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Meet the Chubby Cook Team: Scott “The Chubb” Groth

By on October 2, 2011 in About the Chubby Cook

What’s your foodie history?

I love everything about food- thinking up recipes, grocery shopping, prepping, cooking and most of all: eating it.  There’s nothing like a great meal to turn any day around.

I don’t think that I became a “foodie” until a couple years after college.  Since then, it’s been an explosion of learning and experimentation in the kitchen.  All of it lead to us opening The Chubby Cook to provide great food to people.  Crazy when I think about it for a minute!

Do you have a signature dish?

There are a couple dishes that I really do enjoy making, but it’s hard to beat my Rustic Baked Ziti.  It’s just soul satisfying, particularly served with a nice red wine and a hearty bread.

What is your favorite thing to cook? Least favorite thing to cook?

I love grilling… anything.  Beef is one of my specialties.  One of my personal favorite dishes is dry aged strip steak, charred rare with melted blue cheese and a side of whipped taters with bacon croutons.  Toss in some brussels sprouts and we’ve got a winner on our hands.

As far as my least favorite, I’m not sure that I have one.  I love to cook.  The area I have my biggest weakness is Asian cuisine.  With the exception of fried rice and stir fry, nothing quite comes out right.  But, I do love to use the wok whenever I can!

Must have piece of kitchen equipment?

A good knife and a big cutting board.  After that, tongs.

You are planning a dinner party & could invite any three people, dead or alive. Who would you invite?

Well, it would go without saying that my wife, Caroline would be there- right?  So three more?  I would invite Chef Michael Symon, Julia Childs and my buddy Jamie Ginsberg.  I think that it would be a blast and I would absolutely love to cook for that crew.   There are a ton more people that I would like to invite though- this is a really hard question.  How many dinner parties could we plan?

What is your favorite local restaurant?

For breakfast, Your’s Truly in Chagrin Falls.  For lunch, Moxie in Beachwood (right across the parking lot from us!).  For dinner, Fire on Shaker Square.

What is your guilty food pleasure?

I love wine and cheese.  My favorite is Petite Basque on baguette with some saucisson and a delicious Cab.

What do you like to do when not in The Chubby Cook kitchen?

Recently there hasn’t been much time when I am not at The Chubby Cook!  When I am not there, I try to spend as much time with my family as humanly possible.  I’m really lucky to have such an awesome wife and two incredible kids.

What is something that is always in your fridge or pantry?

Homemade stock.

Scott, The Chubby Cook himself, opened the brick-and-mortar Chubby Cook in June, 2011.   Come and visit him, take a tour of the kitchen and enjoy some of our delicious meal options while you’re there!  

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Meet The Chubby Cook Team: Liz

By on August 24, 2011 in About the Chubby Cook

Visited our website recently? In addition to rolling out our schedule of cooking classes this weekend, there were some major changes made to The Chubby Cook website. With updates to our menus for our corporate and fine catering options, we continue to grow and are ready to cater your upcoming get together! Call us at 216.342.4840 for more info on what we can do!

It’s Wednesday, so it’s time for another interview with The Chubby Cook team! Today, we introduce Liz, our office manager:

headshot 1

What’s your foodie history?

Foodie history? Besides eating food for my own personal survival, I have to admit I am no chef! With that being said, I am a strong believer in holistic nutrition and grew up in a health conscience family that I can now look back upon and appreciate. Besides being a server through college, I started in the events industry as a planner and love every second of it. It wasn’t until then I really grew to value the beauty of food and how it really can make or break an event. I may never be caught with a chef’s coat on, but leave me to the visual details and my creativity will shine.

Do you have a signature dish?

A good old fashion salad. Growing up, my mom was always known for her amazing salads she concocted and that unique talent was passed along to me! Not only are these super easy, a bit creative and can potentially be raw -if done correctly. What else could a girl ask for?

What is your favorite thing to cook? Least favorite thing to cook?

