The multitalented chef has based his culinary career on his deep respect for food, art and the relationships he’s built along the way.

WHETHER IT’S CAPTURING the perfect shot of a colorful dessert or preparing a meal outdoors for hundreds of people alongside a fellow chef spinning vinyl, chef Steve Dolich takes an artful approach to his craft.

The oldest of five kids, Dolich found himself in the kitchen at a young age often cooking alongside his mother and grandmother, preparing rustic family food like chicken pot pies or having pasta nights. While they didn’t have a lot of money, Dolich grew up in Casco Township surrounded by farms where vegetables were plentiful and affordable so there was always fresh food in the house, he says.

Even at a young age, he knew he wanted to be a chef, so he applied for a job at Side Street Diner near his house in Grosse Pointe, where the family moved when he was 13. He started off washing dishes, eventually moving on to prep. After a few years there, he decided to enroll at the Culinary Institute of Michigan.

While in culinary school, he landed his first professional kitchen job at Northern Lakes Seafood Company in Bloomfield Hills where he started off shucking oysters, then moved on to garde manger making salads and plating desserts. And in the classic way that chefs often get promoted on the job, a sauté cook quit and Dolich found himself promoted to the hot line.

Eventually he worked pretty much every station in the kitchen, but even more importantly, he learned a lot about the aesthetics of food while working at Northern Lakes. The executive chef at the time was Frank Turner, an influential mentor in Dolich’s career, and someone he still talks to every day.

As someone who grew up on a farm, Dolich found a kindred spirit in Turner and his style of food.

“He was very into the community where we were at, too. He did cooking classes. He would do pop-up markets
there too. And this was all happening in the restaurant,” he says.

That first job would serve as the foundation for the rest of his career. Not only did he learn how to work in a professional kitchen, but he also discovered the importance of building relationships, something that he would take with him wherever he worked.

“I fell in love with the camaraderie that kitchens have to offer. You spend a lot of time with people in the kitchen, sometimes more—a lot more—time than you do with families,” he says.

His experience at Local Kitchen and Bar in Ferndale under chef Rick Halberg also left an impression on him. The restaurant had an open kitchen and a chef ’s table, which was
“beautiful,” Dolich says.

“It was a very intimate dining [experience and] it was my first bit of actual performance art, because you actually had to perform in front of live guests.”

These days, Dolich works as a pastry chef at The Rind in Berkley. While many savory chefs tend to shy away from pastry, but it’s one of Dolich’s favorite things to do in the kitchen because a “really nice dessert” caps off the dining experience.

He likes the challenge of doing both savory and sweet because it makes him more versatile in the kitchen.

“I want to be able to feed people entirely. I want to be able to do beautiful courses from start to finish,” he says.

He also likes to combine sweet and savory, such as his Pineapple Rum Cake, which has an orange purée and whipped goat cheese.

“The best thing about making desserts is not having them overly sweet, and just being able to control the components, the textures,” he says.

A big part of his culinary work entails traveling and doing residencies, including a two-month residency at Farrand Hall on the southwest side of the state, and special events like a dinner for Tillers International in Kalamazoo, cooking whole animals and vegetables outdoors over an open fire alongside other chefs from around the country. He has another event at Tillers, a nonprofit that teaches skills such as blacksmithing and woodworking and hosts farm-to-table dinners with chefs on its working farm, on Nov. 22.

Growing up on a farm, Dolich has deep reverence for food, which he says has “life source energy.”

“Food feels almost ritualistic in nature, and it feels sacred and something that should be appreciated. Sometimes it’s undervalued, because [of the consumer-based] world we live in,” he says.

As a chef, relationship building is just as important to him as cooking food. For example, he likes to work with farmers, exchanging seeds and incorporating their bounty into his dishes. Some of his dishes highlight local products and produce.

And much like how dessert finishes off a meal and is part of creating a memorable experience, he usually has a chef friend, Thomas Hunt, provide music alongside him at his events.

In recent years, Dolich fell in love with food photography after he came into his own as a chef and began getting over imposter syndrome. He started embracing food photography because he noticed that other people’s photos of his food didn’t live up to the vision he had for it. So, he taught himself how to edit to make sure the food was positioned the way he wanted and the light was just right. He also enters photo competitions.

“I like the aesthetic to be kind of natural. I like to implement things that are relevant, [for example], the bees aren’t doing very well this year. So, I’ve been doing a lot of supporting bees. So there’s a topic and a story behind the food,” he says.

From his first kitchen job to his travels as a chef, Dolich has built a career not just on creating beautiful food and telling a story through his artfully plated dishes, but also the relationships he’s built along the way.

“As you work in the restaurants, over time you start building connections with people in all aspects of Michigan,” he says. “And I would like to be a household name out here. I don’t plan on leaving Michigan. We have a lot to offer.”

Dorothy Hernandez is a freelance journalist who frequently writes about food at the intersection of culture, entrepreneurship and social justice.