Today we’d like to introduce you to Steve Chambers.
Hi Steve, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
The story starts WAY back when I was around four or five years old (1980-ish?), living with my grandparents in a tiny Knoxville, Tennessee suburb called Hall’s Crossroads. I’d watched (and helped a bit) as my Gramma had made breakfast numerous times, and in the depths of my toddler’s hubris, I believed myself capable of doing the same as a surprise for the family.
The surprise was almost entirely my Gramma’s as she came bustling into a smoke-filled kitchen just as the pan of bacon that I was tending from the top of a tiny step ladder burst into grease-fueled flames. This became my first lesson in how to manage a grease fire. It was also the first tiny step on a lifelong journey in the world of Food & Beverage.
Fast-forward nearly a decade and transport yourself a few miles south and west to the city of Tupelo, Mississippi. After time spent in and around Austin, Texas, during my formative years, I’d been moved there to live with my mother, from whom I’d previously been somewhat estranged and lying about my age; I took my first job as a busboy for a local Ryan’s Steakhouse. Shortly thereafter, our grillman called out on a busy Saturday night due to alcohol-related circumstances. I learned the intricacies of beef tips and filet mignon at the tender age of 15.
Not long after, I began working for a growing local deli franchise that had started in Starkville, Mississippi, opening their first location in Tupelo. I worked through all aspects of the location and, before I was 18, was being deployed as a Corporate Trainer and Location Opener for new units in NE Mississippi and SW Tennessee. That organization now has 400+ units all across the US.
I left Tupelo during the winter of my 18th year for the greener pastures of Atlanta in the mid-90s with the promise of the impending 1996 Olympics and all that entailed. Being a huge nerd at heart and an avid table-top roleplaying game enthusiast, I made the joke at the time that I was leaving to go find my way into the fold at the prolific Atlanta-based White Wolf Game Studio creators of the World of Darkness & Vampire: The Masquerade. Little did I know that that joke would become a reality ten years or so later.
On my arrival in Atlanta, I immediately found my way to the Virginia Highlands, taking an opportunity at the once staple location, American Roadhouse, to which Atlanta has sadly bidden a fond farewell. Over the course of the next half-decade, I would hone my craft all over Atlanta’s mid-town and Decatur/Avondale, serving time at a number of bright shining stars of a bygone era: Everybody’s Pizza VA-HI, Club Kaya, Pauly D’s, Luckie’s Irish Pub, and Harvest to name a few. I was driven to broaden my experience and leave places in a better state than I found them.
Ultimately, this led me to stumble onto Contract Work, a path that started at Alpharetta’s UPS Supply Chain Solutions, where I spent a short stint as interim-Executive Chef, followed by several years of serving at BellSouth’s last headquarters where we ran an open-to-the-public Business Dining cafe, as well as catering events and an Executive Dining Room at the corner of 14th & Peachtree; known as The Campanile Building in those days. From there, I took a short sabbatical from leadership to work a year at a former staple of the Emory area, Bagel Palace & Delicatessen, a well-cherished experience due to the placement of that organization in the local community of the time.
Just as I was about to begin a second year of service at Bagel Palace, however, I got a call. My former mentor from BellSouth was in charge of a new property, something bigger than we’d ever done before, big enough that he needed my blades to return to his service. And so it was that I became Executive Chef for Turner Broadcasting Systems.
Based out of their main campus at 10th Street across from Georgia Tech, I found everything from Cartoon Network to Williams Street to CNN Center under my purview. Foodservice, business dining, catering, special events, VIPS, Talent, a whole new world crossing over between my love of food and hospitality and Big Entertainment’s interworkings. The main facility itself was massive, and for those folx that don’t know: as above, so below. Underground studios and offices, service ways, etc., an entire complex, the beating heart of the organization beneath the stunning complex above, and an opportunity to learn so much more about the ways of Craft Service and handling specialized populations.
My tenure there ended with a posting in the classified section of Creative Loafing, and though I can’t quite remember the words verbatim, it went something like this: “International production company hiring passionate culinary professionals for our in-house Café. Come cook great food for a bunch of adult children crafting video games!”
And so it was that I learned about CCP Games (Crowd Control Productions), a company based in Reykjavik, Iceland. At the time, they were best known for an incredibly beautiful, if terribly niche, video game: EVE Online, an open-world spacefaring MMO colloquially known as “Spreadsheets in Space” for its robust focus on player-driven economics and interrelations. Their Viking longships had sailed the Atlantic, establishing a beachhead in Stone Mountain by acquiring a local business whose IP they intended to turn into “The Next Great Massively Multi-Player Online Roleplaying Game.”
I arrived at the location, having spent my entire trip wondering why the address seemed so familiar in the back of my mind. Lo and behold, as I walked up to the front door, I could see banners and memorabilia spanning the last two decades. Banners depicting vampires, werewolves, and all the other creatures that stalked the Long Night of the World of Darkness. I was at White Wolf Game Studio.
…I took a $10k pay cut.
For the next three years, I immersed myself in the task of providing hospitality and delicious meals to the employees and their families in the place where I dreamed of working as a teen. As far as that went, we were an open-door location, a paradigm that the Vikings had brought with them from the Home Office and one that I helped them spread to their other offices across the globe in Newcastle, England, and Shanghai, China. All were welcome, and there was no point of sale, just a welcome mat, a smile, and a bounty of options available, making us the heart and hearth of a project that ultimately never saw the light of day for reasons multitudinous and multifaceted. Vampires never really do so well in the light of day anyway…
Ultimately, we parted ways as the project began to deteriorate, and I found myself curiously, in free agency and then, nearly as suddenly, in the employ of an NFL team by way of contract. And that is a whole other decade-long story. Suffice it to say that I am now, to the best of my knowledge, one of the only people in the world, if not the only person, to directly oversee the Chef-Driven Performance Dining programs for two separate professional athletic teams across two entirely different leagues of play, having taken both to the pinnacle of their various competitive achievements and here I am, still, just playing with food…
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
For anyone in our industry, the road is rarely smooth and often dark and full of terrors, but the challenges thereof are a huge part of what keeps me going. Restaurant closures, power outages, burst water mains, terrible customers, shady co-workers… we’re known as a bastion of cast-offs, misfits, and the marginalized. For better or worse, these are my folx, and I’ve worked hard to carve out a place where we are free to be who we are while doing the thing we love.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Well, I’ve spoken quite a bit about my culinary/hospitality & leadership journey as a part of my story, but at heart, I’m an artist and creative, food being far more like Jazz to me than Math, while also not being my only creative outlet. I’m also an amateur photographer and writer, though I’m limited in publication. You can find out more at my blog “Playing with Food (just ’cause Mama told me not to)” (https://epicureanmilitant.blogspot.com/p/playing-with-food), though it’s been a while since I’ve posted new content. My personal catering/F&B consulting business can be found at wellseasonedservices.com, and ko-fi.com/vsqchambers is where all the crazy stories and people in my head leak out onto the internet.
Ultimately, I specialize in custom-crafted customer experiences and providing food and hospitality to specialized populations, but I’m also happy to spin a fanciful tale or two or stop to enjoy and take pictures of a dramatic sunrise or a particularly delightful blossom.
How do you think about luck?
Luck, both fair and ill, is a constant, but like the man said, “(Good) Luck is the intersection of preparation and opportunity.” I don’t recall which man that was, and to be fair, it could just as easily have been a woman, but regardless, when plotted on a graph over time, it holds true on average.
Contact Info:
- Website: wellseasonedservices.com
- Other: https://ko-fi.com/vsqchambers | https://epicureanmilitant.blogspot.com/p/playing-with-food
