Interview with LREI Chef Eric Baer

http://cty-lrei.com/staff

Eric Baer is the head chef at LREI and works for the company Cater to You. He has been working at LREI for nearly 10 years and has been promoted from sue-chef to head chef. I decided to interview him because he has been working in the food industry for a long time, so he has a lot of wisdom and advice to give. Also, as someone who works at LREI which is a school that values social justice quite a lot, Eric has insights into food security and sustainability. 

Question #1: Can you tell me about your first job working with food?

Eric explained that when he was a junior in high school he decided to go to college at the CIA (Culinary Institute of the Arts) and he needed at least 6 months' worth of work experience in order to apply. He had zero experience in the food business before realizing where he wanted to go for college. "My entire experience with food was surrounded by my family and our gatherings, and helping my mother cook meals for holidays and things like that..." Eric ended up finding a job at a pub in his neighborhood where they allowed him to shadow the people working there, with no experience of his own, and take notes. "They wouldn't let me cook, but they would let me assist with minor stuff for a few hours two days a week after school." He mentioned another early job he had while he was at college. "Once I was at CIA, in between your freshman and sophomore year at college you have to go on what's called an externship. It was a six and a half month program. It's actually your final for your freshman year...I worked at a restaurant called Blue Water Grill." Eric mentioned that in order to get this job he had to basically work there for free for a day as a trial run. "I was supposed to start on prep...getting things ready for them (for the head chefs)...but when I came back two weeks later, they told me that I was immediately promoted because one of the people on the, we call it garde manger, which is really just the cold station. It's typically like appetizers, cold salad...one of the guys at that station had quit last minute, and so they needed my assistance immediately..." After Eric graduated college, he went back to work for the same company that owned the Blue Water Grill which was called Be Our Guest for our 2 and a half years at another restaurant. He mentioned that downtown has always been really special for him. "I kind of found myself, as far as my career and what I wanted to be and the places I wanted to work in, downtown...It feels like every time I've had the opportunity to come back I've always found my way back to lower Manhattan."

Question #2: How did you start working for Cater to You?

Eric worked in restaurants for a while, then transitioned from his last restaurant job because of the bad conditions he was working in. "I left restaurants because I decided that I wanted something better for myself." Ultimately, he explained to me that he wanted a "normal" work schedule, and to eventually settle down and not have to worry about the crazy hours of being a full-time chef. He then got into corporate dining and worked at the Bank of America tower when it was still being built. He fed basically all the people with corporate jobs within the building. "We were doing it out of two tiny little cafes..." He described it a little like LREI but on a larger scale. They fed around 3600 people a day Monday through Friday, with holidays off. "I  don't think I laughed as much anywhere as much as I did at that job." Eric met his current wife at this job and knew he wanted to marry her. In order to marry her, he needed more money for the engagement ring and the wedding so he asked for a raise but was unfortunately turned down. So he decided to look for work elsewhere and he found a job as a sue-chef for Cater to You at the school Birch Wathen Lenox in 2010. Then he was asked to go to Nightingale Bamford because they needed more help. He worked there for the 2010-2011 school year. "I did my first summer at LREI in June 2010....summer of 2011 I worked there again and while I was there they asked me if I would become the sue-chef at Little Red, and I said yes because I wanted to be downtown. I loved the area, I loved the school." "Somewhere along the way, me working at a school became just as much of an important part of my job as the food. It became as rewarding as doing the thing that I love, which was getting to work with food and see how food works..." Eric explained that he had no idea what he wanted to do as a career when he was younger. He explained that all he knew was that he wanted to make people happy. So for him, there were two career options: 1. anything having to do with food, and 2. being a teacher. He explained that somehow all his happy memories growing up are surrounded by food. Getting together with family, holidays, gatherings, and just enjoying a good meal with someone else. For the second option, he felt that being a teacher would be his "next best chance to affect someone's life in a positive way beyond food". "In all of your years at LREI if there was just one time maybe when you were just having a really bad day, and you came down to the cafeteria, and you found that favorite something, that meal, that one food item that made you feel a little bit better, that's enough...It makes everything I've done completely worthwhile and feel more than meaningful."

Question #3: What would be your favorite thing to make? What's your least favorite or what's the hardest thing to make?

Eric answered that he likes to make everyone's favorite things to eat such as tacos. Also, his favorite things to make are things he didn't grow up with. "It's like a new adventure." He grew up in an Italian American household, so he's very comfortable making classic Italian dishes. He loves making Asian cuisine, Vietnamese, Thai, Malaysian, etc. He loves Latin food or Spanish food in general. Eric said he's learned a lot about Latin culture from his crew in the kitchen. For what the hardest thing is for him to make, he responded, "everything is difficult". "I never enter into any kind of situation when it comes to food or making something, feeling like I got this 100%. I'm also the kind of person that I feel like I'm always, 'I can do better.'" He mentioned that he does get anxious sometimes when he's trying something new and different. He also said that baking and pastry he got into later when he was in college because taking a few classes was required for his degree. He learned about the art of baking and how it influences making savory dishes. "When it comes to cooking....it's so fluid." He compared cooking to surfing and he explained that you can have happy accidents, and you can make up stuff as you go along. However, he explained that you have to be precise when it comes to baking and pastry and you can't experiment as much. During quarantine last year, Eric dabbled in baking and became a little more comfortable with some recipes. 

