John E. Thompson, Minneapolis Club
By Mike Mitchelson

While we northern state natives often have a hard time imagining life without cold and snow, we still wonder why anyone raised in more agreeable climates, in their right mind, would voluntarily move here.

Ask John Thompson, executive chef of the Minneapolis Club since January, and he’ll tell you it was because the position was an opportunity he couldn’t pass up.

True enough. With its vine-covered exterior and dark wood interior, the Minneapolis Club is steeped in history, and will celebrate its 125th anniversary next year. Many surveys rank it as one of the top-rated city clubs in the nation. But then Thompson adds another reason: His family is looking forward to snow. “I grew up in the South,” he said. “Twenty-five degrees was cold. But if it’s cold out you can either stay inside and do something or add another layer of clothes and go outside. When it’s too hot, you can’t do anything.”

Also true enough.

Thompson said he’s also looking forward to settling into a city for a good, long time for his wife, Enyce (who is the catering director for the Minneapolis Crowne Plaza), son Jack, 13, and daughter Halsey, 10. “Minneapolis is a great city for the arts, and we’re looking forward to the change in seasons,” he said. “It all rounds a person a bit better.”

Thompson’s rounded out in his professional career, which has included stops at various prestigious resorts and clubs. Before arriving at the Minneapolis Club, he was the executive chef at the Greenville Country Club in South Carolina, an exclusive, century-old club with two championship-length golf courses.

Formal culinary training was at CIA in Hyde Park, where Thompson graduated in 1992. He also met his wife there, and the two traveled to the U.S. Virgin Islands, where Thompson worked as a sous chef at the St. Croix island resort The Buccaneer. He became the resort’s executive chef at age 24, but didn’t let it go to his head. It was one of those situations where, he said, “you get on the line, then the sous chef leaves, then the executive chef leaves. …I handled it, but I had nowhere near the expertise (required),” he said. “After that, I took a step back and honed my skills. I took sous chef positions for (the next) 10 years.”

With his wife pregnant, they decided to move to Houston, Texas, where Thompson worked as a sous chef at the Houston Country Club, and from there to Savannah, Ga. and the Landings Club, again as a sous chef. He also taught classes at the Savannah Technical Institute, picked up another sous chef position at the 17 hundred 90 Inn’s eponymous restaurant—one of Georgia’s most acclaimed. He eventually moved on to the Colleton River Plantation, a high-end golf and residential development at Hilton Head, then to Wilmington Island, for a brand new venture, where he was involved in the kitchen design and ordering equipment. He worked there for three years, before becoming executive chef at the Greenville County Club for five years. Then on to Minnesota.

“It’s a phenomenal club—it really is,” Thompson said of the Minneapolis Club. Appealing to Thompson was the overall mindset—which is quite different from a country club. “It’s a city club,” he said. “The focus is on food and fitness. I’m not competing with the cost of overseeding (turf) or buying three new tractors (for the golf course).”

There’s much more variety in the cooking, he added. “I don’t miss the Memorial Day to Labor Day pool season, where you’re making $150,000 in chicken fingers and French fries in three months.”

Appealing was also the diversity of membership, with some families stretching back four generations.


First things first

Though it was hardly a rebuilding effort, Thompson still had to completely evaluate his kitchen staff. He quickly realized the first thing he needed to do was “pull back on the reins,” he said. “There was a lot of what I call ‘confusion cuisine’ going on.”

For example: one cook prepared a pistachio crusted rack of lamb with a lavender gastrique. “Maybe it could have worked, but it wasn’t prepared properly, and didn’t speak of good, sound cooking,” he said, adding that if it’s a good piece of meat, “it’s best to do a simple preparation.”

There are also the simpler—but equally important—things that need to be executed. The club has, in essence, four dining concepts within the club, ranging from pub fare to fine dining, and much of the tradition of the club is built on business meetings and lunches. Members want consistency, quality and service, Thompson said. Perfection in fine dining is demanded, but also “day in, day out, is the burger hot, the tomato fresh, the tuna salad consistent—we’re making sure to look at all those factors, down to the set up in the kitchen, the organizational structure.”

That organization extends down to the individual cooking stations, where Thompson implemented standard mis en place, so any cook can go to any station without disrupting flow.

Thompson has gone beyond foundations, however, and started a new tradition at the club—chef’s table dinners, and soon will offer a three to five course menu in the dining room. The first chef’s table was offered February, and sold out in a day. “It’s something to keep things fresh,” he said. “We’ve done about two per month.”

There are other options at the club for him to show off his kitchen’s ability—last month there was a “wild game week” (see Thompson’s recipe for one of the meals). There’s also the option unique to a club environment—approaching a group seated for dinner, “taking the menu, and we’ll say, ‘We’ll keep cooking for you until you say stop,’” Thompson said. “It’s fun and an inventive for the kitchen.”


Mixing old and new

Thompson isn’t the only new blood at the club. With the club’s general manager, hired in November 2006, they have a common goal to make the club the best in the country. “Our visions are very close,” Thompson said. The club, according to its Web site, is ranked one of the 22 most distinguished clubs in the world, and in recent years ranked as one of the top ten city clubs in the country.

“Those numbers are nice,” Thompson said, “but we’ll know when we’re the No. 1 club in the world.”

The club’s 125th anniversary offers an opportunity to celebrate the club’s history and its future. Thompson said he found the first Board of Governors menu, which he might adapt for the 125th celebration. “(The Minneapolis Club) is business; we’re meeting spaces,” Thompson said. “We’re nowhere near contemporary. We’re built on history. We’re about maintaining traditions, but we also want to create new ones.”