Last Update 12/29/2002 by Chef Mars
PROFESSIONAL INFORMATION ON CHEF MARS
Graduated from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio with a degree in chemistry in 1968.
Began culinary career in Sonoma County, Ca. in 1970 at the Timber Cove Inn as an apprentice. Located on the Great Highway, Timber Cove was then a discreet retreat for San Franciscans and artists filled with over 500 Ansel Adams photos. The California cuisine movement was in it's formative stages and even up there we were stating the experiment, using local seafood out of Bodega Bay and buying fresh produce and dairy products from local farmers.
Traveled through the Caribbean, Central and South America studying the local indigenous culinary and cooking heritages and customs.
Relocated to Miami, Florida to start working and living in a great city. Sonesta Beach Hotel, Pavillon Hotel, Hotel Intercontinental, Faces-in-the-Grove and the infamous "Menage". Miami in it's days of the comet, streaking along all fiery and colorful, glowing in the dark of even the earliest mornings.
Dropped down to the Dominican Republic in 1987 as executive chef for all of Casa de Campo's vast and high quality food operation. In 1989 promoted to position of Food Director; sort of a super chef for 7000 acres, 9 and 1200 private villas.
After being whacked by Hurricane Georges on September 22, 1998, relocated to the Cincinnati, Ohio area where I am working for a young technology company that is the leader in the rebuilding of industrial robots, Antenen Research and pursuing an MBA degree to couple with my 20+ years of kitchen operations experience.
MAJOR CULINARY AND KITCHEN INFLUENCES
Traveling down the long road to becoming a chef, I had many personal and distant influences that brought me to my current condition. I will mention just a few for now;
Raymond Oliver,
Julia Child,
Paul Bocuse,
Guy Gateau,
James Beard,
Rudi Berggold,
Dominick Fragala,
John Clarke,
Lee Schrager,
Chez Panisse,
Louis "the butcher"
SOME INFORMATION ON WHY and HOW THIS SITE WAS CREATED
The Cyberchefs Electronic Union page is a site for fellow professional chefs who would like a communications tool, a forum if you wish, where an HONEST exchange of ideas and information can flow. After surfing the internet in 1995 and actually being entangled in some "culinary" web sites, I realized that what I was looking for did not, to my knowledge, currently exist. There were numerous "FOOD" sites, but not for professional chefs, and anyway, within the flux of information there is much that is misleading and uninformed. Sort of like many of the recipes in the newspapers, they just don't work because they are not done by professionals nor with integrity. I felt that the real soul of this internet phenomena was in being part of it on an interactive level. So I decided to start this website, which would only become useful and valuable to the profession with your participation. As in the kitchen, teamwork brings the success.
But how to create one of these pages I asked myself.
- Stumbled across "NCSA (at UIUC) Beginner's Guide to HTML." and downloaded it.
- Taught myself HTML and JavaScript by trial and error experiment; frequently falling asleep in front of the computer.
- This led me on to investigate many more sites which were dedicated to the HTML markup language that the WWW uses to compose it's documents which are then "browsed" or displayed as graphical screens on you computer's monitor.
WEB SITE CREDITS
Just to mention some of the people who helped bring this site to life. Each contributed in their own way if they did did not even realize it. Like all successful projects, the team is important, and we all stand on someone else's shoulders in some manner.
The "RULES OF THUMB" pages are reprinted with the permission of
"SEFA, The Alliance of Premier Foodservice Equipment and Supply Dealers (708-699-4070)" and are part of their complete SEFA RULES OF THUMB.
Dominican Information
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