rederic Morineau,
executive chef of the
Ritz-Carlton in
Sarasota, Florida,
recalls how, “since I
was small I was
impressed with
American life and wanted to go
there.” Growing up in Angers, a
medieval town in France’s Loire
Valley, he comes from a family with
a long history in the food industry.
His great grandfather was a pastry
chef, his grandfather and uncle
were chefs, and his father was
general manager of Cointreau.
Chef Morineau’s father
encouraged him to go into a
profession like computers or
medicine but at 16 he started a
restaurant apprenticeship program.
At 18, he moved to London to learn
English, working as a line cook at
the Café Royal on Regent Street, a
banquet facility spread out over eight
floors that did about 5,000 covers a
week.
Chef Morineau returned to
France to serve in the Army and
ended up as a general’s personal
chef. He then moved to Cannes, working as a
line cook at the famous five-star Carlton Hotel
before moving to the Caribbean island of St.
Martin, where he worked as a line cook in a
hotel. In St. Martin, 80 percent of the clientele
was American, he says, “so I started to understand
a little bit the logistics of serving them.”
Chef Morineau explains, “when working in
America you might cook French cuisine, but you
must do certain things differently.” For example,
Chinese food around the world takes on the
preferences of the local culture. “Chefs must adapt
themselves to that taste.” In the states, there
are things he feels won’t be well received, like
charcuterie; sweetbreads or livers aren’t often
featured on American menus. “At Publix, I bought
a beef tongue for only one buck ... in France it
would be pretty expensive ... the cashier looked at
me like ‘are you sure you really want this?’”
Chef Morineau came to the United States in
1992 when he was hired as a sous chef at La
Boheme Restaurant at the Snowmass Resort in
Aspen. His first week on the job he went to a newly
opened hotel in town, the Ritz-Carlton (now the
St. Regis). “I took a look around and said, ‘this is
where I need to be.’” That dream came true in 1996
when he was hired as the restaurant chef of the
Ritz-Carlton in Atlanta’s Buckhead section.
Marriott had just acquired the company and
was making steps to differentiate its hotels.
There was a push for each restaurant to have its
own identity and an initiative for hotel food to
display quality and innovation, “which at the
time was not usually the case.”
An advantage of working in Buckhead was that
Ritz-Carlton’s corporate headquarters (now in Chevy
Chase, Maryland) was next door. “That was a great
benefit to my career because anyone wanting to
open a Ritz-Carlton stopped at the corporate office,
so we always had VIPS or future owners at our café.”
After three years, Chef Morineau was promoted
to executive sous chef. He then moved to
Ritz-Carlton’s downtown Atlanta property as an
executive chef of the Atlanta Grill. “I must have
done a good job because after a year I was asked
to open the Ritz-Carlton Sarasota.”
The main facility at the 266-room Ritz-
Carlton Sarasota sits on the marina. The hotel’s
dining facilities include the 80-seat (with
40 seats outdoors) Vernona Restaurant, which
handles breakfast, lunch, and dinner; the Bay
View Bar and Grill; and the Cà d’Zan Bar.
Chef Morineau is also in charge of the Beach
Club Grill, part of a $30 million complex a
few miles away on Lido Key, and the area’s only
gulf-front restaurant. It is accessible only to guests
and Ritz-Carlton Members Club members. Despite
the members-only status, the Beach Club Grill
traditionally serves 400 for lunch in season. A Tom
Fazio-designed golf resort opened about 20 minutes
away with a clubhouse and another dining venue
scheduled to open in the summer of 2007.
Chef Morineau’s day involves driving between
sites, overseeing four kitchens (soon to be five) and
60 employees, including 10 sous chefs. The secret to
juggling everything, he says, is to hire a good team: “I have very talented chefs working with me.” One
of the great things about being an executive chef, he
adds, “is you’re not stuck behind the restaurant line
doing the same dishes every day. One day I might
do a tasting, then move on to look at the menu for
the new golf resort ... my job is always different.”
MENU DESIGN
From a culinary standpoint, Sarasota is not as
sophisticated as Atlanta. Chef Morineau says he
approaches his menu design cautiously, not doing
anything too avant-garde. “You can’t come in and
say, ‘this is what you’re going to eat now just
because I tell you it’s better.’ You go slowly but
surely.” He tries to balance offering what people
are accustomed to, “but I always want to push
farther. The best thank you is I now see
downtown restaurants following what we do.”
