“卷”春卷”卷”出的烹饪冠軍！From Egg Roll Roller to National President of American Chef Federation! Chef Rene Marquis’s American Dream is steaming & inspiring !

一名廚師可以有多“卷“？Chef Rene Marquis 来告诉你： 1）他由一名高中生在中餐馆“卷“春卷，一小時能卷300個；2）他在军营廚師長時参加电视热门厨艺比赛节目Cutthroat Kitchen（残酷厨房）里，最後一关靠“卷“春卷击败对手赢得奖金1万美元；3）十年后的今天他出任久负盛名的美国烹饪協會ACF的全国主席！

“Cutthroat Kitchen”《残酷厨房》的烹饪比赛视频：

The career of Rene Marquis, the American Culinary Federation’s (ACF) new national president, reads like a Hollywood movie script.

Introduction

The career goals of Master Sergeant Rene J. Marquis, CEC, CCE, PCEC, CCA, AAC did not originally include the U.S. Army.

Chef Rene’s interest in cooking was sparked by his first job, washing dishes for a Chinese restaurant in his hometown of Lewiston, ME.

During his senior year in high school, he enrolled in the culinary program at Lewiston Regional Technical Center.

At a culinary competition in New Hampshire, he met Culinary Institute of America (CIA) chef-instructor Fritz Sonnenschmidt, who said, “Come to my school.” That moment changed Rene’s life.

Chance meeting number two came following Chef Rene’s CIA graduation while he was working as garde manger and chef tournant at the Broadmoor Resort in Colorado Springs, CO.

A four-star general from a nearby military base frequented the dining room and enjoyed Chef Rene’s creations. One day he asked, “Why don’t you come be my chef?”

After serving as an enlisted aide to two generals, Rene Marquis requested to be assigned to the 18th Airborne, Ala Carte Troop Feeding Dining Facility at Fort Drum, NY.

At the rapid-deployment, state-of-the-art venue, he served as a shift leader. While at Fort Drum, Chef Rene was deployed four times to locations including Bosnia, Kuwait, and Panama.

Rene served as the senior chef-instructor in the States at the Quartermaster Center and School with the Army Center of Excellence, Subsistence in Fort Lee, VA.

There he taught the flagship culinary course for all of the military services—the Advanced Culinary Skills Training Course, which focused on mastering the fundamentals of cookery and pastry preparation.

In addition to his teaching duties, Chef Rene Marquis was drawn to the world of culinary competitions. On several occasions, he had been selected for the Culinary Olympics, the largest American Culinary Federation (ACF) sanctioned competition in the world.

Chef Rene served as the enlisted aide to the commander of United States Special Operations Command, one of only 90 such positions in the entire army.

He regularly judges culinary competitions, proctors ACF certifications, participates in charity fundraisers, starred in a YouTube cooking series called Dinner Boot Camp, and won on Alton Brown’s show, Cutthroat Kitchen, Season 1 Episode 7.

He has been an active member of the ACF for several decades and was recently installed as the association’s new national president.

With the importance of chefs now expanding into so many disciplines, Total Food Service wanted to share the vision of Rene Marquis for the role of today’s chefs across the country.

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Can you please share what sparked your interest in the industry?

I only did two things growing up in my hometown of Lewiston, ME: I played hockey and I worked in a kitchen because it was warm! I started at a Chinese restaurant called Cafe Hut as a dishwasher and then worked my way to handling fryers on weekends.

After being there for almost two years, I got an opportunity to work on the woks and made fried rice.

That’s all I did and then one of the chefs from the restaurant decided he was going to open up his own Chinese restaurant down the street and I went with him.

I was intrigued by how much I learned in the restaurant. I had a high school culinary vocational class, which was really cool.

From there, I went to a culinary competition while I was in high school at the Balsams in Dixville Notch.

I had three master chefs as my judges, and long story short, I put out this beautiful mirror frosted with powdered sugar and a watermelon basket.

I didn’t win a prize, but three of the judges (Axanar Smith, Anton Florian, and Joe Amendola) came to me and said, you need to come to our school.

I asked what school, and they said the CIA. I’d never heard of the CIA outside of the federal agency!

There was a three-year waiting list at the time, but they found me a spot for the class beginning in July 1990, and there I went.

What were your takeaways from the CIA?

The takeaway was time management and scheduling. I had classes in the morning. I worked in the school store in the afternoon.

Every night, I had an event or a club that I was in. Monday night was gourmet. Tuesday Night was Epicurean. Wednesday night was ice carving.

Thursday night, I played hockey with President Ferdinand Metz, because I was on the CIA hockey team.

On weekends, my roommate and I worked at Anthony’s Pier Nine catering on the other side of the river, going towards West Point.

As you look back at your culinary education, are we teaching the next generation correctly? What is it we should be adding to today’s curriculums, especially as you move into your leadership role with the ACF?

I’ve seen culinary programs evolve, and I see the way that we’ve changed. We used to teach, what was called, direct functionality by teaching just classical recipes.

Now, we have to change and teach things differently and modernize some things. I’ll give you a good example.

Our technology for equipment has changed from just having a four-burner stove and a convection oven.

We have all these different cooking techniques now. We have all these different ways of reheating and recirculating and doing all this magic with food.

You must look at these Turbo-Chef ovens, and you must look at some of the equipment that has been made, where they can steam, bake, and fry all in the same piece of equipment.

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