Photo by Greg Rannells
Ramon Cuffie, executive chef at Parigi, doesn’t like interviews for fear of being misrepresented. My interview with him was months in the making. After our initial contact, he disappeared only to have Ben Poremba, Parigi’s owner, “bug” him about it (Cuffie’s words) until he relented.
A self-proclaimed “grump,” who can be soothed by his staff with a cup of strong coffee or a Butterfinger, Cuffie was gracious and refreshingly candid. The focus of the interview was his education, but we talked about a great deal more, including a topic that makes many so uncomfortable it goes unspoken: race.
When Cuffie looked back at childhood photos of himself, he realized that almost every one depicted him with food. His interest in food was so strong that at 16 he dropped out of high school to embrace a life in restaurants even though it wasn’t “fashionable” at the time, particularly for an African-American boy from the inner city. Cuffie explained that back then, working in the food industry was akin to slave labor for some African Americans and therefore something to be avoided.
Cuffie worked his way up from bus boy at The Chase and line cook at Al Baker’s to executive chef of Bar Italia, where he stayed for ten years. Travels through the Pacific Northwest and Europe often turned into short gigs at restaurants. Cuffie even cheffed on a train at one point. A few years ago, Cuffie found himself back in St. Louis after being forced to leave France because of an expired work visa. He cooked and baked at La Dolce Via before it closed, as well as Jaboni’s. While at Jaboni’s, Cuffie reconnected with Ben Poremba, chef-owner of Olio and Elaia and the recently opened Nixta, and Poremba predicted they would do a restaurant together.
Despite Poremba’s prediction, Cuffie knew how difficult it was to secure a chef’s job that paid a decent living. In addition to the usual obstacles towards stable restaurant employment, it seems that another factor played a role. “In this business, you hate to bring up race,” he said, continuing after a pause, “as a black man in the city, it’s different. I had an easier time finding my way in France working for people than I did here.”
Doubly marginalized as a black man nearing 50 (cheffing is a young person’s profession), Cuffie decided that culinary school, and more specifically, the CIA or Culinary Institute of America, would give him the edge he needed. Even though a high school diploma was listed as a requirement for admission, Cuffie sent in his materials. An admissions counselor soon phoned and encouraged him to earn his GED since that was the only piece missing from an otherwise impressive application. Cuffie then cut back on his hours and began GED classes.
While most people around him thought going to culinary school was a waste of time and money, Cuffie enjoyed the GED classes that paved the way to the CIA. He said, “I thought it was going to be drudgery, but something happened—I don’t know what—and I began to really enjoy it.”
Following eight months of study, Cuffie passed the two-day test and left for Hyde Park, NY three weeks later. “After 30 years, I broke down. It was really something big,” he said of his accomplishment. Cuffie loved everything about school and found that it legitimized his years of experience in the kitchen. Culinary school was an opportunity for total immersion in the world of food “without a ticket coming in.”
Although Cuffie was leaning towards staying a third year for a bachelor’s degree, with aspirations of teaching cooking, he left the CIA after two years with his associate’s in culinary arts. Before Cuffie finished his degree, Poremba was calling him, asking, “When are you leaving, Pops?” Poremba had plans back in St. Louis as he set to open Parigi; he would send Cuffie pictures of the space in Clayton that would become Parigi, eager to have Cuffie lead the kitchen. Less eager and ambivalent about returning to St. Louis, Cuffie eventually did so.
When asked why he was ambivalent, Cuffie explained that he felt like a failure since he was coming home but would not have a place of his own. Compounding that sense of failure was the fact that he couldn’t immediately put into practice what he had learned at the CIA since, as he put it, Poremba wanted things he had done ten years ago.
