THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 17, 1995 TAG: 9509150206
SECTION: SUFFOLK SUN PAGE: 12 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: By PHYLLIS SPEIDELL, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 163 lines
WITH THE FLASH of a cleaver and a flourish of his cooking thermometer, Chef Warren S. Brenan comes to the culinary rescue of busy families all over Western Tidewater.
A robust man in chef's attire topped with a white sweatband instead of the traditional chef's toque, Brenan is an unlikely looking super hero.
He has, however, saved numerous families from the dietary dangers of too much fast food or skipped meals and he does it with the flair of a TV cooking show host.
Brenan, owner and sole employee of Professional Home Chef Service, appears in a client's kitchen once every few weeks to whip up a supply of dinner entrees. No more nights of takeout tacos or lukewarm pizza when Brenan has stocked the family freezer with dinners that might include quiche Lorraine, barbecue ribs, parsleyed chicken breast en croute, country meat loaf with gravy, vegetable lasagna and lemon dill salmon. And at a cost not much greater than home cooking and less than eating out, Brenan noted.
The entrees, cooked to the client's specifications, are packaged, labeled with directions for reheating, and stowed in the refrigerator and freezer.
One of Brenan's first clients, Margaret Rosner, knows her family appreciates a home-cooked dinner, fresh from the oven, nutritionally balanced, and seasoned to their liking. But Rosner, a Carrollton resident and pharmacy director at Maryview Medical Center in Portsmouth, also knows that the demands of her career and her family's schedule will not allow her to put that ideal meal on the table every night.
``My 14-year-old said she was tired of eating fast food and this is so nice for busy nights,'' Rosner said. ``It has also given the kids an opportunity to try new things like the lamb kabobs that have become everyone's favorite.''
Because Brenan provides all the ingredients he can guarantee the quality of the meal.
``Fresh is what I am about,'' he said, laughing at his reputation as a picky shopper.
``The local produce managers and butchers all know me,'' he said, adding that he does cause a small commotion when he makes a quick supermarket stop while still in his chef's whites.
Brenan, a Western Branch resident, graduated at the top of his class from Johnson and Wales University College of Culinary Arts in 1994 and is a member of the U.S. Personal Chef Association. Gwen Martin, marketing director of the association, which is headquartered in Albuquerque, N.M., noted that the idea of a personal home chef is a relatively new business concept that started eight years ago in southern California and the greater New York City area.
``We have grown to 800 members in just our association since 1991 and have about 10 in Virginia,'' Martin said. She said the unique personal aspect of the business has been its biggest asset.
``The chefs become part of the family,'' she said.
Brenan agreed that personal communication with his clients is key to his success. Each new customer fills out a family culinary questionnaire detailing their likes, dislikes and menu preferences.
``I always submit at least two menus and allow them to mix and match,'' Brenan said. ``I see this as a partnership with the client.''
When a Brenan-made meal has been reheated, garnished, and is ready to serve, he wants the client to be feel free to say, ``The chef and I did this.''
Brenan, 37, was only 14 when he began working in a hospital production kitchen in Charleston, W.Va., but he had no thoughts of a culinary career then. His heart was in the outdoors and after a year at Marshall University, he became a forest ranger.
Although he loved the job, the static salary and looming layoffs were a problem for the family man he had become. Also well skilled as a carpenter, Brenan with his wife, Joyce, relocated to the Tidewater area.
By 1987 the couple was settled here with careers going well until Brenan suffered an on-the-job knee injury so severe that even surgery and extensive rehabilitation left him unable to return to active carpentry. Brenan found manager positions in a cabinet shop and a hardware store, but recurring knee problems and a tight economy sent him back, unwillingly, to unemployment and disability payments.
``I was not going to do that,'' Brenan said. ``I was not going to lay around on my knee.''
Determined to find a better way, Brenan limped to the library and did his own vocational research.
``The culinary field looked promising and I had always enjoyed cooking,'' he said.
After two years at Johnson and Wales, Brenan landed jobs as a chef at Kingsmill in Williamsburg, Williamsburg Landing, and finally the Town Point Club in Norfolk. ``The future looked great,'' he said.
Then disaster struck. He re-injured his knee.
Unwilling to spend the rest of his working life on some sort of disability relief, Brenan thought back to the graduation thesis he had written about the potential of an in-home occasional chef service.
`It was time to get the project from paper to reality,'' he said. `Although I am not a deeply religious person, I think the big guy up there has been steering me along this way and finally I am at an age where I can think `Why fight it?,' '' Brenan said.
Since he launched his business last spring, Brenan has seen it grow comfortably to include active families like the Rosners, convalescing elderly couples, vacationers who want a week's supply of really good meals to take to their beach cottage, dinner party hosts, and career couples like Ramona and Alf Mapp of Portsmouth.
Ramona Mapp, professor of English at Tidewater Community College, and Alf Mapp, writer and professor emeritus from Old Dominion University, are typical of Brenan's clients in that they value nutritious and healthy food well prepared.
Alf Mapp describes his wife as an excellent cook who enjoys cooking when she can.
``When I have time I want to cook, but occasionally when I have been run ragged it is nice to pull something from the freezer,'' she said.
Meals in the Mapp home need to be low sodium, low fat, low sugar, and generally prepared without red meat, a trend Brenan sees often.
``Most of my customers are very conscientious about their diet, but they are not used to cooking low fat,'' he said.
To accommodate the Mapps' preferences, Brenan uses several of their favorite family recipes interspersed with his own menu suggestions.
From the time Brenan enters a kitchen and sets up his equipment ``mise en place'' (a culinary term for everything in its place and ready to be used) to the moment he cleans up and sweeps the floor, four or five hours elapse during which he is constantly moving: slicing, dicing, mixing, baking, sauteing until the kitchen is filled with delectable aromas.
Once the aromas became too tempting, luring the client's hungry teenage son into the kitchen where he devoured several dozen freshly baked muffins Brenan had left cooling for the family. On his next trip to that house, Brenan was pulling an apple pie from the oven when he remembered the boy's appetite and garnished the pie with a business card on which he had written ``Don't even think about it.''
``The important things are sanitation and proper food handling,'' Brenan said, admitting that a few of his clients think he is somewhat fanatical about safety when he presents them with a food thermometer and teaches them how to check the temperature of each dish before they serve it.
Brenan also makes a practice of sanitizing work surfaces in the kitchen before and after he cooks. The kitchen may have been clean when he arrived, but chances are it will be cleaner when he leaves.
Food safety and nutrition are two of the topics Brenan stresses when he volunteers his time to teach cooking skills at the HER (Help and Emergency Response) Shelter in Portsmouth and to elementary students in after-school programs in Western Branch schools.
Skilled and creative as the affable chef may be, he is unhappy with the label ``gourmet chef'' and the image it suggests.
``I just do real good cooking,'' he said. ``To me the simpler the dish and the fresher the ingredients, the tastier it is going to be.'' MEMO: For more information about chef Warren S. Brenan's Professional Home
Chef Service, call 483-0557.
ILLUSTRATION: [Color]Cover and inside photos by JOHN H. SHEALLY II
Warren Brenan cooks in a customer's kitchen.
Brenan chops parsley that will add some zip to a recipe.
``The local produce managers and butchers all know me,'' says Chef
Warren S. Brenan, who insists on fresh ingredients for his
customers.
Mushrooms and a sauce simmer on a stove top - one of Brenan's meals
in progress.
Brenan relies on his favorite cookbook, ``Betty Crocker,'' for many
of the meals he makes.
by CNB