A highlight of the foodservice calendar in April is always the National Gala for C-CAP (Careers through Culinary Arts Program) in New York City.
The Gala serves as a platform to celebrate and honor individuals for their outstanding accomplishments, and to inspire the next generation of culinary professionals.
Each year, a selection committee comprised of industry professionals, educators, and C-CAP staff carefully review nominations and applications to identify individuals who have demonstrated exceptional talent, dedication, and leadership in the culinary arts field.
Honorees are chosen based on their achievements, contributions to the industry, and commitment to giving back to their communities.
This year’s honoree is Mary Attea. The Executive Chef at The Musket Room and Raf’s is the ideal honoree for C-CAP’s annual gala due to her significant impact on the culinary industry and her dedication to supporting young chefs.
With her leadership and expertise, her career parallels the accomplishments of C-CAP in reaching over 22,000 students across the country to provide them with the skills and opportunities they need to succeed in the culinary world. Chef Attea’s commitment to excellence and passion for mentorship make her a role model for aspiring chefs everywhere.
By honoring her at the gala, C-CAP is not only celebrating her achievements but also highlighting the importance of investing in the next generation of culinary talent.
As Chef Mary Attea worked on her preparation for the NYC event, Total Food Service sought her out to get her thoughts on being honored by C-CAP.
TFS also wanted to get her thoughts on a variety of subjects from some of the iconic mentors who shaped her career and what it takes to retain the prestigious Michelin Star for The Musket Room restaurant.
For those who don’t know you, can you share where your passion for food and cooking came from?
It harks back to being in a family that just celebrated food all the time. My father was of Lebanese background, so we were always eating a lot of different and unique food at the time. It’s obviously much more popular now. We were just taught to sort of celebrate our meals every day.
And no one in my family was a picky eater. We always finished our food. So, I think it was just something that was instilled in me from a young age to really care about food at the table and be excited to spend time eating with others and take enjoyment in that.
How did your Lebanese heritage and upbringing in Buffalo, NY influence your culinary style?
It was something that as I started to really step into my chef’s shoes and role and started to create dishes, to draw on a lot of those flavors just because for me it was comforting and nostalgic and reminiscent of being around family.
And also that type of food is very light and bright, like fresh flavors, not as many big fats. I always kind of gravitated towards something that was more olive oil and lemon forward versus butter and vinegar.
I think a lot of my dishes I do today, obviously some are rooted more in French cuisine or those types of dishes. But I am really drawn to sort of bright, vibrant flavors and a lot of stuff I cook.
What actually drew you to the restaurant industry? You were pursuing a master’s at John Jay College in something completely different?
Yes, I was in graduate school. And most people would have been like, what’s wrong with you for studying forensic psychology? But no, I was sort of a very common New York story. I moved here for school.
And while I was in school, I started working in a restaurant to make money and survive in the city. And I found myself just being much more excited and leaning towards going to the restaurant versus going to school.
I think as that sort of developed and I got really intrigued by service and fell in love with hospitality and trying to learn about wine and the food, it started to make sense that it could be something I pursued as opposed to the current path I was on in graduate school.
Always fun to find what you really want to do.
Yeah. And then when you unexpectedly find it.
Exactly. And then what led you to ICE?
When I first left my graduate program and was working in the restaurant, I had expressed interest in going into the kitchen to learn what they do.
And they let me come in once a week and just spend time kind of learning how to cut things and learning how to cook some things.
And that restaurant ended up closing shortly after I kind of started getting in the kitchen. I had to go find another job to survive and live.
And I started waiting tables with the intention to go to ICE, but I took a little bit of time to get there because I just started really enjoying waiting tables and living in New York and kind of being in that life just amongst other industry people and going out and eating and having drinks. I finally decided it was time to concentrate on the food part.
It’s not common that people who work in the front of the house will end up in the back of the house. You may end up owning a restaurant, but it’s not that common. How are you able to actually like customers and like cooking?
I think it just goes back to how I grew up. My mother was just constantly inviting people over. If anybody stopped over, she was immediately opening up the fridge and pulling food out and they’d be like, no, we’re not hungry.
And she’d just be putting stuff out. It was just ingrained in me that hospitality is everything.
You think about life in Buffalo, there’s always another seat at the table.
