Tampa's hardest-working restaurateur lives in a world three blocks long. Jeannie Pierola, the executive chef at Bern's steakhouse and chef partner at SideBern's, spends her days, her very long days, driving up and down S. Howard Avenue between the two restaurants, making sure everything is just how she wants it. One of these jobs would be demanding. Two? Two is ridiculous.
It's noon, and Pierola is sitting in her small bungalow office near Bern's in a pair of gray chef's pants and a green T-shirt. She's already been at work for three and a half hours, ordering produce and looking over last night's reports. A small woman with sandy hair, the 43-year-old Pierola sits perched in her chair, trying to explain her philosophy of "One World Under Food," which also happens to be SideBern's slogan.
"The food has to be at warp speed and to do that you need to reach all over the world for flavors," she says, leaning across the table that separates us. "That's how you get the newest combos. I'm constantly studying. That's the best thing about this job – I'm never bored."
Pierola's job at Bern's is quite different than her role at SideBern's, the restaurant she took over in 1998. The steakhouse is a landmark, an institution, and while there are upgrades to be made (Pierola is in the midst of implementing a 65-variety cheese menu), the menu changes little from day to day. Bern's is a well-oiled machine; the people working in the kitchen know the menu and know their roles. There, Pierola's main job is as a manager.
But at SideBern's – her baby – Pierola has the chance to flip things daily, an opportunity she relishes. The menu is always the first step.
At 12:45, Pierola jumps into her silver BMW X3 and drives the few hundred yards up South Howard to SideBern's, where she parks in a spot – her spot – marked by a "No Parking Anytime" sign. Michael Buttacavoli, the restaurant's chef de cuisine, and Chad Johnson, the sous chef, are waiting in a separate dining room when she arrives. Pierola, chewing gum like a ballplayer, sits at the head of the table, whips out her iBook and asks how the previous night went.
"It was slow," Johnson tells her.
"It's June, man," she says. "June sucks."
The three are friends, and talk easily with each other. Pierola admires Buttacavoli's new wedding ring (she catered the reception), talks about Hell's Kitchen (a new TV reality show starring a stereotypically abrasive chef) and tells an old story about making another chef cry. "I was like Tom Hanks in A League of Their Own," she laughs. "'There's no crying in the kitchen!'"
But there is business to take care of. Today's dishes will be shaped by what sold the night before, what is in the kitchen and whatever inspiration Pierola, who was never formally trained, might find.
There is no food on the table, yet the three discuss meals as though the ingredients are right in front of them. They run through a checklist with each entree they change. The rack of lamb goes from chorizo-crusted to cashew chili-crusted. The vegetables switch from a coco bean puree and red wine-braised plantains to a canary lentil dahl puree and pea shoots.
Watching Pierola in these sessions, it's easy to understand why she's in this business. She is a virtuoso – a coach, a conductor and an editor all rolled into one. The food combinations, taken from flavor profiles honed over her 20 years in the kitchen, fly off her tongue. She fires off the alluring names of possible ingredients – cepes and muenta and piquillo sabayon – and the chefs nod along as she types the new entrees into the laptop in front of her. "I can taste it in my head," she says later. "A dish has a beginning, middle and end, just like a song or a poem or story."
And when you try to sell one, you better have the words right.
A few days earlier, Johnson had been playing around with a variation on traditional southern Red Eye gravy and had come up with what he called a "peppered espresso sauce." It dressed a prosciutto-wrapped oho (a Hawaiian fish) the night before.
"I think you're really underselling a great sauce," Pierola says to Johnson. "It's much creamier than it sounds … what if we used it with the wild king salmon?"
And she's riffing again. Roasted sunchokes. Vanilla bean-braised chicories. Caramelized cepes. And the sauce. That sauce. What to call the sauce?
"What about… café au lait?" She asks. "Yeah, a 'café au lait emulsion.' I think that will go really nice with this dish. It sounds voluptuous."
And she types it into the computer. "Café au lait emulsion." It sounds right. It'll sell.
Pierola could do the menu on her own and just fax it over to the chefs if she wanted to. But, as she sees it, her job isn't just to put together a menu. It's to develop talent. Not only does Pierola run two restaurants, but she and partner David Laxer are planning to open a third (and a 99-room hotel) across the street from the steakhouse. She won't be able to concentrate on all three; soon, the chefs are going to have to do this on their own.
"She's always been one to teach," says Buttacavoli, whose career started at Pierola's last restaurant, Boca, in Ybor City.
Sitting in the chef's suite adjacent to SideBern's kitchen, Pierola looks out at her staff. A young man slowly cuts a baby carrot in half, taking his time and measuring the sides when he's through. Her eyes tear up. "You're just so proud and happy that they care that much," she says.
So much for no crying in the kitchen.
She may depend on her staff, but Pierola wants things done her way. "I can say blue and these people know what shade," she says proudly. "Everybody knows how I want things."With SideBern's menu done, Pierola moves onto Bern's in the late afternoon. The kitchen is just starting to heat up when she arrives.
The "back of the house" is an immense labyrinth of coolers and machines, bars and wine cellars. Pierola navigates it easily, checking in with the various stations. It takes almost 100 people to keep the steakhouse and its robust menu moving. Most greet Pierola with a deferential "Chef."
It's a term of respect, one you have to earn, she says, adding, "Most chefs who have to ask [for the title] are gonna be asshole chefs." But don't think that Pierola takes it easy when someone in the kitchen makes a mistake. "I'm sure there are some choice things to say about me," she says. "I'm tough and I'm demanding."
And it doesn't matter whether she's talking to a Bern's waiter who has been there for 35 years, or a SideBern's prep chef who's been around three months.
"I'm an equal opportunity bitch," she says.
At 4:30, Pierola walks through both kitchens, tasting the night's sauces and veggies. Then at 5, she heads home for a brief rest and to let her three dogs out. (Her own kitchen is nice, but not extravagant: condiments, beer and wine in the fridge, an economy-size tin of honey roasted peanuts on the counter.)
Then it's back to the grind.
Kitchen life is all about details, Pierola says, and most of her evening is spent picking at the process in both of the restaurants, fixing problems only she sees. Even during a slow month, when the typical sprint of a kitchen becomes a lazy jog, Chef finds things that need work.
The vegetable of the day at Bern's – a stir-fry – tastes too acidic. A goat cheese salad is being plated incorrectly. And at SideBern's, the Hazelnut Crusted Wild King Salmon with the Café au Lait Emulsion is coming out of the kitchen too muted. The plate is made up only of subtle shades of khaki.
Pierola snaps into action. "We need a coffee bean extract [dark brown] and a hazelnut mousse [fluffy white]," she tells Johnson. A plate has been made, is ready to serve, but Pierola holds it, waiting for Johnson to whip up the extra sauces. He moves furiously in the back, mixing the mousse in a stainless steel bowl. "C'mon Chad," Pierola says from the front.
He makes the mousse in under a minute and hands it to the chef, who quickly plops a dollop on top of the pink salmon. The plate is ready.
Pierola goes on like this for a few more hours, dealing with staff complaints, vacation schedules – even an ill-hanging curtain in SideBern's foyer.
By 9:30, it's time for her day to end. She takes off her white chef's coat and gets a glass of wine at the bar. She hasn't eaten much – save the tastings and a few handfuls of fresh popcorn she took from the seafood station at Bern's (it comes with the ceviche). She walks into SideBern's kitchen, the kitchen she built, and tells Buttacavoli to fix her whatever he wants.
For the first time all day, the busiest chef in Tampa lets someone else make a decision.
This article appears in Jun 15-21, 2005.
