“By 14 I completely knew, this is kind of where I want to go in life,” explains Daniel Jefferson, a Roosevelt graduate and chef who is currently working at Art of the Table, a restaurant near Fremont. Since the time Jefferson was around five or six years old, he has climbed the ranks of the culinary world, eventually landing where he is today, working as a chef in the upper echelons of the industry.
However, Jefferson did not start out as a professionally trained chef— he fought his way there. Jefferson says he “started out as a busboy,” at the age of 15.
“That was kind of my first introduction to commercial kitchens and from there, I went to Seattle Golf Club to work for a couple months in their service department,” Jefferson explains. “And then soon after I transferred to Art of the Table to start actually working in a kitchen.”
While this process sounds effortless, during that time he was putting in extra hours. For Jefferson this included “Just like studying chefs and cookbooks, and like culinary textbooks and stuff. Kind of just learning on my own.” He in fact stated that, “my starting at The Table was a lot based off what I was willing to teach myself prior.”
Yet the learning was not limited to reading books. Jefferson also attributes some of his growth to, “a mindset of seeing it as a learning opportunity, rather than a mistake.” He continues that it was not only him who has benefitted from having this mindset in the culinary industry. “I think you see a lot in these professional chefs that are at the height of their career and stuff,” he says. “They have a lot of setbacks, but they look at it as a learning opportunity. The second chance rather than you know, a mistake that they’re gonna lose stuff from.”
Once Jefferson began cooking at Art of the Table, life didn’t seem to slow down. He described the business of the kitchen, and that at some points, “there is a lot of movement and fires and sharp objects and everything. So there’s definitely a level of physical stress that you need to be doing the right thing. You know, I definitely the first couple of months, got a lot of cuts and burns because you don’t really learn the motions of the kitchen.”
Chef Daniel Jefferson cooking
He further describes the experience as, “very stressful and it’s very… I don’t know what the right word is… it’s very, like, rewarding in the sense that at the end of the day, you can actually see what you did and see progress and everything.” Jefferson further explained, “some of the highs were kind of seeing progression in your own cooking. I think it’s something you kind of forget about and don’t pay attention to as you just go about your day,…It has very much changed and I feel like I’ve learned a lot.”
The mindset of learning from mistakes and hard work shows Chef Daniel’s dedication. He admits that, “You rarely see people at such a high level, so young,” but his skill is not unwarranted. As previously seen, he shows a learning mindset and dedication that has allowed him to get so far while being so young, working in highly respected restaurants such as the aforementioned Art of the Table and at The French Laundry, a Michelin three-starred restaurant in California.
While food is an important aspect to survival, Jefferson sees it as a way for people to connect to one another, saying, “food is an amazing aspect of learning other people’s cultures. And I think people often take that for granted. In just today’s world, try new foods, try different things.”
Being a good chef consists of many things: a willingness to learn, dedication, a fair share of cuts and burns, and some elbow grease. However, Chef Daniel has shown that he has all of these in spades. Why? Because, “it doesn’t feel like a job that I need to like go to, it’s just something I want to do.”