I think for me, it was exciting to sort of be on the front side and get excited about food and tell people about it and watch them enjoy what I was serving them. And then when I jumped to the kitchen, it was really exciting to now see them enjoy what I’m making.
So where was this kitchen that you jumped to? Who let you make that jump? How did that happen?
The restaurant in the Upper East Side was a very small restaurant called Ian. And again, it was just probably there for like a year or two. It was a very small restaurant, small team.
I think as they started sort of training me and I was learning more and more and I was an important member of their team. When I expressed interest in the kitchen, they invited me to come hang out with them. It was nice. They let me in.
Then did somebody guide you so that the things you had learned at ICE fell into place?
I didn’t spend that much time, it was probably like a few weeks, one day at a time that I spent in the kitchen at that restaurant.
But I finally applied to culinary school and I think having worked front of house in the restaurant at that point, I had learned a lot about food in general.
When I stepped into culinary school, it was a little bit easier to understand all the things they were teaching me because I had context to it.
And then after culinary school, when I stepped into my first internship at Annisa [with Chef Anita Lo], it was a smooth transition because I had worked in a restaurant front of house.
I sort of understood all the dynamics and the lingo and the flow of a kitchen. I think there are a lot of like beneficial things from working in restaurants for a while before going to school and then going to the kitchen.
No wonder you know what you’re doing. Anita Lo is an incredible chef.
Right, so that’s primarily where I did most of my training. I spent six years with her, formative beginning year in the kitchen for her philosophy and her mentorship. I mean, extremely fortunate.
It was one, just a very incredible kitchen to start off in because it was run by this incredible woman who was kind and compassionate. And, you know, we knew that we had standards and had to be detailed and work hard.
We were allowed to be nurtured and have fun and laugh and listen to music. It wasn’t like a lot of other places that counterparts in the industry we were at. It gave me space to feel comfortable and grow and kind of find my creative path.
So then what happened after that?
When Annisa closed in 2017, I took a little time off, did some traveling and then just started kind of helping people out and friends out, dodging around different restaurants. And then I spent a little time at Vic’s in Noho.
I really wanted to learn to make pasta and pizzas. And Hillary was a friend of mine. It kind of started out with me just helping her. And then she was like, hey, can you be my sous chef for the next four months?
And I was like, yeah, I can help out. And then after that, I took the chef role at High Street on Hudson, which was really fun. That was a big learning experience. It was my first sort of in charge role.
I think there was a lot of learning, a big learning curve with an all-day restaurant, seven days a week, 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. I spent about seven months there and then my father passed away and I took some time to reset and spend time with the family over the holidays. And then after that, I started at The Musket Room.
How did that come together? Where did the money come from? Where did the real estate come from? How did you do it?
The Musket Room was already an established restaurant. It had been open. Yeah, it was Jennifer Vitagliano, who is my business partner in Raf’s Restaurant and Bakery. She opened it with another chef from New Zealand.
They parted ways. And then she and I started talking for a few months and timing was just never right. And then finally, it kind of all fell into place where she was ready to bring on a new chef and I was ready to start a job.
It was great because they had a Michelin star. They were already well-known as a great restaurant. I stepped in to take over and try to change the program, which was an incredibly daunting task given.
The restaurant had such a great reputation. But then three weeks later, the world changed and it kind of forced us to reset anyway.
You have a lot of stuff in your story that seemed meant to be, you know.
Little fortuitous moments come together.
How would you describe New Zealand cuisine? And then how did you transition out of that cuisine?
I don’t think I could even speak that eloquently to New Zealand cuisine. The chef was from New Zealand, he was using a lot of product and whatever little nuance exists there he was bringing to the plate.
I wasn’t familiar with it. And the whole point of me being brought in was to step away from it being what the restaurant was known for.
And again, just given that we had to close for four months and reopen under a completely different type of service, it really gave us the time and space to be thoughtful about what we were doing, kind of reset without it was going to come in.
It was going to be hard for me to come in and just try to change the whole DNA of the restaurant while still operating the restaurant.
I think because we could close, we were able to talk, get to know each other, kind of throw ideas out there and learn what would make sense for the two of us and the rest of the team going forward.
Not to mention something called customers.
Yeah, that too. But I think part of the change was to make it a little more neighborhood. And again, given the restraints of the pandemic, everybody who started coming in or that we were doing takeout for were neighbors. We got to know our neighborhood really well.
