These Atlanta Chefs Got Their Starts in Massage Therapy and Late-Night Shifts at Taco Bell

When you picture a major chef in Atlanta, you might think of that crisp white jacket, their rise to celebrity status, and or an unshakeable confidence in the kitchen. What is easy to forget is how that chef got where they are today — the journey of struggles and hardworking beginnings. It’s much like a stellar dish. Diners see it beautifully plated — micro herbs dotted on with tweezers, and bowls wiped to erase any drippings of sauce. Behind the scenes, however, that pork dish may have gone through a 48-hour braise, a season of waiting for the right truffles, and an insufferable amount of julienning.

Here are stories from three Atlanta chefs with interesting stories of how they came to the pass.

Gunshow chef worked midnight shifts at Taco Bell

At 17, Cody Chassar, who became chef de cuisine at Kevin Gillespie’s Gunshow last year, worked at his neighborhood Taco Bell in Chesterfield, Michigan. He’d walk two miles from his house after school to get there for a midnight shift. He was the cook and cashier, working his way through tacos and burritos, saving up for a car.

“As I kid I thought, I can’t draw for sh-t, I can’t paint, I can’t play an instrument. But then cooking became that thing for me,” says Chassar.

“Making that perfect quesadilla perfectly crispy was a great learning experience. Which sauce was the best and what not. I fell into it by accident. I had zero plans for what I wanted to do.”

Chassar says learning “speed-slinging” at Taco Bell and later at Red Lobster was one of the most important skills that helped him in his future career. Keeping up with service is essential, he says, and then fine-tuning techniques comes next. Chassar is one of the chefs most recently given the Rising Star award by Restaurant Informer. You might still spot him at a Taco Bell with a cheesy gordita crunch.

“The sauce for chicken quesadilla is the best item on the whole menu,” says Chassar. “But my guilty pleasure is the Mountain Dew flavor Baja Blast. Keep that away from me.”

Cody Chassar

Studying massage therapy helped this pastry chef knead dough

Nickey Boyd, pastry chef at the Indigo Road Hospitality Group overseeing the dessert programs at Oak Steakhouse, Coletta, Indaco, and O-Ku, says she studied massage therapy and social work in college.

“I didn’t know what I wanted to do,” says Boyd. “I did dead end jobs and worked retail for years.”

Boyd says when she was first married, she worked as a homemaker, learning to cook and bake, and that’s when she realized cooking could be a career.

“People think cooking is a hobby. It’s what housewives do when they’re bored,” says Boyd. “[After culinary school] I was 30, I was late in the game. And I knew I wanted to be a well-known pastry chef.”

Boyd’s initial schooling did not go to waste. She says she uses her massage therapy and social work degrees in the kitchen constantly.

“When you’re massaging there’s techniques with your hands and it’s the same with bread dough,” says Boyd. “You’re feeling to see how smooth your dough is getting, are there any lumps you need to feel out?”

She says social work is a large part of communicating and delegating back of house.

“It all tied with me working in the kitchen and as a service worker,” says Boyd.

Boyd moved from Brooklyn to Jacksonville, working multiple jobs at restaurants and bakeries, eventually ending up in Atlanta last year. She competed in season 10 of “Spring Baking Championship” on Food Network this year.

Learning knife skills from the family’s butcher shop in Mexico

“I grew up in a family of butchers and I started working when I was a teenager,” says Chef Luis C. Damian, founder of Mi Casa Tu Casa Hospitality Group, which operates five restaurants in Atlanta including El Valle in Midtown, Oaxaca in Chamblee, and Casa Balam in Decatur.

His family moved to the U.S. in 1997, and that’s when Damian started his first job as a dishwasher at a Bahama Breeze.

“I only worked a week as a dishwasher when the fryer guy called out,” says Damian.

“I said chef, throw me in. I started chopping vegetables — I had knife skills, of course. After two months, I was like, man, I like this. This is what I’m gonna do.”

Damian moved on to work at The Cheesecake Factory and completed his culinary degree from Culinary Institute in Puebla, Mexico.

“Culinary school doesn’t mean you’ll land a job. You know nothing about financials, about people skills,” says Damian.

Now leading multiple restaurants, Damian says his experience at big corporations like Bahama Breeze and The Cheesecake Factory helped him learn lessons beyond the kitchen, including human resources, profit and loss, cost of items, and other business related skills needed to be an executive chef. Damian was previously at Big Sky Buckhead and the now closed, Esporpión.

“I’ve been the trenches for 20 years and only 5 years ago I started seeing the light,” says Damian. “It was a lot of work but it paid off.”