Meghan Levins, a Culinary Institute of America-trained chef and former executive chef at Monnik, recently joined the Great Resignation. She tells us why.
If I was asked to name a local chef most likely to join the Great Resignation, I would never have thought of Meghan Levins. Yet now she’s a full-time webinar monitor for a national virtual education firm.
Look at Levins’ biography, you might think, “There’s a chef for life.” She’s been working in restaurants since she was 15, when her Mom told her that if she wanted a car she was going to have to earn it. She took the challenge, grabbed an after-school job at the Molly Stark Tavern in her home town in New Hampshire.
Her job was bussing tables, she said, but she quickly fell in love with working in the kitchen. Management nurtured her, created a pantry chef job for her, and by her senior year in high school, gave her the recommendation that got her into CIA, the Culinary Institute of America.
Is CIA really is as tough as Chef Michael Ruhlman wrote in his memorable book, “The Making of a Chef”? Absolutely, she says. “It was very military,” she said. “I wouldn’t take it back for anything.” CIA trained her as a chef and started her on a round of kitchen jobs, moving around the country with her former husband, who was in the military: New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, Louisiana, and finally Kentucky.
Nine years ago, when her husband got out of the military, they tried to figure where to go. “New England was too cold, the Northeast was too expensive. “A bunch of people told us we’d like Louisville,” she recalled. “They told me I’d love Louisville, a farm-to-table scene starting up. I was like, ‘You’re joking!’ I thought of this as a rust belt area.”
But they came for a three-day weekend at the peak of autumn’s beauty and, she said, “I just felt connected right away, and here I am.” ...
Read the complete article on LouisvilleHotBytes,
http://www.louisvillehotbytes.com/great-resignation
You'll also find this commentary in LEO Weekly online later this week.
http://www.leoweekly.com/category/food-drink/