If we’re talking about actual cooking and not just throwing together a salad, I really love cooking pasta. Okay, maybe the end result is really what I love, but who’s asking. Least favorite? All of the above. I am not a culinary enthusiast and really hope I can stay that way by marrying someone who feels the complete opposite!

Must have piece of kitchen equipment?

The George Foreman! Not only does this phenomenal “grill” fit on the counter top, but it’s made for those of us who are not as advanced in the culinary field.

You are planning a dinner party & could invite any three people, dead or alive. Who would you invite?

Assuming I’m hiring The Chubby Cook to cater and make me look good? I’m choosing those of the current era, partially because I am completely obsessed with technology and don’t think a guy like Sir Isaac Newton would get that whole concept! Bill Gates, Donald Trump and Sarah Sienesi (she planned the 2011 Royal wedding) would be my guests cordially invited.

What is your favorite local restaurant?

Living in Mentor, there is an excellent Sushi place called “Sumoboy” I love.

What is your guilty food pleasure?

Dark chocolate. I’m not a huge dessert fan, but dark chocolate is a weakness of mine. Thankfully cocoa beans are known as one of the worlds best super foods containing cancer fighting agents and antioxidants, so I guess I’d rather be addicted to that than artificial sweeteners!

What is something that is always in your fridge or pantry?

Bananas. Another super food I tend to gravitate towards for breakfast. I could never eat too many of these!

What do you like to do when not in The Chubby Cook kitchen?

When I’m not working at TCC, I like to stay busy. I am also with GhostLight Productions as an event planner and a lot of my free time is spent working on our upcoming events. I believe knowledge is the strongest tool anyone could possess, so I’m always researching new trends in the industry to help myself stay above industry standards.

Liz’s smile is the first thing to greet you as you enter The Chubby Cook kitchen in Beachwood. Come visit her and the rest of the team for breakfast or lunch sometime soon: tomorrow’s special is Baked Chicken Parmesan Sandwich. Sounds delicious to us!

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Meet The Chubby Cook Team: Caroline

By on August 10, 2011 in About the Chubby Cook

Interested in a fun, community event this weekend? We’ll be at the 3rd Annual Cleveland Yoga Appreciation Day this Sunday, August 14th at Orchard Hills Center (AKA Patterson’s Fruit Farm) in Chesterland. Registration starts at 9:00AM and the 75 minute all-levels yoga practice begins at 10:00AM. Make sure to stay after the practice to sample an array of treats from our kitchen! More info is available at Cleveland Yoga’s website.

Continuing with the The Chubby Cook team interviews, we’d like to introduce you to a very special lady: Caroline, the better half of The Chubby Cook himself!

caroline

Taken in the south of France at one of her favorite restaurants

What’s your foodie history?

I was born in France to a French father and an American mother who love to eat and drink. Three plus hour meals with a feast of food and an abundance of wine were the norm. I was lucky enough to marry a man who also loves to eat and drink – and who happens to be an incredible chef. I am one seriously lucky foodie!

Do you have a signature dish?

I make a mean quiche and a deliciously simple pork tenderloin dish with Dijon mustard and Herbes de Provence. You can catch a couple of my family recipes at The Chubby Cook, as well. My mother’s apple pie is a big hit as well as her family’s secret BBQ sauce.

What is your favorite thing to cook? Least favorite thing to cook?

I don’t really have much of an opportunity to cook in my household, but I do enjoy pouring a couple glasses of wine and keeping Scott company while he cooks. I delight in my role as taste-tester. My least favorite thing to cook is an omelet because I can never get it just right.

Must have piece of kitchen equipment?

A corkscrew & a dishwasher (have you ever cleaned up after a chef? Every single pot/pan/spoon/dish in the house gets used).

You are planning a dinner party & could invite any three people, dead or alive. Who would you invite?

I would invite my grandfather and my two kids, so that I could introduce my son Jack to his namesake.

