Charleston Grill chef takes over kitchen from mentor

She cried, sure she did. Bawled like a baby when she heard.

Everyone else cheered. Stood and clapped for three minutes straight in the Charleston Grill dining room.

"Mama!" they roared. "Yeah, Mama!"

She beamed, wrapped in the moment. She felt overwhelmed and thrilled, happy, yes, and sad, too. Somehow, the dream was bittersweet, as Michelle Weaver holds the course without her pal and mentor.

Weaver (kitchen code name Mama) became Charleston Grill's executive chef last week, succeeding Bob Waggoner. He spent 12 years as the grill's chef, helping the restaurant achieve the state's first four-star rating from Mobil Travel Guide.

Waggoner also brought along Weaver as sous chef, preparing her for a crowning role. The two worked side by side for about 15 years, an eternity in the restaurant business.

"He's a kind man, a class act," Weaver says of Waggoner, "and you can watch and learn so much from just being in his presence.

Don't get me all teared up again."

'A restaurant girl'

It should be a melancholy easily blanched.

Weaver's job comes with a plum distinction: She's a female chef in charge of a marquee restaurant, a rarity in a field dominated by men.

Chef Rose Durden worked at Carolina's, and Sara Carter helms the kitchen at Vendue Inn, but neither restaurant commands the same attention as Charleston Grill.

"If you look around the country, there are so few nationally recognized female chefs, we can name them on two hands," says Mickey Bakst, general manager and maitre d' of Charleston Grill.

So can you believe it? Michelle Weaver, the little girl who used to crawl up on a chair to reach her mom's stove top, has ascended to conspicuous heights.

"I always called her the sheriff of the kitchen," Waggoner says. "She ran the show."

But it's tricky, too. Hers is a grueling profession that makes little concession to family, children or recreation.

"It's 100 percent harder being a woman chef," Waggoner says. "To have family and have kids, and it's just a darn hard, physical job. You have burns on your hands, your legs hurt, you've got varicose veins, you walk home smelling like a catfish."

Another ill-mannered beast: kitchen politics.

"If you're tough and you're hard on somebody in the kitchen and you're a guy, it's being a guy," Waggoner says. If you're tough on somebody and you're a woman in the kitchen, he continues, you're given a vulgar nickname.

Weaver, 43, works a modest 10 hours during light days. She isn't married, and she doesn't have kids.

"Everybody has their personal decision to make," Weaver says. "My father said it, 'You are married to your job.' That's true."

Waggoner left to chase other dreams, such as developing a television series, Web site and iPhone application that allows users to access shows and recipes.

Weaver's dreams always have been the same.

"I'm a restaurant girl, heart and soul," she says. "This is my baby."

For pay, for pleasure

During a recent two-week span, Weaver took only one day off.

Here's what she did: She drove up to Ladson on a Sunday, hit the flea market and bought fruit and vegetables from Mexican producers. Then she visited the H&L Asian Market on Rivers Avenue for a few other items. She cooked chile peppers to make enchilada sauce, turned fresh strawberries into simple syrup for a batch of mojitos and whipped up fresh tortillas. Her friends had a feast, "the whole shebang," she says.

Growing up in Decatur, Ala., on the Tennessee River, her mother, Pat, had a big garden with green beans, green onions, banana peppers and "the best tomatoes I've ever eaten in my life," says Weaver.

Her mom raised chickens and canned and froze all her vegetables. She made fried cornbread in a cast-iron skillet and fried apple pie. Just a terrific Southern cook, "one of the best Southern cooks ever," brags her daughter.

The bug runs in their family. Weaver's got one brother, "the grill guy," who likes cooking brisket for 16 hours straight. Another brother's a wine authority. Her sister is a vegetarian and artist who returned recently from Indonesia with new recipes for Weaver to try.

Weaver read cookbooks as a kid, Julia Child being a favorite hero and author. But her wow moment came later, as she realized her passion might make a career.

She was tending bar and waiting tables at a sports grill when a friend returned from culinary school to open a restaurant.

"It never dawned on me I could go to school and do this for a living," says Weaver, in her late 20s at the time.

She packed up her red Chevy Cavalier and made a two-day drive to the New England Culinary Institute in Montpelier, Vt. She called her dad: "I'm exactly where I need to be."

$5 an hour

Weaver left for New Orleans after school, working for Daniel Bonnot, a mentor of well-regarded chef Susan Spicer.

Bonnot was a "typical" French chef, phenomenally talented and temperamental. He cussed, he yelled, he threw dishes.

The other cooks kept a wooden spoon in the Chez Daniel kitchen, a happy or sad face etched on the sides. The first one to work would spin the spoon to alert the others of the chef's mood.

Weaver was so nervous she'd pull over on the side of the road to vomit before work.

Her friends asked her: "Why do you do this every day?" But she was determined. She'd learn, observe, absorb.

Her last day at work, she finally summoned the courage. She and Bonnot shared a couple of shots of Chartreuse. "You know, Chef," Weaver told him, "when I first got here, I thought you were a real jerk."

Bonnot looked her dead in the eye. "If you can work for me, you can work for anybody."

She returned to Vermont, studied and worked. A friend kept telling her about a young chef, fresh from France, working at a new place with first-rate products.

Enter Waggoner, 1995. He sent her menus, and they talked over the phone, discussing his vision for the Wild Boar restaurant in Nashville.

"My first intern ever," Waggoner says.

Waggoner had persuaded the Wild Boar's owner to rent a couple of two-bedroom condominiums and to take a chance on four kids out of school. Their rooms, telephone and other bills would be paid; they'd make about $5 an hour.

"She had the guts and energy and enough of an attitude not to take (guff) from anybody," Waggoner says.

For Weaver, she might as well have been a kid with the keys to Santa's workshop.

"I was holding my first fresh truffles," she says. "I was holding what I thought was the stinkiest cheese I had ever seen in my life."

Paying tribute

When Waggoner took over for Louis Osteen at Charleston Grill in 1997, naturally he asked Weaver to be his sous chef. When Waggoner left, naturally the position fell to Weaver.

The quadrant menu at Charleston Grill? It focuses on four food categories: pure, lush, cosmopolitan and Southern, and it was Weaver's idea.

"One hundred percent," Waggoner says.

And the bit about being a female chef — she's not keen on the perception.

"I never saw myself as a woman chef. I saw myself as a chef," she says. "People from the outside, other people may see that."

The grill's standards and traditions, Weaver understands. Much of what she creates pays deference to her former boss and to her mother.

The first dish Weaver served Bakst was a fried peach pie. She made it the way her mom did and dusted it with curry sugar. She seared foie gras on top — her ode to Waggoner — and drizzled the dessert with aged sherry vinegar and a bit of maple syrup.

Bakst had dined with two friends, who returned a year later. They didn't ask about their room, the service or much else, really.

What did they ask about?

Weaver's fried peach pie.