Meet the Chef: Xena Lovelady

Photo by Michael Donahue // Buy this photo

Xena Lovelady worked many jobs in the restaurant business before settling into the kitchen.

Title: Kitchen manager/chef at Evelyn & Olive Restaurant.

Age: 34.

Hometown: Key West, Fla.

Who or what was your first cooking influence? My grandmother. My first cooking memory is standing on a chair at the deep fryer.

What was the first thing you ever cooked or baked? Corn bread in the cast iron skillet ... crackling corn bread.

What made you decide to become a chef, and when was that? Just hearing compliments on your food: "That's delicious." .. . Just working in restaurants for 20 years, it was just the natural progression. Once I learned to hold a knife, my front-of-the-house career was over.

What was your first food-related job? I worked at a Country Buffet in East Tennessee when I was 14 years old. I was the cashier and bus girl. It's been a long time coming. It's just kind of been server, bartender, bar manager, expo, cold side, hot side and now this. So it's been a very organic kind of progression.

What was something important that a fellow chef taught you? This is food, not brain surgery.

What is the Xena Lovelady style? Simple. I think food should taste like what it is. The more you add on your food, you kind of get away from what it was intended to be.

What do you cook or bake at home, if anything? Lots of breakfast food -- bacon, tomatoes, grits.

What's your favorite food? Either bacon or figs. So the two together -- bacon-wrapped figs.

What's your least favorite food? Beets. I don't know if it's the color or the aroma, but I find them offensive.

Evelyn & Olive is at 630 Madison; (901) 748-5422.

-- Michael Donahue: (901) 529-2797; donahue@commercialappeal.com

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