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About the Chef – Toby Joseph
The first thing
Toby Joseph ever prepared in a kitchen was clean dishes.
But something in all the steaming water and those piles of dirty plates and pots
told that 11-year-old boy he was in the business he would never leave. And it
was in that spot, a Massachusetts kitchen in his father’s delicatessen,
that one of the youngest and most promising chefs in the country today chose
to make his career.
Toby is only 31 years old today but already he
has the skills, experience and reputation of a chef with a lot
more time behind
him. In Houston, he is an executive
chef for a AAA Hotel and one of the youngest chefs
in the exclusive lodging family. It’s a restaurant with a sterling reputation
among the city’s central social set and a destination for those who insist
on quality dining.
Behind him, however, is a resume that brought
him to one of the most prestigious culinary spots in Texas. By
the time he reached his 22nd birthday, he was executive
sous chef at Café LiEurope in Palm Beach, Florida. When he arrived in
Houston some eight years later, he had held top positions at the award winning
Maritana Grill, the Don Caesar and the Belview Biltmore Restaurant and Spa.
Thousands of people have enjoyed a Chef Toby
experience including a diverse group of celebrities including Oprah,
Donald Trump, the entire AC DC band,
Tom Cruise,
Lionel Ritchie, Joan Collins, Jerry Lewis, Tommy Lee Jones, Rod Stewart and
Burt Reynolds.
To define the personality of a Chef Toby menu,
one must discuss time, quality and imagination.
Time is a defining quality because where the
diner sees the chef’s culinary
creations appear in prompt order after a menu choice is made, Chef Toby
may have started working on the meal days earlier when a sauce
was begun that takes
days
of reduction or an ingredient was ordered that had not been harvested
or caught yet. It takes time to find the right products and then
it takes time to prepare
it. The kitchen may go through 600 pounds of bones a week to make his
famed sauces.
No restaurant claims to have less than the best
quality, but with most that should be better described as the best
quality for the price. In
Chef Toby’s kitchen,
the world is his super market. From availability, to shipping to preparation,
the chef’s team searches for the best of everything.
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