Question #4: Before the pandemic, if you did some traveling, can you tell me which countries you enjoyed the most for their food? Also in the future (post-pandemic) where would you go to experience more cultures and their food?

Eric explained that his travel experience is pretty limited because he has been working since he came out of high school. He answered that he has been to Mexico many times with his wife, they love the culture and the food especially. "No one place can be painted with the same brush culturally or food-wise." Speaking about the different cities and areas in Mexico, and the diversity in food. He explained, "What makes Italian food, or what makes Mexican food, a lot of the time is so few ingredients..." He explained that simple foods can be so flavorful when you don't expect them to be. "If you do it the right way, and you put the care into the ingredients, those ingredients will come through for you in a way that they wouldn't if you didn't source them appropriately. Or they weren't of the greatest quality because not a lot of care went into them, or...burying them with too many flavors or too many ingredients."He also really enjoyed the French influence on the food in Montreal. "There's an idea of seasonality or sustainability in Europe that goes along with a lot of European cultures that I think has only come to North America...in the last few decades." He mentioned the open-air markets in Europe and compared them to what we have in the US. "I love strawberries and I would love to have them all the time, but they're not good all the time...You're forcing something to be that doesn't want to be. Eating tomatoes in the middle of February in a cold region - unless they're hothouse grown and given the appropriate treatment - they're just not good...Everything in its time." Eric also mentioned the stereotypes surrounding food in the US and tried to de-stigmatize them. He mentioned the culture that we are influenced by such as a huge Italian influence in New York. He said that in his senior year of college, he had to do a final thesis that was informed by a month-long trip in Europe or in the US. "The majority of the class went to California..." He went to wineries, farms, restaurants, and visited fishermen. He talked to fishermen about sustainable fishing, overfishing, etc. "Having those conversations about sustainability and what our need...has on the oceans, and the Earth, and crops, and food. Those conversations kind of expanded me into this entire other idea of what food can be beyond just putting something on a plate in front of someone and giving them an experience that was going to make them smile. It's now about creating an experience that not only makes an individual smile, but may also be able to reflect on a local community, or a group of people, or a different culture, and also maintain a sense of equilibrium with my area that I grew up in...Maintain this kind of balance and giving back to a planet that has continuously given to me and everyone I know..."

Question #5: If you could give three pieces of advice to a potential chef/baker/someone entering the food industry what would say? 

Eric answered that he has had many people come up to him over the years asking for advice for their son/sister/friend/cousin etc going into the food industry. "The first thing I always say is 'don't'. Which is surprising, but I say it because most people don't understand what it means to go into this field. Like I said there are careers out there where the world takes for granted the physical and mental sacrifice that goes into these industries, food is one of them..." He said that in this field you stand all day, you might be expected to work longer hours than you think, you have to get dirty, and you might get hurt. "So if I tell you don't, don't do it, and you still want to, and there's a part of you that still wants to push forward and try anyway then that means that you're meant to do it." He said that his second piece of advice would be, "Understand that there's never going to be a finish line." Eric talked about the greatest advice he's ever been given from one of his chef instructors at culinary school. "So one day in class he looked at us and said, 'the only piece of advice I want you never to forget, is that you will never stop learning. Never assume that you know everything there is to know.' He looked at us and told us, 'After 40 plus years in this industry, the thing that has served me most is understanding that there's always something that I have to learn and that's what made me the best that I could possibly be as time has gone on.'" Then Eric said, "Every person is a learning opportunity, every person has something of value that they can add to your life. So don't dismiss anyone based on an assumption." Lastly, he told me, "Second-guessing yourself is both good and bad. It's good to question things. It's good to know that you don't know everything, and there's more that you can learn. But also it's important to have confidence in yourself and understand that you're going to make mistakes, you're going to fall down. But as long as you get back up and keep trying, that's all that matters. Early on and even sometimes now I catch myself putting an enormous amount of pressure on myself when it comes to everything I do. I like things to be organized, I like to know what it is I'm doing and getting myself into before I get started. I feel like setting myself up for success is one of the most important things any person can do. But even when you do those things and it still doesn't turn out the way you wanted it to be, and I'm not just talking about food again this is anything, it doesn't mean you failed. It just means that you learned something new, that's all. It's not an ending, it's just a new pathway, to the result you were looking for or maybe something even greater. So don't get discouraged, don't think you can't do something, just because it feels like you can't. You never really know until you push yourself and you never know what your limits are until you push past them."