One of the things that truly sets a chef apart from the pack is the ability to be creative.  People have a lot of options on food these days and  diners are looking for creative and fun menus that can enhance the experience.  My freedom to create tasting menus based on regions for the last couple years has really driven my craft.  Picking a region and getting inspired by it as a chef is amazing. It’s what drives me to be inspired.  Thousands of hours looking on the internet and being broke from buying cook books is what my life has become. When you get to that point it’s an amazing feeling to have that kind of drive and passion in what you do.  Its what separates your life from having a career vs. a job.

One dish that comes to mind was Spanikopita.  it’s a classic mediterranean dish.  If you’re not familiar with it it’s a sautéed spinach and feta mixture that’s wrapped in phyllo.  I found a really cool type of shredded phyllo called kataifi.  I decided to make a nest using it and use a type of feta from Greece that is cave aged.  This was an opening course and it went over great!   Another dish we did was the greek salad.  Finding fun ingredients made this dish interesting.  We used Cherokee and yellow pear tomatoes.  We sliced the cucumbers thin on a mandolin and pickled them before we rolled them up.  I found some beautiful olives that we marinated in garlic, fennel, and red wine.  crumbled feta and a Meyer lemon greek dressing finished it off.  If you can think about a dish and do it in a new creative way your well on your way.