What’s the menu look like today, four years after the pandemic?
It’s honestly not too far off from what the structure it always was, which was a tasting menu. We have an omnivore and a vegan version, but we also still offer a la carte so that people who want to come in and just have a few bites or not do a whole extended tasting can still come and enjoy the restaurant.
The cuisine itself is just more globally inspired. We just draw from a lot of different experiences and heritage and travels and just whatever is kind of exciting us in the moment.
It gives us a lot of space to be creative and thoughtful about what we’re making, which is great.
So is the prix fixe or is it a tasting menu?
There are two tasting menus that are a set price and there’s options to add wine pairing or supplemental dishes. And then there’s the a la carte menu where we just have some other offerings that people can just pick whatever they want.
Something for everybody. And it’s lunch and dinner?
Just dinner, five nights a week, Tuesday to Saturday.
What about as you look at fine dining and you look at sort of family culinary memories to create menus and culture, how have you taken that and blended that into what you are doing today?
I really try to be thoughtful about what I’m putting on a plate and making sure that it makes sense or that there’s some story or thread or reason that items exist on the plate.
I try to teach all my cooks to not like just because you think something sounds cool or like you don’t just put things together, like why are you using these two ingredients? It can be a personal story.
It could be something that makes sense between all the ingredients on the dish. But there has to be a perspective in the item.
I kind of draw from, again, many different inspirations, but some being what I grew up eating, it’s really fun to reconfigure or take those flavors and apply them to a different dish that I wouldn’t have eaten and see if it works.
And sometimes they work out, sometimes they don’t. But I think that’s the fun part of just getting to be experimental and create. But at the end of the day, make sure you’re making something that’s thoughtful and delicious.
With this background you have in psychology and the forensic studies, you’ve built and you need to build and motivate a team. I’m kind of curious what makes you tick in terms of how you approach that?
I just try to do what I know allowed me to grow as a cook, chef, human in general. And I just do what I felt like was right for me. Everybody will have different leadership styles or different ways of approaching people.
But it’s at the end of the day, you’re approaching it from the sense that you just want the best out of everyone and everyone to feel like they are also growing and changing and building. So far, I think you can’t go wrong with that.
What do you hope that guests take away in terms of a dining experience at The Musket Room? What do you want that experience to look like and feel like?
I want everyone to walk away happy and fulfilled and satisfied and taken well care of. I want people to walk away feeling intrigued or like maybe they experienced something they knew they haven’t experienced before or that feels so unique to the evening.
That everybody leaves feeling the warmth of the hospitality and the passion behind the food and the team. Nice. Bringing it to them and just leave warm and fuzzy. A good night of food and wine.
You were just honored by C-CAP. That’s really cool. Have you been involved with the program before?
I had known of C-CAP for a while. And last year was maybe the first time I was involved in their big gala tasting. This year they asked that I be the chef honoree and Jennifer’s the co-chair.
We’re the faces of the gala this year, which is really fun and a huge honor because there’s been so many great chefs who have come before in this position.
As you look around your kitchen, you look who’s working with you. What do you think it’s going to take for some of these young people from C-CAP and other programs to succeed?
It’s definitely a lot of tenacity and perseverance. It’s not an easy job, nor industry. We’re hopefully making strides and working harder to change what it was.
But, you know, again, it’s a hard thing to just overnight shift everything. There does, require a little grit in it. There’s going to be bad days. There’s going to be awful services.
Would you still suggest it to somebody to go into?
I would. Because at the very least, if it’s not your long term career, it’s not what you do forever. I think it’s one of the few careers that really teaches you how to interact with people.
With other humans.
Service to people, how to build a team, support each other and connect with people. It’s not you just behind a desk and don’t interact with anyone all day.
I think there is a beauty. And it’s one of the few things left where it is about engagement with each other.
It’s a people business. Every time I see a robotic arm [in the kitchen], I start laughing.
Something that I think is the crux of our human nature is to be interactive with people. And again, it’s not easy. There are not always the greatest people that you have to wait on.
You’re short staffed. It’s hard. But I think when the beautiful moments happen, they’re doubly rewarding. Hopefully, they try to inspire people that way.
Learn more about Chef Mary Attea’s cuisine at the Musket Room website. All photos courtesy of The Musket Room unless otherwise noted