Although food quality has improved in Sarasota,
Morineau wishes he had more competitors: “The
more competition you have the better.”
Unlike the Beach Club Grill, Vernona is open
to outside diners, and about 50 percent of
business comes from off property. Vernona
was the first restaurant in town to use organic
products—about 80 percent of the produce is
organic. Chef Morineau has high standards for
his ingredients, noting that most area restaurants
serve frozen shrimp from Asia while he uses
fresh shrimp from the Gulf or Cape Canaveral.
Because the Vernona kitchen also produces
food for the bar and room service, the menu
only changes every couple of months. However,
there is a weekly tasting menu taking advantage
of the latest offerings from local farms. Because
of this attention to detail, Vernona’s accolades
include Mobil's Four-Star Dining Award, AAA's
Four-Diamond rating, and Wine Spectator's
Award of Excellence.
Florida is known for its blue hairs and early
bird specials. Despite those demographics, the
Ritz-Carlton does two to three weddings a weekend.
Even though many people come to Florida to
retire, their children often get married there.
The Ritz-Carlton recently handled an “amazing” half-million dollar kosher wedding,
complete with a 100-piece orchestra at the John
Ringling Museum, for the people who own Paris
Hilton perfume. Chef Morineau hired a kosher
consultant from Miami. He finds weddings
interesting because they use people’s favorite
foods. One challenge is they often involve
numerous tastings—a challenge heightened by
the fact that so many brides and grooms live
outside the area, which means tastings are done
on weekends.
Yet, says Chef Morineau, when it comes to the
entrée, most resort to a meat/seafood duo such as
beef and lobster. If parents are paying for the meal “they want it to be classical.” The wedding reception
lets him be more creative. He has developed a
savory cone that encases different tartars. Another
popular option is a sushi station or bruschetta
station with 10 to 15 different toppings.
Chef Morineau had input in the design of the
kitchens at the beach and golf club, but inherited
the Vernona kitchen layout. “My banquet
kitchen is great, but I would redo the restaurant
kitchen in the European style with an island so
the chef is actually inside the kitchen.”
CORPORATE DIRECTION
For the most part, says Chef Morineau, he
has “complete freedom” with Ritz-Carlton. “For
the equipment, there are corporate standards,
but you don’t have to fully comply with them.
You run the show. If your profit margins and
numbers are good they don’t bother you.”
Using organic food was initially a concern for
his GM, but Morineau says because he works
with local growers organic food is often less
expensive in season than nonorganic products. “It’s a matter of looking at your food costs when
you create a recipe ... and charging the right price
for it ... we make a lot of money from banquets,
so the more banquets you have, the more you
can buy for your specialty restaurants.” The
hotel, with 18,000-square-feet of banquet space,
does around $8 million annually in banquets.
The company is looking at buying a conveyor
belt for plating, which “pushes you to work at a
certain speed” and enhances delivery. In the old
days, everything was cooked and sent in a hot
box to the banquet room. Equipment like the
Rational combi oven lets Chef Morineau plate
food cold and retherm it. “It saves labor and the
quality is better ... you can plate up in the morning
and don’t have to keep all your staff at night,
just one or two people to reheat and serve. We
want to plate our food at the last minute, even
with 600 people in the ballroom, so the meat
and sauce are fresh as opposed to sitting for half
an hour in a hot box. We want people to sit in
our banquet room and feel they’re having a
restaurant experience.”
One of Morineau’s pet peeves is what he
considers the sameness of hotel food. “I hate to go
to a hotel and eat the same thing, regardless of
whether it’s in Boston or San Francisco. When
groups banquet with us I try to help them discover
new flavors.” He likes incorporating South
American flavors like mojo sauce and working
with vegetables like boniato, often called the
Cuban sweet potato.
Chef Morineau’s wife is from Ecuador,
and some of her native cuisine influences his
cooking: “When we go there, I always ask her
mother to show me a few tricks ... Ecuador is
famous for its ceviches. We do a ceviche bar with
five or six different fishes or lobster. We do a lot
of grilling and barbecuing.”
When asked if America is everything he
expected it to be, Morineau responds, “I came to
this country with $400 in my pocket. See where
I am now and what I’ve got. I’m very thankful to
this country. I don’t think I would ever have
been able to achieve that if I stayed in France.
And the Ritz-Carlton is very good to me. It’s a
company that has always taken care of and
pushed me to the limit. It was the best decision
of my life to come here.”
Local Flavor
