When Chef Stan, that would be I, moved from Downtown, Los Angeles (Big City) to Winfield, Kansas (Small Town USA), I was really looking for a small-life, the quintessential old brick building, with the restaurant (Chef’s Table) downstairs and me living upstairs…I did that…And my mission statement, I didn’t really have one, I was just going to follow the path, that the Lord set before me…I had ideas, I wanted the Chef’s Table to not only make food that was the best of its kind, but to surround its patrons with the ingredients that I used to make their food and I wanted these ingredients to be for sell, so that the Chef’s Table, could become the Home Table, the home table, being a place of such importance to families and friends of all cultures…There are good guys and villains in this story, I’ll save that for the book, or movie one day, but suffice it to say, that not everyone in Winfield, was happy to have Chef Stan and the Chef’s Table in town, yet the open kitchen, where the food is made from scratch and so much great human interaction takes place, became a fact of life and this fact of life, has gained a reputation that spans the globe, folks, literally, from around the world, have come to eat at the Chef’s Table…And one of these folks, a fella named Scott, who was born and raised on the East Coast, spent about two years talking me into selling Chef Stan’s Spices on Amazon.com…So I moved to Winfield for the small life and Scott talked me into selling my spices on Amazon.com, let that sink in…
Well, there are usually 150 to 300 spices in Chef Stan’s Pantry, at the Chef’s Table in Winfield, so the question I had to ask myself, when I agreed to do a deal with Amazon.com was, where do you start, what spice, or spice blend, will be the best way for folks at home, to begin the process of turning their home table, into their very own, Chef’s Table. And perhaps, my delay in coming to this idea / process was rooted in my love of the idea, okay fantasy, that I would personally get to cook for all of my fellow Americans and people of the World, grandiose, right, but good hearted. Anyway, the answer was fairly self-evident, because so much of the cuisine at the Chef’s Table is reminiscent of what one might find on a table in Tuscany, fresh basil, grown at the restaurant, heirloom tomatoes, buffalo mozzarella, that is actually flown from Italy to Kansas, for us and so on. And by so on, I mean a vast array of super fresh, lighter, healthier, delicious foods. And while this may seem counter intuitive, for a restaurant often described as Norman Rockwell, meets French Country, the cuisine that comes to mind first, is American Tuscan Fusion, a description that I just made up, for the sake of this blog…And that’s how I decided, that Chef Stan’s Tuscany Seasoning, should be the first seasoning blend, that I offer on Amazon.com… Continue reading CHEF STAN AND THE SPICE OF LIFE