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Greene touts pro kitchens as best classroom

Greene touts pro kitchens as best classroom

When school let out for the summer in Ninety Six, S.C., cooking classes started up for Steven Devereaux Greene. Since his mother, a teacher, led summer school during the day, Greene stayed with his grandmother, who taught him to cook from scratch using fruits and vegetables she grew. Like most boys, he dreamed of a career as a football player, but reality already was steering him toward life as a chef. At family gatherings, where he learned to grill, he gained such confidence that he applied to cook at Greenville, S.C.’s Marigold Market, a traditional French restaurant, when only 16.

Marigold’s French-born chef-owner, Pascal Hurtebize, wasn’t about to let the Low Country lad into the kitchen so easily, and he insisted Greene prove himself first in the front-of-the-house. But the curious teen was still poking around the kitchen, asking how sauces were made, touching and tasting foods, and asking to learn more.

Alot has happened in the 13 years since, most significantly Greene’s 2005 opening of Devereaux’s, where he is partner and executive chef. The energetic and inquisitive 29-year-old hasn’t stopped sticking his nose in other chefs’ work, and he’s staged at several restaurants around the country, most notably Thomas Keller’s French Laundry in Yountville, Calif. He counts those unpaid learning experiences among his most treasured.

BIOGRAPHY

Title: Partner, executive chef, Devereaux’s, Greenville, S.C.Birth date: January 3, 1980Hometown: Ninety Six, S.C.Education: high school graduateCareer highlights: Working for chefs Ken Vedrinksi and Scott Crawford, and staging at The French Laundry, L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas and Alex restaurant at the Wynn hotel in Las Vegas

When you started cooking, you intended to go to culinary school, but decided against it. Why?

I stayed at Marigold Market until I graduated high school, and Pascal [Hurtebize] strongly suggested I go work for Louis Osteen [at Louis’s Restaurant & Bar in Charleston, S.C.] They weren’t hiring, so I went to work for Steve Kish at 82 Queen in Charleston. After four months there, he made me sous chef and told me I had a lot of potential. He thought I didn’t need to go to culinary school, that I could learn more working with him and at other restaurants. It was great advice.

Advice that ultimately led you to leave and work elsewhere.

Exactly. A restaurant around the corner, McCrady’s, opened up, and the chef, Michael Kramer, was supposedly doing really different stuff, not the Low Country cuisine so popular back then; he was doing tasting menus in a refined California-cuisine-style. A friend went to work there and told me I should come there, too. I was a sous chef already, and I didn’t want to have to start over as garde manger to get my foot in the door. But when I ate there, it was like, “Oh man, I have to work here. It doesn’t matter what it takes.”

Michael was a great chef who really taught me to work on my finesse. I learned to make pâtés, prosciutto and proper gnocchi. I learned to butcher whole fish, whole lamb, about everything.

What was it about working at the Woodlands Resort & Inn in Summerville, S.C., that really set your destiny?

Cooking was all I did, was all I cared about. Just a few months after I went there, it got its fifth Mobile star, and when you’re at that level, you pour more into it. You don’t have an outside life. I understood that cooking was a passion, a gift for me, and it’s all I thought about.

Has that changed?

No, it hasn’t. On a short week I work at least 60 hours, but most always six days a week. That’s mostly why I’m not married yet. When a girlfriend learns she doesn’t come first, that the restaurant does, they really don’t like that. My restaurant is something I’ve dedicated my life to, and at 29, I can’t back out now or relax. I’ve got a lot of goals that are still set high. I know if I’m not going to work for them, they’re not going to fall in my lap.

You were 25 when you opened Devereaux’s. How did you open it when you were so young?

My brothers and I wrote up some business ideas, looked for places to do it and then looked for money, which was the hardest thing of all. We ended up asking an uncle for a loan. He had no restaurant experience, but said: “If I’m going to get into [restaurants], I’m going to do it with you. But you’re going to have to find other investors to buy me out in two years.” He ended up loaning us the money to open the restaurant in June 2005, and before the two years were up, I had new investors [Table 301 Group] who bought him out.

Your food draws inspiration from many different cuisines, so how do you define it?

I call it contemporary American, but mostly because that doesn’t confine me to certain ingredients or any one style. It allows me to switch things when I want. I’ve learned from so many different chefs who’ve influenced my cooking that it’s hard to point to one thing.

In addition to working for some great chefs, you’ve worked alongside others at food events. Is it safe to say you recommend others do the same?

No question that working with people like Thomas Keller, Rick Tramonto, Michelle Bernstein and many others has made me a better chef. Guy Savoy cooked at my restaurant in September. When I staged at different restaurants around the country, I worked for free. I saved the money to afford it and usually stayed with friends where I went. I can tell you that education costs a lot less than culinary school.

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