Passion
Nothing brings people together in the same way food does. The fact is, it is not just the food. It is really gastronomy – the mindful act of choosing the food you eat, the process of cooking the food, the environment in which you eat, and the traditions that surround it all. After experiencing the attention that France brings to gastronomy, my eyes have been opened to the fact that gastronomy exists everywhere food exists.
Decades before I experienced France, a long list of great cooks filled my belly, especially those cooks in my native South. The best I ever knew was my mother, Allie Ree Moree Rouse Stuart. Just before creating the concept of The Table, I was reflecting on her influence as I sifted through her stacks of cookbooks, journals, recipe cards and old grocery lists. My mother believed in seasonal recipes, grew and picked her own vegetables, knew and dealt with the local butchers, and knew the farmers in the area well enough to know who grew the best of just about any fruit or vegetable. Local sourcing of ingredients is the basis for the creation of The Table. Our region is bountiful, and I love nothing more than sharing the local foods and promoting the dedicated farmers and artisans with others.
Many assume I’m kidding when I tell them I came to love French cuisine under the iconic chef Julia Child. Initially, I did simply watch her on television and read her books, but in 1985 I had the opportunity to learn from her personally as her student in a week-long class she taught in her Cambridge, Massachusetts home. The lessons I learned from her sparked my imagination and gave me a confidence in culinary arts that I never knew was possible.
Throughout my career, I often traveled on business, taking every opportunity out of town to attend a cooking class. Whether visiting San Francisco, Chicago, San Antonio, Texas, Morelia, Mexico or Maui, Hawaii, Indonesia, Japan, Singapore, Argentina I’d come back to my small home town to rework the recipes I had learned, using local ingredients and the Southern cooking techniques I had grown up on. In the meantime, I found I never had enough cookbooks.
As time went on, I began to seek more formal culinary training which lead me to spend time at the Culinary Institute of America, the California Culinary Academy and the New Orleans School of Cookery. Finally, after retirement, I was able to take three intensive immersion courses through Le Cordon Bleu Paris and Ecole Ritz Escoffier, as well as earning a diploma in Gastronomy via the HEG Program in conjuction with Le Cordon Bleu Paris and the University of France-Reims. In 2020 completed and extensive wine curse at Le Cordon Blew Paris. Despite studying in Paris, arguably the best place in the world to learn about cooking, such immersion in the culinary arts led me to embrace my own food heritage. At the end of the day, it’s all about bringing Southwest Georgia to The Table.
