Meet Michael Gooch | Chef & Restaurateur

We had the good fortune of connecting with Michael Gooch and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Michael, what led you to pursuing a creative path professionally?
I knew when I was 8 or 9 years old that I wanted to be a chef. As a kid in the 80’s while most kids were watching after-school cartoons and programs, I was watching Justin Wilson and the Frugal Gourmet.

I would have my mother take me to the market to purchase the ingredients from that days program and come home and try to recreate it! She was fine with most of the ingredients except for giving a 9 year old a bottle of Chablis. lol, so I had to settle for the salted cooking wine. She had a little bit of a problem with how much Justin Wilson was using the wine in his dish and how much he was actually drinking on air!

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I take great pride in what I serve! I have a true love for food and not only the food but what it means for people to sit around the dinner table making moments together while they break bread! There is nothing like a great meal with family and friends and the memories of thise times together!

Honing my craft took years of trial and error to get it right! Being a talented chef takes, patience, practice, success and failure to truly get it. It is an occupation that you have to have passion for to succeed.

I remember being full of myself when I got that first executive chef job, I had learned from Charlie how to run a kitchen, he was Chef Ramsey before anyone had heard of chef Ramsey lol. So I quickly learned on a Sunday morning brunch at the All Good Cafe that yelling at the staff got me nowhere. I had a packed dining room and only had myself and the dishwasher to cook and serve the 200 people waiting for breakfast. I knew then that I had to develope better communication skills and went to work on that part of my skill set.

It was a hard place to work at the time and I was always ask to hold my checks, the owner would take equipment from the kitchen we needed for service, he also wouldn’t allow me to hire the proper amount of staff to execute. I realized then that if I was going to be successful in developing better management and communication skills it couldn’t be in this environment.

I went on from the All Good to open my very first place of my own. Here I learned the struggles that the owners of the All Good faced, with tight margins for labor and food cost when it’s all on you to be successful or fail.

So at this point I’m 7 years into my career and finally starting to put all the pieces of the puzzle together. So when ask was it easy to become a really good chef the answer is heck no. There are a lot of ups and downs along the way!

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
For me we are checking out my adopted home state of Louisiana. A lot of my family are from or live there and to me it’s a foodie paradise! I have actually done this trip with friends several times and there is nothing like the food, hospitality and culture of Louisiana.

The food really gets good once you hit the Atchafalaya basin, but first we would stop in Louisiana’s oldest city, not New Orleans as most people think, but in Natchitoches. We would pick up some crawfish at T Johnny’s and go to Front street on the banks of the Cane River and have them crawfish right underneath the covered porch. We would then stroll front street and go to the oldest general store in Louisiana and enjoy the French architecture and gas lamps, then turn in for the night at the Hotel Saint Denis.

The next morning we would have a southern breakfast at the hotel, grab some meat pies from laysonnes for the road and check out the cane river creole historic sites and make our way down to Alexandra for a late lunch or dinner at Buckets in Pineville, they have excellent catfish. We would either spend the night at the historic Bently and have a cocktail in there underground bar or go 20 miles south to Chennyville and stay at one of my favorite haunted places the Lyod Hall Plantation. It’s a fantastic stop and the best thing is breakfast with Ms. Buella as she tells you the stories of the haunted Plantation and has been the caretaker for 60 years, a truly amazing person!

Day 3 the Atchafalaya- we start our day in Le Compte at Lea’s lunchroom for breakfast and the day would take us through one of my favorite places, Opelousas. The spice capital of the world and the home of zydeco music. It’s also the home of Tony Sacher’s creole seasoning company and just down the road in Ville Platte and slap Ya Mamma Spice company. There are so many spices blended here I couldn’t even list them all. It’s also the birthplace of a very important influence in my chef life, Chef Paul Prudhomme which I met in 2001. From Saint Laundry Parish we Travel east on 190 to Krotz Springs and get to me the best boudin and cracklins in the state at kartchners market. Then make our way south to Bruex Bridge for dinner at Tante Marie or maybe a burger at Angelles Old Fashioned Hamburger, the owner is quite a funny character and full of stories.

Day 4 – our first stop would be in Grand Coteau at Petite Rouge for some herbal tea blends to take home with us, as they have an excellent blend of teas and its a beautiful little town. Then on to Lafayette to the Acadian Cultural center. From there we are headed just 20 miles south to one of my favorite areas of the state, New Iberia, the language is a cross between English, French and swamp and it feels like you’ve entered another country, it’s fantastic. We would go over and tour the Tabasco factory which is quite fascinating and spend the evening at Jefferson Island touring the gardens and checking into our cottage for a nosh tray and glass of wine overlooking the beautiful lake. On a side note the peacocks on the island really freak you out with their mating calls if you’ve never been. It sounds like a woman being murdered or something!

Day 5 – Today is the day we make our way across old US 90 and stop off to check out the creepy town of Morgan City, stop by the best butchers for some sausages and meats to pack on ice for home and grab a donut at the 24 hour donut shop before making our way to New Orleans to cap off the trip. By this point it’s late afternoon so a stroll through the arboretum and the tree of life before hitting the quarter for dinner at ACME for the best chargrilled oysters of any place! When you are sitting there watching the guy behind the bar shuck 8 sacks of oysters during your dinner, you know you’re in the right place! You can’t help but be amazed at the skill they show! Then look over your shoulder and see the cook grilling your oyster right in front of you on the open flames, it’s quite the experience!

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
Several people along the way have helped me out by mentoring me and standing by my side along the way!

First off, I wouldn’t be here today without all the support from my wife, which I meet way back in culinary school through a classmate in 1996. She has been the rock though all the late nights I spent working fine dining to the incredibly long days of high end catering!

When doing my apprenticeship at the Doubletree Hotel in Dallas, I had a very tough chef to work for. Most of the employees couldn’t stand working for him as he held you accountable and would throw some off color comments your way for messing up! His name was Charlie Sacher and he really thought me the fundamental foundation of how to be a great chef and how to be a complete 5 tool chef. After getting my but kicked during the Thanksgiving brunch I went to turn my notice in to Charlie as I had to go do 300 hours in the pastry department and there were no openings at the Doubletree for this. I was going to the Marriott to complete this task so I could graduate from culinary school. Charlie told me “Gooch, you’ll be back” I told him not a chance in hell. So after completing the hours I needed in pasty at the Marriott I realized how much Charlie was actually teaching me and how he had took me under his wing so I made that phone call I had dreaded and ask him for my job back. He took me back and ask me what had took me so long, lol

After this I wound up at the Grape working under chef Jim Hamlin and Brian C Luscher which both further mentored me.

I got my first break to be an executive chef under the mentoring of a couple of excellent chef owner partners at the All Good Cafe in Deep Ellum Brian Hennington of Deep Ellum Cafe Fame and Daddy Jack Chaplin.

This compiled the first 5 or 6 years of my career and all these people played a pivotal role in making me the chef I am today

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