Whole lotta love going on in this man's kitchen

by Susan Alai/Star-Leger Staff

PATTI SAPONE/THE STAR-LEDGER Jesse Jones prepares his take on "new Carolina cuisine" during a stop at The Star-Ledger.

 

Chef Jesse Jones is the friendliest, most effervescent "personality" chef you've never heard of.

The 280-pound affable man with the cheerful smile and the carry-all full of pots is a husband and father and former restaurateur whose only dream these days is to become a TV food personality so he can make a buck in the food business and repay his mother and grandmother for all their guidance -- and recipes.

If Emeril can do it, why can't he? Only problem is he doesn't have a marquee restaurant that people flock to or a published cookbook that they turn to for his special dishes. That's the stepping stone to success that has been eluding him thus far.

What Jones does have however, is a bunch of great recipes he's acquired from his grandma and mom and tweaked into what he calls "new Carolina cuisine" and a fusion of French. He spent his early years in North Carolina, later moving to Essex County, where he still lives. That Carolina background means the whole family knows plenty about ribs, pulled pork and mac and cheese.

What's new about Jesse's take on it is that he's managed to pick up some solid French cooking knowledge in the years he spent doing scut work for the likes of New Jersey's well known chefs Dennis Foy and David Drake. It hasn't hurt, either, that he has taught a couple of cooking classes at Kings Cooking Studio where some of the patrons are so demanding that's he's learned to provide them with exact measurements and proportions instead of just flash in the pan fast talk.

What Jesse learned after working for these accomplished guys is that while they've taught him how to make heavenly potatoes dauphine, to carve and cook up some duck bits into succulent confit and to elevate creamed spinach into refined epinards (French for spinach), it's still not enough to keep this energetic guy solvent. He's also not above reflecting on what he believes is a certain amount of prejudice in professional kitchens.

His South Orange restaurant, Heart and Soul, was closed after three years when he found he didn't have the steady clientele he needed. He admits that closing the restaurant a little too frequently to accommodate some private catering gigs didn't do much to endear him to the neighorhood.

Raised by a single mother who needed him to get to work after high school and thus miss college, he started his kitchen career working over steam tables for Ara Services (now Aramark) for 15 years. When that job folded, there was more kitchen work at Hewlett Packard in their company kitchen. This was a step up, and just when he thought he had made it as a chef, HP hit rough times and he was out the door.

That's when he tried to go the professional chef route, learning the hard way that commissary-type kitchens did not a pro make. Back to the ground floor he went, peeling potatoes and making duck confit for Foy's Townsquare for three years and eventually learning French cuisine right there on the job.

Next stop was Stage House Restaurant with David Drake in Scotch Plains, and soon Jesse was hankering for his own place. "Chefs have their dream which is about them. It doesn't include me," he said simply. " I've got to do it on my own."

He also took a few courses in food safety at Hudson Community College and got a business management degree from Katherine Gibbs. He has high standards, prefering organic food, buying his meats at pricey places like D'Artagnan and Whole Foods, thus making his profit margins ever thinner.

At the moment, he's putting together recipes so he can self-publish a book. After that, he hopes the TV Food Network might come calling.

And then there is the dream about helping others, training young African American kids in the kitchen so they'll know there's more to life than "hanging out on the streets."

While the youngsters might look at the kitchen as a hot, messy place to found a career, Jones believes it's the right way to get ahead -- with hard work, sweat and a whole lotta love.