You can’t — unless you know one of his clients.
Welcome to the world of personal chefs, those who make lavish meals for parties of as few as six people. Zervos, who has made lavish banquets for hundreds, may now be called upon to create nothing more challenging than a grilled cheese sandwich for a child’s snack.
George Zervos always knew what he’d be doing for a living – and he had the right role models in his immediate family.
“My grandfather had the well-established Busy Bee café in Santa Barbara,” he says. “It’s part of my roots – I grew up in the culinary industry. My family is Greek and has a big focus on family dinners and cooking together. Even when I was a child that was an outlet for my creativity. I went from high school in La Cañada to working in restaurant kitchens, then went to college and majored in food service management. I found that I was more interested in the hands-on part in the kitchen, and I applied for an apprenticeship program and went straight into the business. I have thought about what else I might have done with my life, but I never seriously considered anything but cooking.”
Once Zervos got into a restaurant, he discovered a cruel fact – being successful in culinary school doesn’t give you all the skills you need in a day-to-day restaurant job. It took a while to learn to deal with the hectic and unpredictable rhythms of a working kitchen, but in time he got the hang of it.
“When I got out of college in the 1980’s,” he recalls, “I worked for a big chain restaurant company, and I found that a lot of what I had learned wasn’t really that relevant. Even though I had a degree in food service management, I feel like I am largely self-taught. When you are in a chain restaurant, you have to conform to a plan that is already in motion. You start out under an executive chef who is in control, but kitchens are collaborative places – you can give your advice on things. We’re all in there together, and an executive chef will pick up things from his sous chefs and vice versa. This isn’t the kind of thing that happens in the middle of a dinner rush. You don’t start making a recipe differently just because you have this vision of how you can improve it. But you have a lot of time with other chefs doing prep work or over lunch breaks, and that’s when you experiment and share ideas.”
Zervos went on to jobs with greater prestige, like the French Room at the Ambassador Hotel, the LA Athletic Club, and Hilton Hotels, and picked up awards for his skill at ice sculpture and other kitchen techniques. Of the various jobs at the kitchen, he had a particular enjoyment in what may seem like a humble job – making salads and cold appetizers.
“At the LA Athletic club I was the gardemanger, the person in charge of preparing the cold food,” he explains. “I enjoyed that because it’s a department where you can really stretch your imagination, make beautiful preparations. You’re working with a palate of fresh flavors and textures, and you have a lot of latitude to surprise people with how much you can do. Compared with the hot foods, you are working with a lot more color, with symmetry of presentations, creating food as art.”
As many chefs do, Zervos job-hopped, ascending the professional ladder each time, and he eventually was part owner of a pair of bakery cafes. It was a hugely stressful job, and he decided to sell the business.
“It was time to do something different,” he says, “so I decided to move to the South Bay and become a personal chef. I had friends in the business here, and they encouraged me to move. It’s a different pace, and I’m cooking for people who appreciate the cuisine I like to create. This area is every bit as interesting as more celebrated places like Melrose and the West Side – there are chefs here who are very talented, and people who support and appreciate them. The ambiance, the produce – I believe we have the best of everything here.”
After the high-pressure world of being responsible for hundreds of meals a day, Zervos’ description of his new job sounds idyllic: “My duty’s to prepare breakfast, lunch, and dinner for a family of six – breakfast and lunch while I was there, and I would make dinner and store it and give them instructions about preparation. I like working that way, because unlike most chefs I get to go out for dinner and try other restaurants. The meals I create are varied – I do anything from a grilled cheese sandwich for one of the kids to a chateaubriand or a big business lunch or dinner. That’s what a personal chef does – a wide range of cuisines, taking into account anybody’s food allergy, likes and dislikes, but trying to always come up with things that will surprise and delight them. I have to come up with new and different things within the parameters they have established. I have to check some things with them. If I felt like exposing them to something like Vietnamese or Moroccan food, I would have to ask first. Some of my clients are very open to new things, some like variations on what they know. “
It sounds easy, but Zervos warns that you have to be at the top of your game all the time.
“The challenge,” he says, “is that you have to be very good at what you do. You are getting paid to make every meal nourishing, appealing, and appetizing, to make every item special three times a day. Some clients are very particular, and you need to keep them engaged, keep them feeling special. I have customers from Palos Verdes to Dana Point, some of them on boats, who hire me to create things for them in those small kitchens. I do parties, special luncheons, and sometimes it is a juggling act to handle all of them at one time. My clients usually have what I need, but I bring a lot of my own tools so I know I have things I can rely on. I have someone who is available when I need help on a big job, but otherwise, it’s all me.”
In days gone by, Zervos explains, those wealthy enough to have a personal chef might have regarded them as almost a servant. But cooking is now accepted as an art, and chefs get respect commensurate with their skill.
“Interest in cooking has exploded over the last few years,” he says. “Everybody is getting into it, and my clients are more informed, asking for more interesting things than they probably would have a decade ago. Every once in a while my clients come over my shoulder and ask, ‘What are you doing? What are you making?’ And I always like educating them. Most of them, though, are really only interested in the end result.” PEN
George Zervos can be reached at 949-922-1579.
