Culinary Journey to Wellness with Executive Chef Nick Marchesano
Join Doro and Tricia as they chat with The Gasparilla Inn’s Executive Chef, Nick Marchesano, a culinary expert known for his commitment to sustainability and wellness. In this episode of Health Gig, Chef Nick shares his journey from a family-inspired kitchen to working with celebrities like Ed Sheeran. Discover the latest trends in the food industry and gain insights into healthy cooking habits that anyone can embrace.
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Website: https://the-gasparilla-inn.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nmarchesano/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicholas-marchesano-82909495/
Quotes:
When we write our menus, we just learned the other day that millennials are inherently more collaborative, so I always try to not be the kind of chef who just writes a bunch of material and then asks the people that work for me to cook it. - Nick Marchesano
My staff and I wake up and say, “Hey, what is this dish going to be like to cook?” We do a lot of research and development at home before we bring it into The Gasparilla Inn. - Nick Marchesano
I think that everybody is moving towards their most local and sustainable producers. - Nick Marchesano
Show Notes:
Nick Marchesano: I'm started cooking at a super young age. I grew up in a primarily Italian household, you know, all the way down to my grandmother, lived with us for a good bit. So there was a lot of cooking that was done at home. I grew up on the outside of D.C. and Prince George's County
Nick Marchesano: when I look at where I started cooking and why I cooked for a living, I think it's pretty pointed at those events and all of the family recipes that were shared amongst families and coming together to cook and, you know, people stirring red sauce for three days straight and making a mess in a parish basement kitchen.
Nick Marchesano: I went to Johnson and Wales University for four years and did the first two years as an associates of science. And then I finished up the Bachelors with Hospitality management, with a minor in wellness and sustainability.
Nick Marchesano: I've spent a lot of my career in the South. So North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida now and then a little bit of Louisiana. The south for me is a very opulent area. And I think that that's where we learned really well how to purchase appropriately and purchase, leading towards wellness and sustainability
Nick Marchesano: I started working the Masters tournament in 2011.
Nick Marchesano: I worked for Ed Sheeran on the entirety of the Divide World Tour Europe and the United States over the course of three years. I was doing six months during that, and then the other six months of the year was at Augusta National full time.
Nick Marchesano: I'm always very reflective and thankful and blessed. And I surrounded myself with just really good people that help grow and move my career
Nick Marchesano: I think that the toughest and largest responsibility of a chef right now, or at least what I focus on and I think what sets me apart is procurement and where you buy from. And I think that the Broadmoor really spoiled us because we did have this ability to work with the best products constantly.
Nick Marchesano: We try our best here at The Gasparilla Inn to order within this region. And I try my best to not go any further west than Louisiana or any further north than North Carolina. And obviously it takes a lot more work to purchase that way.
Nick Marchesano: As far as your event goes, that's where we wanted to make sure that we were using the best and the freshest and the closest of everything that we could possibly find. And then on top of that, you know, kind of going into things that are easily digestible and, you know, nothing's inherently heavy, you should be able to come down here and go to the pool and go to the beach and not feel weighed down by lunch or dinner.
Nick Marchesano: It's going to be really fun. The Monday night dinner buffet, we've kind of leaned on kind of more worldly cuisines that lend itself to lighter and vegetable based cooking.
Nick Marchesano: Obviously with the Gulf of Mexico and where we're located, the grouper is very local, does not have to travel far at all. We're going to do that with some spiced sweet potato wedges.
Nick Marchesano: It's also a good learning experience for the sous chefs to be a little bit more involved in the menu writing than they typically would be at that stage in their career. We took about 4 or 5 days and we went through and we did probably about four iterations of the menu before we came up with something that we all really, really enjoyed and we felt we'd like to put out.
Nick Marchesano: During season, it's about 57 line cooks and then about 20 managers.
Nick Marchesano: Italian is where I feel most comfortable, either Italian or I would say some of these like very traditional French techniques. But I always gravitate towards Italian when put on the spot.
Nick Marchesano: It's more of that super regional production where things aren't necessarily like, you don't have to buy your favorite wine from Napa Valley and you don't have to buy, you know, from Italy or France or Spain.
Nick Marchesano: We just redid our banquet repertoire and there's a good amount of your event that we are using to kind of test out some of those other menu items. So it's definitely going to be a flagship for a lot of these recipes that we want to continue to reproduce.
Nick Marchesano: I think that the toughest part about eating well, I'm sure that you guys know this is that you know, think that it's challenging and it's expensive.
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