What is your favorite local restaurant?

I love the quality of the seafood at Blue Point Grille and the authenticity of the dishes at L’Albatros Brasserie + Bar. Doug Katz does an amazing job at fire food and drink keeping the menu seasonal and delicious. But I also love bringing my son to Yours Truly for pancakes and bacon on Saturday mornings.

What is your guilty food pleasure?

Baguette and stinky cheese – the stinkier the better.

What do you like to do when not in The Chubby Cook kitchen?

First and foremost, I am a proud wife & mother. I also like to try new restaurants, experiment with wine and food pairings, travel, bring our labs swimming in the Chagrin River and relax in Chautauqua whenever possible.

What is something that is always in your fridge or pantry?

I whole-heartedly agree with my fellow TCC team member Michele from her interview… wine.

Caroline, The Chubby Cook’s biggest fan, spends a lot of time at our kitchen. Stop in and say hi to her and the entire TCC team: check in on Facebook or Foursquare when you do & you’ll get a free cookie on the house!

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Hummus Party

By on June 9, 2011 in About the Chubby Cook

Sweet.  We love hummus.  We love it enough to want to share it with everyone.

That’s what’s happening this Friday, June 10.  We’re having a Hummus Party.  Check it out:

Our House Hummus:  Creamy with just a hint of roasted garlic to tantalize your palette.  Currently not vegan friendly- we have made this hummus with some sour cream.  Our next batch will be vegan friendly made with some soy yogurt in the place of the sour cream.

Roasted Red Pepper Hummus: Just what the name says- it’s got some delicious roasted red peppers in there.  Our Director of Hummus, Dave, has added some naturally flavored oil into the mix that really makes this hummus pop.  This is a vegan friendly option.

Mediterranean Hummus: We’ve packed this hummus full of flavor with kalamata olives, artichoke hearts and roasted red peppers.  Vegan yo.

We’ve got pita and cut veggies to scoop up the goodness.  If you want some heat, there will be some cayenne hanging out as well.

If you like what you sample, pick up a tub while you’re there.  Limited quantities… like everything else, when we’re out, we’re out!

In the spirit of the Hummus Party- we’re featuring our California Veggie Tacos (formerly The Vegetarranian) as our daily feature.  Flatbread taco’s (we’re making 1/2 with veggie flatbread and 1/2 with plain flatbread) with fresh hummus, our house made olive pesto, roasted red peppers, fresh sprouts and thin sliced mini cucumbers.

Our next Hummus Party will be in 2 weeks.  We’re experimenting with a Jalapeño and Sauteed Onion Hummus, a Sundried Tomato and Arugula Hummus and my personal endeavor is to figure out our “Goddess” Hummus- think raw ginger, Bragg’s Liquid Amino’s and a healthy dose of fresh garlic.

We love food… and it shows.

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We’re having a ball…

By on June 8, 2011 in About the Chubby Cook

Today we got a ball in the mail.  It’s the best ball that I have ever received.  A big Thank You to my friend Jamie- make sure that you follow him on Twitter @Jamieprints.  Check out what he sent!  I’ve been talking to everyone about it today- and it reminded me that I need to revisit our conversation from earlier this year with regard to printing.  Jamie is in the print business- anything you need printed, talk to him first for great ideas and options!!!

Very cool- Thank you again Jamie-

The Crew @ The Chubby Cook

Very cool!!! What a great idea!

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Website: New Site

By on May 29, 2011 in About the Chubby Cook

Well, for the rest of this holiday weekend I’ll be working on the site getting it changed around… well, we do have one drop-off catering client tomorrow, but all I have to do for that is fire the ribs on the grill (cooked them today- they’re definitely fall-off-the-bone tender) and make our Apple ∏ (that’s supposed to be a Pi symbol, but it doesn’t look exactly like it).

Soon you will find some new voices on the site as well- more to come on that in the next week!

