as an influence, who preached the motto of keeping it simple.

“He always used to say keep it simple. Just do simple food. Hot food hot, cold food cold and everything cooked properly. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Just make sure the food tastes good and it’s cooked properly. That’s part of my philosophy,” Emert says.

The instructors are incredibly dedicated to their students. Emert recalls when his car broke down in college, one of the instructors, Kevin Gawronski, gave him a ride.

“He actually stopped by my house and picked me up and took me to school because I didn’t have the money to get my car fixed. I mean, how many teachers do that?” Emert says.

Kelli Lewton, chef and owner of Two Unique Caterers and Event Planning, is another Schoolcraft alum who credits Gawronski, as well as other teachers like Gabriel and Peter Loren, as being mentors as well as friends.

“I would say a lot of my mentorship came from [Schoolcraft] in my young life. I met really good friends there; people like Shawn Loving were people I went to school with. I kept this wonderful culinary family and these people are still my very good friends,” Lewton says.

One of the core values instilled in her as a young chef that she’s carried throughout her career is “ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen,” a hospitality concept popularized by Horst Schulze, co-founder of the Ritz-Carlton, which became known as the gold standard for customer service.

Schoolcraft empowered her to have “authorship” of her food from the beginning, teaching her solid fundamentals in classic technique as well as American regional food. “I could take something somebody showed me and I could change it and evolve into what my style was. … What [Schoolcraft] did for me is it gave me the confidence to know that once I understood these core principles and values, then the sky was the limit.”

As a chef, Lewton appreciates the new heights to which younger chefs are taking food in Detroit. She says there are so many more options for creative food and drink in the city than ever before, noting Joe Giacomino and John Vermiglio at Grey Ghost, James Rigato at Mabel Gray, Andy Hollyday at Selden Standard and Anthony Lombardo at She Wolf, to name a few.

“I’m a huge fan of the culinary culture right now, especially what’s coming out of Detroit. … These young men and women are pioneers of not asking for permission,” Lewton says.

Thanks to this new generation of chefs who left to work in other kitchens and came back to join the wave of new restaurants, Detroit “is a destination now. … Once culture in Detroit was ready for it, and the infrastructure was ready for it, I just think people came back,” Lewton says.

Dorothy Hernandez is a freelance journalist who frequently writes about food at the intersection of culture, entrepreneurship and social justice for a number of national and local publications. Her work has appeared on BBC, CNN, Eater, Thrillist and more.