Lunchtime with Chef Gary

Here at The Wall, we have our very own Chef. Meet Chef Gary

Name Gary
Restaurant The Wall
Married Yes
Kids Yes, 1
Age 26
From McKinney, Texas
Culinary School Le Cordon Bleu, in Dallas, Texas
Knife Hand Right

Chef will be making us the Guacamole Bacon Burger. Our Guacamole Bacon Burger is made with 100% USDA prime which sets it apart from any other burger on campus and any other burger in Provo. We're the only place on campus that serves fresh made guacamole. We make our guacamole several times a day so anytime you get it it's never older than a couple hours old. Being from Texas I ate a lot of TexMex which means a lot of guacamole and lightly spiced and typical TexMex type entrees so having guacamole here remind me a little bit of home.

How old were you when you started cooking?

I was 14 when I started cooking professionally in restaurants. First restaurant was a little family owned restaurant in McKinney, Texas called Beef'O'Brady's. It's actually a chained based out of Georgia. But they had six restaurants in Texas and one of them happened to be in McKinney. 

What made you get interested in Culinary arts?

I love to eat. Everyone loves to eat. My favorite subjects in school were always choir, theater, and art. I really strove to do something with that in mind and I grew up with the understanding that "If you love what you do you never work a day in your life." Although that's not entirely true, I knew I wanted to do something in an art capacity. There's a difference between a cook and a chef and the big difference is that a chef sees food as art, everything from plating, color, and presentation to the flavor, the way that things mix as they're cooking and they all come together as a finished product. It's like the movie Ratatouille how they eat the two things and it creates something totally different. It's always been beautiful to me. Then, there's the simple fact that I can cook anywhere in the world, I don't need to worry about a job opening up, someone is going to need someone to cook so it seemed like a smart plan. 

What's your favorite meal to cook?

That would be rack of lamb. I sear mine and a panko herbed crust and then bake it in the oven until it's medium rare and I serve it over potatoes and fried kale and pine nuts with jalapeno jelly as a sauce.  

What did you have for dinner last night?

The remarkable thing about chefs if we actually don't eat dinner a lot. When you spend all day around something you don't want it when you get home. So most nights when I get home I make myself a bowl of cereal. 

Favorite restaurant in Provo?

I can't say anything else but The Wall! But if I had to pick somewhere else, that would be DP Cheesesteaks. They make authentic cheesesteaks. They have a variety of sizes and different combinations of vegetables. Essentially it's a family run business. The owners are from the East coast so they know all about authentic cheesesteaks. The dad, son, dads brother, and immediate friends of the family that work there. Basically everyone has a say in what happens at the restaurant.   I really like the way that it's run, the people who run it, and it's hard to beat cheese and meat on bread. They also have apple beer, it's delicious!

If you weren’t cooking, what would you do for a living?

I would be an army solider.

Person you love to cook for?

My son. He eats anything. 

Do you have any pet peeves in the kitchen?

A dirty work space. I've actually shut down this kitchen during service before so that they could clean it.

What ingredient could you not live without?

Bacon.

Most embarrassing cooking moment?

One time in culinary school in my third block class which was meat fabrication and entree preparation. I started one of the mother sauces, called espagnole. Basically what it is is a beef stock that you fortify with more vegetables. Then you let it simmer until it's a thick sauce. Then you add red wine or another acid. So I started boiling one sometime. I get the aromatics out of the vegetables so I started simmering it and I totally forgot about it and just left it boiling. I ended up starting a whole other batch of it, still forgetting the first one. So at the end of class there was this pot sitting over there on one of the stoves that nobody was claiming and it hit me that it was mine and I went over and it was just caked on beef stock and it looked like beef jelly with burnt celery, carrot and onion just like sticking to the bottom of it. The whole rest of the classroom was totally clean and I had to stay there a extra hour to clean this pot.