For the next couple days, if you get any errors or pages not found, please be forgiving- it just means that I am updating the site.  Or, it means that I am trying to fix something that I broke… wish me luck… Thanks and keep checking back!

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New Kitchen: The Chubby Cook’s Kitchen

By on May 16, 2011 in About the Chubby Cook

Starting up this week, I wanted to get up some pictures of the transformation of the actual kitchen that we will be cooking in.  It’s a really nice kitchen that has undergone a lot of work in the last four or five weeks.  The funny thing is that nobody really knows what to expect when they walk in the front door.  The typical response when anybody first walks into the retail space out front is that it is a nice space.  Then we continue the tour back into the kitchen and I usually get a “wow, this is awesome.”  Yeah, that’s exactly why we picked up the lease.  The kitchen is awesome.  It’s got a lot of space and enough counter top room to pump out a lot of food.

When I first walked into the kitchen, it looked as if the people before me had just walked outside to take a break or something.  The shelves were full of equipment and there were aprons and other items sitting on the counters.  It was a little bit eerie.  There was also a lot of work that needed to be done.  The equipment looked a bit neglected and there was a good amount of grease and grime coating the entire kitchen.

Fully stocked with dirty pots and pans when I first walked in.

Before the lease was even signed, we brought in a professional cleaning crew to get started.  They had eight people scrubbing the kitchen from ceiling to floor for four, ten hour days.  When they were done, it looked incredible.  The equipment looked shiny, the walls were gleaming white and there was no grease anywhere.  They definitely did a bang up job.

The cleaning crew finished up and things are starting to look better.

I wanted the kitchen to feel a little less institutional, so we started to do some work in here.  First, we added in some color.  Then we moved some equipment around.  And some more equipment around.  After moving it several times, I decided that we needed to paint the floor in the kitchen so we moved the equipment around some more.  Lots of moving equipment around- but it was fairly incredible to watch this transformation.

Color on the walls and a kitchen in chaos.

Ahh- a fresh coat of paint on the floor and we're ready to move more equipment.

After the floor was done, we tried multiple layouts before deciding that this was a good one.  With this layout, we can fit 15 people in the kitchen comfortably for participation classes.  When the classes aren’t running (or until we get them setup), we will be using the kitchen primarily for catering.  We’ll be working on the layout in the months to come as we continue to break in the kitchen a little bit.

Looks shiny and new.

Bang!  We’ve got stuff in here now.  The shelves are starting to fill up with pantry items, new kitchen utensils and equipment.  Our UPS and FedEx guys are working overtime for us.  It takes a lot of work to fill up a pantry this size.  Check out the huge bay leaf container- we’ve got enough to hold us over for a while to come.

Filling up the shelves and gearing up to open the doors.

Up next, we are waiting on the flat screen and camera to get installed for the cooking classes.  We still have more equipment on the way and need to fill in our catering supplies.  But, it’s all coming together!   We will have our lunchtime catering menu up on the site hopefully by mid-week!

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Website Update: New Banner

By on May 15, 2011 in About the Chubby Cook

Well, I’m working through the website.  Definitely takes a long time to think about how things should look and what functionality should be included.  Going to be reworking the entire page over the next several days, so check back and let me know what you think.  The first change which has been published is the banner that you see at the top of the page. I was using the banner below for the last six months or so… that little dessert was fantastic and I really like the contrast between the brown, red and green in the picture.

Here’s the old banner… The one before was terrible so it’s never coming back!

On the other hand, I like the look of the new banner- and putting the pics up of those dishes I created really reinforced why we’re doing this.  The love of food and cooking.  Makes me want to get back in the kitchen right now- but instead I have to keep on trucking on the website.  Hopefully this week I’ll be back in the kitchen again.  Check back for a walk through of the transformation of the kitchen itself next- it’s crazy!