One year into the position, however, Cuffie makes all of the major decisions in consultation with his staff. To cut down on his commute, Cuffie lives in an apartment above the restaurant. “It’s seductive to stay beyond closing and play with stocks,” he said, and he’s been found in the kitchen at 4 AM on more than one occasion testing biscuit recipes. At the same time, he acknowledged that he has to deliberately carve out time away from the kitchen since he’s so close to it. “As you start to get older, you want to . . .go to the movies,” he said, illustrating that even in the best restaurant kitchens, work can be increasingly punishing as one ages. Anything that takes him away for a short time—yoga, the gym, meditation, sculpture—is necessary for balance.
Cuffie also credits his time at the CIA as instrumental to his mellowed disposition. School gave him a foundation that made everything easier; “it’s all about ratios,” he joked, explaining that he no longer panics about determining portions. More confident and relaxed, Cuffie is also now happy to share the menu planning, tasting, and tweaking with his team, both in the back and front of the house. The democratic method of leading seems to have paid off for Cuffie since he’s avoided the revolving door found in most restaurants. Even the health inspector on a recent visit noticed that the names have remained the same in Parigi’s kitchen.
What’s the one part of the job that still causes Cuffie some anxiety? Leaving his “office”—the kitchen—and interacting with diners on the floor. “You seem like a bumbling idiot in the dining room because your head is still in the kitchen,” he said. That’s something he’s still working on along with posing for pictures, two things Poremba pushes. “Ben likes the picture taking. You can quote me on that,” Cuffie laughed.
While reflecting on his past work experiences, Cuffie named a few people as critical to his education beyond the CIA. Without remembering names, he credited a black GM at The Chase and a black sous chef at Charlie Trotter’s, where he staged several times while working at Bar Italia, as important role models. Of the sous chef at Trotter’s and his overall experience there, he said, “It was the first time I felt like I fit in.” Cuffie also noted that DiGregorio’s market on The Hill was instrumental in his culinary development. During his tenure at Bar Italia, he’d place orders for specialty items through the market, and they’d put Frank DiGregorio’s dad on the phone to talk about them. The first time Cuffie made Ragu Bolognese, he took it to the market for them to taste.
When naming influences, the one person Cuffie returned to several times in the interview was Van Hardy, the chef at Al Baker’s. While many St. Louisans may remember Al Baker’s, the popular, fine-dining restaurant located at Brentwood and Clayton open between 1966 and 1994, they probably don’t know that it was Tom “Van” Hardy who was cooking the food there. Cuffie called Hardy “the only black chef in the city of prominence that worked for a restaurant like Tony’s” and “no one remembers him.”
“He never got any notoriety whatsoever. It’s a sensitive subject for me,” Cuffie admitted. The subject is sensitive for the obvious but unspoken reason—race and perhaps racism—but also because Cuffie recognizes himself in Hardy. Later in the interview, he said, “I didn’t want to have his experience,” recalling that he and his sister had discussed at one time how Cuffie has followed a trajectory similar to Hardy’s. “That could very well happen to me,” he concluded.
At the end of the three-hour interview, it became clear why Cuffie opened up about his educational journey when he said, “There’s a part of me—for the Van Hardys in the world—I want to say something about [race].” Cuffie wants young African Americans, particularly those in the inner city, to know that food is important. “You can travel right from here,” he said, underscoring the concept of food as passport.
The fact that someone like Van Hardy could fall off the radar so easily frightens Cuffie. The first step to bringing Hardy back from obscurity is saying his name and establishing his influence. For Cuffie, that means tracing his culinary lineage back to Hardy through Bar Italia and the CIA to his current position at Parigi and beyond.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Writer’s note: I have been researching Tom Van Hardy since I sat down with Ramon Cuffie. With the exception of a few mentions in The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, I was unable to find any substantive articles on him. Perhaps that’s because chefs did not enjoy the same celebrity status back then that they do today; perhaps Hardy’s race plays a role in his obscurity. I’d like to thank Joe Bonwich, one of St. Louis Magazine’s food writers, and Amanda Albert, an assistant professor and instructional services librarian at Saint Louis University, for their assistance in my research. We believe that Tom Van Hardy is still alive, and if anyone has information about the chef, please contact me at jmagnew@gmail.com.
