Photo by Michael Donahue // Buy this photo
Kjeld Petersen is executive chef at The Inn at Hunt Phelan.
Title: Executive chef, The Inn at Hunt Phelan
Age: Late 40s
Hometown: Long Beach, Calif.
Who or what was your first cooking influence? Jacques Pépin. ... He was one of the first chefs that appeared on television who produced an approachable professional cookbook called "La Technique," then a followup called "Le Methode". . . . My mother and both my grandmothers were very, very good cooks.
Photo by Michael Donahue
Kjeld Petersen is executive chef at The Inn at Hunt Phelan.
What made you decide to become a chef, and when was that? I worked, usually in the kitchen, at night and tried to do some sort of office job during the day. And the office job just made me miserable. I found myself looking forward every day not going to the office job, but going to the kitchen job. Had the opportunity to work around some really good people, people that were inspiring ... that motivated me to approach it in a more serious way.
What was your first food-related job? I started working in a country club when I was 14 washing pots. Then making meatballs.
What was something important that a fellow chef taught you? I had the opportunity to work with a very good pastry chef . ... One thing I took away from him that continues to stick in my mind is about . ... being consistent with everything that you do in the kitchen.
What is the Kjeld Petersen style? Classic European cuisine applied to regional American food based upon local seasonally available ingredients.
What do you cook or bake at home, if anything? My wife and I ... do a lot of outdoor cooking. We live in a condo building Downtown. ... We do a lot of rooftop cooking and watch the sun go down over the river. So that means we end up cooking a lot of sausages, a lot of steak.
What's your least favorite ingredient? Canned soup. ... When you take something so basic, so fundamental as something like soup and you let somebody prepare it and over-season it and over-salt it and fill it up with sugar and high-fructose corn syrup ... and put it into a can -- you should be able to make soup.
The Inn at Hunt Phelan is at 533 Beale; 525-8225.
Michael Donahue: 529-2797. donahue@commercialappeal.com.
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