This past week we had the extraordinary opportunity to spend the day with Master Chef Ferdinand Metz and his wonderful wife Lilly at their California home. Nestled in the mountainside and adorned with olive trees and fresh lemons for the picking, it made the perfect backdrop for insightful conversation.
My focus for our interview was about the significance of the national Master Chef order and the history of culinary competitions, our Detroit chef community having been deeply involved in these arenas. Through Master Chef Milos, our chef community developed a long standing relationship with Chef Metz who served 21 years as President of the Culinary Institute of America. He also led the Culinary Olympic Team to three consecutive world championships.
Raised in Munich, Germany Chef Metz is credited with helping define American regional cooking—not to mention graduating some 45,000 culinary students from the CIA!
You can be assured Chef Metz's reputation is known world wide.
Our time together talking was fascinating, as is his new book “From Many we Are One”, an important read for any young or seasoned culinarian. https://www.masterchefmetz.com/
My time with Chef helped me to better understand how an 84 year old iconic chef lives life today. Still cooking two meals a day "I learn something new every time I cook" he explains as he’s as he's so humbly preparing lunch for myself, my wife and son Josh along with our production crew. We thoroughly enjoyed spicy BBQ'ed shrimp on a bed (mixture) of sauerkraut, a julienne of parsnips, apples, and carrots, flavored with a touch of curry, cilantro, ginger and garlic, surrounded by a border of pureed of herbed taro root.
I am deeply drawn to his wisdom as an aging man who is still extremely relevant in a time of YouTube chef stars. His wife of the last twenty plus years, Lilly is a holistic Chinese doctor, and this no doubt has had a positive impact on Chefs health and well being.
Each morning they mediate, do breathing exercise and then they stretch to stay limber. Being in California enables them to embrace the outdoors year round and enjoy their home tennis court. As an avid tennis player myself, Chef and Lilly can really stroke the ball with a great deal of consistency with long rallies, you can hear Chef after Lilly hits a tough shot say "What are you doing Lilly?” with a sense of humor in his voice as he aggressively runs down the ball, only to hit the ball back with a great deal of precision. A near pro hockey player from his youth, you can sense his competitive nature still burns very hot.
As I reflect on our time together I am deeply thankful that I was able to be able to sit and talk with this wisdom filled Master Chef, who has such wonderful admiration for our Detroit chef community.
We thank Chef Metz for talking the time to help us understand who we are as a chef community in America. This interview will be featured in our Detroit the City of Chefs II film this coming fall. https://detroitcityofchefs.com/index_2.html