 

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New Kitchen: Retail Ready

By on May 11, 2011 in About the Chubby Cook

My contractors have been hard at work in our kitchen and retail space getting things ready to go.  It’s been a long road for them because it seemed like every day we were switching directions or coming up with new ideas on how we could maximize the impact of the space.  Here is a quick and unsolicited plug for the hard working crew at Aspen Design- they are not only great in commercial settings, but have done superior work at our house too.  Plus, they are a green company which means that for all my projects, almost all of the work site waste was recycled or repurposed. I’ve got nothing but good things to say about this company and look forward to our continued relationship.

In the picture below, this is how we basically walked into retail portion of the space.  It was setup for carry-out and other food merchandising.  I don’t know about you, but to me it looked really drab.  The battleship gray wore on me every day I was in here.  The counter tops were stained and the cabinet doors were chipping.  After about a week in the front (the kitchen itself was getting cleaned during this time), I realized that something needed to change.  The next step was to figure out exactly what.

Ready for carry-out business... but not for us. Too drab. We need color!

While we were figuring it out, the thought process was to leave everything in the space in the event that we might need it.  What this led to was my contractors moving these heavy cases around way too many times.  We discussed changing the tops to butcher block, wrapping the laminate in stainless steel, making tables- you name it and we thought about it.  What was the final solution?  Getting rid of just about all of it.

This is a relatively tame picture- wait till you see what happened in the kitchen!

Finally we came to the decision that it needed to be bright and clean with a bit of industrial feel to it.  So we tore off the worn counter top, removed all the broken doors and hardware and got to work.  Along the way, I realized that the carry-out business is not something that we wanted to take on at the current point.  Out went the cold cases, the sandwich board and the huge checkout counter.  We might add take-out into the mix sometime in 2012.  Check out the blue on the wall- I love it.  All the cream walls were painted too- the entire place just looked so much better when it was done.

Nice- the blue immediately made a huge impact. The floor has its first coat here.

Here we go!  The counters are in and the doors are going back on.  The floor was painted and sealed which really cleaned up the overall look.  We took off the laminated shelves and installed some tempered glass shelves that I think look really sharp.  We are really close to being finished in this picture.

Pete and Mike from Aspen Design are installing the cabinet doors. Fresh and clean!

These next shots are of the completed retail and demonstration area.  All we are waiting for now is our 3X8 foot butcher block table to show up. Can’t wait for that bohemoth to arrive early next week.  We are working to stock up the shelves currently not only with cookware, but with locally produced items as well (think artisanal cheeses, house made stocks, hot sauces, jellies, pickled goods).  We are picking up our folding chairs and tables this weekend to be able to use the space for demonstrations, networking events and small seminars.  If you or someone you know is looking for space to use, give me a call or send an e-mail.

Up next, the butcher block table and pictures on the walls.

Ready for retail and demonstrations- looks good to me.

Up next is our virtual face lift.  Time to get the website moved around and reworked.  Well, no rest for the weary!  Before I go, I wanted to thank everyone for all of the support.  I think that we are working on something that has the potential to be pretty cool and different.  If there are things you would like to see us working on- shoot me a note!  Thanks again-

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New Kitchen: We’ve got a sign people!

By on May 10, 2011 in About the Chubby Cook

Hey- lots of good news today, but the biggest news is that we have a sign on the building!  Makes everything feel so official.  I love it.  It feels like we’ve been telling people that we are located between the dentist and title agency for way too long.  With this sign, you can’t miss us.  Check out the progression:

No sign here... hard to find us.

Our sign, just hanging out on the floor.

Nice- this was a really cool feeling to see the sign going up. What a nice day too.

Schwing- we've got a sign baby. Almost open for business.

So with a little luck, we should be good to go by the end of the week with everything else.  We’re picking up all our pantry items today- hard to cook without a little sugar and spice hanging around.  Headed down to the Tremont Farmer’s market this afternoon to pick up the ramps from Kevin at Por-Bar farms.  Going to pick up some other goodies too… we’re cookin baby!

 

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