ABOUT US
Chef Willie Cooper
Your Private Chef
Chef Willie has 25+ years of experience working for award-winning chefs in fine-dining restaurants in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and Nantucket. For over ten years I was a private chef in California Wine Country catering to food and wine enthusiasts visiting Napa and Sonoma, CA.
More about me, Chef Willie
I grew up as a child in France and schooled at Peter Kump’s New York Cooking School with teachers Catherine Alford, Nick Malgieri, Paul Grimes and Peter Kump himself, and all the New York City chefs and food writers of the time. This is before Food Network TV - 1990.
Peter Kump’s culinary school was an un-air-conditioned four-floor walk-up on 92nd street and 2nd Avenue on the Upper East Side in Manhattan. Day one was knife sharpening and knife skills. I remember executing a pile of perfectly cut dice of carrots, celery and onions as the guy next to me sliced the end of his finger off. Day two was egg day. I ate 15 eggs in various preparations and loved every minute of it.
Chef Willie in the kitchen
My French mother was from the Atlantic Coast of Brittany - she was a fantastic French woman - and I spent my summers as a kid in a small resort town in Brittany’s Loire-Atlantique with my aunts and uncles and my French cousins. That’s why sea-side French country cooking is in my blood - pristine oysters, tiny smelts, fresh fish caught that day, pressure-cooker potatoes, stunningly strong spicy watercress greens, with lots of fresh bread and good salted Brittany butter. Delicious crèpes, buckwheat galettes Breton, gateau, pastries, pain d’épices, charcuterie and hand-made farm cheeses are the foundation of my cooking style today.
In my 20+ year restaurant career, I worked for many award-winning chefs as the food movement really kicked in through the 90’s and I always maintained high standards in my cooking and hospitality. I have been a commis, the chef garde manger, a grill guy (I even wrote a grilling cookbook!), a fish station guy and a pastry chef. I have cooked it all.
On The Grill Adventures in Fire and Smoke makes a great gift for your favorite grill person!