In the kitchen with . . . Executive Chef Stephen Kolar
Sunday, October 30, 2005 1:24 AM PDT
Tami Hart
Argus Observer
ONTARIO
It's a fusion of influences of East, meets Far East, meets West, but the cuisine from Chef Stephen Kolar's kitchen at the Cheyenne Social Club still maintains its simple origins.
Take for instance Kolar's new specialty, a tender boneless pork roast stuffed with dried apricots and prunes and an apricot sauce, broccoli with Hollandaise sauce, glazed carrot blossoms and “pommes fondant” - a half-baked, half-poached potato.
“It's still meat and potatoes, we're just decorating it a little fancier,” Kolar said of the presentation of the dish, which also features a strawberry floret garnish.
Kolar, the new executive chef at the Cheyenne Social Club, said he plans to educate people on dining and hopes to turn the Cheyenne into the best restaurant in the state, or even the West.
“It just depends on how we can elevate the place,” he said. “We're going to do it in phases, one notch at a time. This is the first phase,” he said of his specialty dish.
Five-star dining will be the final notch and that comes with time, he added.
And with customer demand.
“It just depends on what people want. It's not too hard to figure out what they like and then work on that. In Ontario, it's similar to where I came from in West Virginia. The people are simpler, from the rural areas, and enjoy the meat and potatoes meals. There's hundreds of ways to make potatoes, and they're going to taste them all here,” Kolar said.
Kolar's culinary roots began in West Virginia, where he graduated from the Culinary Institute in Wheeling. He then moved on to Las Vegas, where he served his apprenticeships in various Vegas hotels. He progressed to room chef at both Caesar's Palace and the Flamingo hotels and was also executive chef at the Tropicana, Circus Circus and the Hacienda hotels on the Las Vegas strip. Kolar also spent four years as a corporate executive chef in Japan and prior to landing in Ontario, was the executive chef at the Fitzgerald Hotel in Las Vegas.
It was his love of the country and the simpler lifestyle that brought him to Ontario.
The simpler life and the Cheyenne Social Club also mean a smaller kitchen, but Kolar said that allows him to do less delegating and have more hands-on time in the kitchen.
“You can do a better job than you would in a big hotel. In a big hotel, you have 10 or 11 kitchens and you have to rely on your staff and delegate, delegate, delegate,” Kolar said. “Here, you can come up with a more detailed product in a small place.”
In addition to turning out fine meals, Kolar's kitchen also serves as a training ground for aspiring chefs.
He looks for entry level cooks with little cooking experience who want to make a career in the culinary arts.
“If you find that kind of a person, you train them. You have no choice. This is a business where the chef is also a teacher and a mentor,” Kolar said. “Here, it's like opening up a culinary school. You have to teach people and do it slowly, one piece at a time.”
During his own culinary education, Kolar said he picked up pieces from wherever he worked.
“In this business, to learn it, unfortunately, you have to live a bit of a nomadic lifestyle for a while until you've gone through the broad spectrum of what's out there in the culinary field. You can't learn it at one hotel.”
The days of having a culinary “speciality” are over, though, Kolar said and today's chef has to enjoy making Chinese food just as much as preparing Portuguese cuisine.
“You've got to mix it up.”
Kolar said he looks forward to giving customers at the Cheyenne Social Club what they like.
“You try it out and if they like it, they come back. If it's too fancy, they're not going to come back. Here, the people are not complainers. They like this place and we're just going to give them a better variety of food, a better designed food and a better format.”
