Paul Booth, Minneapolis Community
& Technical College
By Mike Mitchelson

Paul Booth’s career as a chef might be owed to a dining room manager at the old Eddie Webster’s restaurant in Bloomington. When he was 19, Booth walked into the restaurant to find a job, he thought as a busboy. “He said he didn’t have anything, but maybe the chef did, so he sent me in to see the chef,” Booth said. “The chef said, ‘Yeah, I’ll train you on pantry.’”

By the end of the year, Booth worked his way up the line, made decent money, and decided to stick with the profession. Now, 26 years later, he works for the foodservice management company Taher Inc. as the executive chef at Minneapolis Community and Technical College, and was named 2006 Chef of the Year by the American Culinary Federation’s Minneapolis chapter at the organization’s Annual Awards Banquet in November.

Cooking for the masses at MCTC—about 1,200 meals per day, plus catered events for guests and visiting organizations—requires cooking for many masses. Appealing to MCTC’s very diverse student body through the school’s two food lines and second-floor kiosk is a challenge Booth appreciates. “We have people from all over the world, and big groups from Somalia, Ethiopia and Japan,” he said.
He has free reign with his menu, and relishes the opportunity to research for authenticity. It’s paid off—there aren’t many Minnesota—or U.S.—chefs who can say they serve up a great camel dish. Throughout Taher (and MCTC’s Ethiopian students), Booth’s traditional Ethiopian dish of spicy camel meat served with injera bread is well known. The camel meat he purchases is Halal prepared. “I’ll use that (Halal) in the marketing,” Booth said. “And the students come in and say, ‘No way,’ and I’ll say, ‘Way.’ And then it’s, ‘All right, serve me up.’”

The foreign students appreciate the effort made to serve their cuisine on different days of the week, Booth added, and efforts are also made to accommodate vegetarian and vegan diets. “I try to make sure I have offerings for them, and not just a veggie pizza,” he said. “I try to make it a center-of-the-plate type item. Sometime during the week, no matter what ethnic group you’re from or dietary restrictions you have, you’re going to be able to come in and be happy with something.”

Obviously, camel and other unconventional ingredients require going beyond his usual distribution channels. No problem. “I really like it (that the students) are so diverse,” Booth said. “It’s fun as a chef, because I end up going to Holy Land, Jerusalem Bakery and Taste of India, and going up University Avenue into St. Paul and the East African Markets. Or Shang Hur on Nicollet to buy my Asian stuff. I just love going into these food places—just going into these shops and smelling these foods gets you fired up.”

Working for Taher gave Booth another reason to get fired up about his craft: world travel


Traveling chefs

Taher Inc., based in Minnetonka, Minn., is a regional foodservice company providing service for private and public schools, technical and community colleges and businesses. Booth began work at Taher and MCTC about four years ago, and after about six months on the job joined its Chef Council, a seven-member group including company president Bruce Taher. The group travels to foreign countries about twice per year for research and menu development. Since he joined the group, Booth has traveled to Thailand, Spain, France, Italy, Turkey and, most recently, India. Booth said ideas from the India trip are already showing up on the company’s menus.

What, exactly, happens on these trips?

“We eat a ton of food,” Booth said, laughing. “We try to cover everything from the stand on the street to the best restaurant in the city. We try to talk to chefs, get into kitchens, and take a lot of pictures. You get a bunch of chefs talking about what they’re tasting and taking notes in the restaurant, you’re probably going to get a pretty close guess as to what’s in there. Then we back it up with an online study and buying cookbooks while we’re there.”

The group will also take cooking classes when they can within the country, and—even better—talk their way into a restaurant kitchen to learn traditional methods. On a trip to Turkey, the group ate in a restaurant and asked the chef if they could return the next day to learn how to make traditional doner kebobs. “He was so happy we came back; I don’t think he believed we were going to,” Booth said. “We were hanging out in his kitchen for about four hours, and he was talking with us and explaining things—we had a translator with us—and we’re taking pictures and notes.”

Booth has similar stories for every trip—in Spain there was the Escoffier-designed kitchen in an aging Ritz hotel, in France there was dining on rustic cheeses and other food in a castle. “And (the group is) all chefs, so we’re fever pitched freaks about it,” Booth said.

But there is a risk involved: “We were in France, and we had the greatest meal I’ve ever had,” he explained, laughing. “Then I come back, and went to some restaurants here, and I thought, ‘This is garbage.’ I dumped some olive oil in a pan to cook something here and thought, ‘This is crap.’ But that wears down after a while, and you’re back to going to Perkins.”

(Booth put a bit of France on the MCTC menu late last month—an authentic cassoulet. “It’s so bad for you,” he said, gleefully, as he served a portion to this drooling reporter and his photographer, “but so good—real, old world cooking.”)

The trips are also meant to predict food trends that might cross the oceans, but mostly it’s a search for authenticity. “We try to see it the way they do it,” Booth said. In Thailand, they noted all the condiment bowls available for native customers to customize their meals, Booth said, which resulted in Taher offering the same setup for their Asian food stations, right down to the bamboo matting for presentation. “We try to make it as authentic as we can possibly get, and we back up our credibility by saying we were actually there.”

And for the next trip? “We’re talking possibly Morocco,” he said.


Outside the kitchen

Booth is an active member in the Minneapolis ACF, which he joined about four years ago, and the group’s network led him to his current job. He was stunned by the Chef of the Year award. “I love being part of this group,” he said. “The members are awesome. For me, knowing the ACF and the networking paid off.”

The payoff is not just the networking, he added, it’s having an avenue to volunteer in a variety of public service, charity and general “good cause” events the chapter is involved with. “I feel like, no matter what, I owe the ACF,” Booth said. “I don’t want to wreck my karma, and also it’s the right thing to do.”

He still finds time for fishing (one might find him out on the Mille Lacs ice this winter), and to cook at home and dine out with his girlfriend. And while all the travel has broadened his tastes, he still finds plenty of restaurants in the Twin Cities to rave about. “112 Eatery is awesome. Solera is awesome. La Belle Vie, incredible. And I like going to Holy Land for their brunch.”

But now that the semester has started again, there’s less time to cook fine food for himself, or dine out. “I’m going to be getting my butt kicked,” he said. “It’ll be four in the afternoon after a 10 hour shift, I’ll be tired, and I’ll pour a big bowl of Trix cereal and chow down.”

To contact Paul Booth with any comments or questions, reach him at chefpaulcooks@yahoo.com.