Reclaiming Identity with Sous Chef Nadine Ghantous - No. 28
And a bit on the collaborative process of R&D at Rolo's.
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What can you expect in each newsletter? Sweet stories from women and non-binary people in food. These are chefs, restauranteurs, farmers, and creatives—all with unique, nerdy-passionate opinions to share.
Today, I have the honor of sharing my chat with Rolo’s sous chef Nadine Ghantous. Before cooking, Nadine was determined to follow in the footsteps of her parents, who are both doctors—she was a pre-med student at Syracuse and completed her Master’s in Nutrition, with a plan to become a Dietitian post-grad. In the restaurant industry for about four years now, Nadine got her start working the line at Lilia. Since her transition to the kitchen, she has worked her way up from prep to sous chef, and recently was selected to host a dinner for The Lineup, a NYC Pop-up created to uplift and support the next generation of culinary talent. On top of that she was also featured beautifully in Cherry Bomb’s The Future of Food is You podcast; which you should give a read if you want more insight into her upbringing. Wonderfully kind, mild-mannered, humble, and immensely talented, Nadine is certainly building a reputation as an incredible teacher and mentor in the kitchen.
Together, we talk about her crazy path to becoming a sous chef, the collaborative process of R&D at Rolo’s, and how she’s gone about reclaiming her sense of self outside of restaurants. What spoke to me the most about our conversation was Nadine’s honesty. She gets real and shares how tough it truly is to train yourself as a new teacher, especially when it comes to speaking up and telling others what to do as a naturally softer-spoken human. There are so many great points to take away from this piece—but if you only take one, I hope it’s that it’s possible to reach your goal even if you’re not the most outspoken, bold, in-your-face kind of person in the kitchen. For me, Nadine embodies the possibility of being recognized as you are in an industry that often favors the loudest person in the room over the best mentor.
When did you first discover your love of cooking?
Nadine grew up in Huntingdon Valley, PA, a suburb in Northeast Philly that’s just outside of Center City. Both of her parents work in healthcare and built meals in a well-rounded and holistic way. Sitting down to share a meal as a family at the end of the day was a priority for her mother, who insisted that no matter who had sports practice at what time or how late her dad worked, a meal made it to the table. Because these family meals were at the core of her love of food, Nadine started to play with the idea of combining her undergrad studies in biology with her love of food and entered this realm first, through nutrition. Around this same time, she began working as a hostess at Lilia, where her interests naturally led her to the kitchen. Throughout the two years that Nadine worked for Lilia, she also studied for her Dietitian boards—and while she didn’t pass the first try, combining anything this mentally challenging with the first years of being a line cook is impressive as hell. Amongst all the growth, she reached a point where a decision had to be made, “was I going to be a Dietitian? Am I going to be a cook? I couldn’t keep doing both. And moving to Rolo's was like, I think a formative step in choosing, ‘This is what I want to do.’” Nadine goes on to tell me, she’ll never regret that choice, “when I’m cooking, I feel this kind of confidence in my abilities that I’ve yet to have with anything else.”
What do you do outside of cooking that inspires you?
The year she left Lilia, Nadine realized how burnt out she was, physically and mentally. She felt so clouded by brain fog with the long hours in the kitchen, studying, and adapting to a completely new lifestyle that she’d lost her sense of self. Her past life held multiple strong communities that she felt separated her from just being a student, or just a cook. She regularly attended yoga, volunteered at City Harvest, and taught nutrition to kids. Losing these things made it hard to recognize who she had become separate from cooking. I can particularly relate to this with a similar pre-cooking life (studying nutrition, being intensely into multiple sports, regularly spending time with friends) and then waking up to realize all of that had changed. I experienced a similar feeling of—who am I, now? Outside of cooking, what makes me, me, anymore? Which brings me to Nadine’s lovely idea to reclaim her identity.
“I committed to myself to documenting everything. My journal brought creativity back into my life and now I can go back and remind myself whenever I want.”
Nadine decided her journal would represent a creative release and remind her of all the things that made her who she was outside of cooking. Filling the pages with entries, postcards, and pictures of friends—she would even bring crayons or pencils around the city with her and use the space to color. She continues to start a new journal each year. Looking back at that first journal recently, she was reminded of the many concerts she went to at Prospect Park, the special nights she had with friends, and which activities brought her the strongest sense of calm, daily. “Looking back at my first journal gave me a new goal to just have more fun this year. Reclaim some of that sense of self.”
What was the transition to sous chef like for you?
Nadine tells me that the transition was very hard. Her honesty is refreshing. Being sous often looks impossible from my point of view—kitchens are chaotic and challenging enough without also teaching other cooks new dishes, developing items for the menu, and needing to appear as “all-put-together.” For Nadine, her promotion came at an especially heavy time, which was a part of the difficulty. Fresh out of a break-up, and moving out of her best friend’s apartment to live on her own, she was suddenly placed in a position of leadership above all the men she was friends with on the line. These are people she worked with, partied with, and learned alongside for the bulk of her career at Rolo’s—to suddenly have to tell friends what to do, isn’t a simple task.
“Admit when you need a moment to collect yourself. I keep a glass of water with me instead of a bottle when expediting so I can slip away and refill it when I need a moment to breathe.”
Luckily, Chef Taylor has been a wonderful mentor, still helping with the hardest parts. For Nadine, a big challenge has been communicating. As the mild-mannered leader that she is, telling people what to do in a decisive manner that sometimes comes off as blunt or harsh doesn’t come naturally—but it’s often what someone needs in crisis on the line. “Sometimes you just have to be decisive and you’re fucked if you’re not.” She’s growing in this, however, and I admire that she admits it’s better to answer when you know and ask for help when you don’t.
I think this is a natural problem for women and femme-presenting people in leadership. The implication of becoming known as bitchy, for being loudly decisive, or as “emotional,” when stress becomes visibly clear in high-pressure situations, while male counterparts do this without hesitation. Neutral when asked about being a woman in the kitchen, Nadine’s still had plenty of moments when it feels like men in the industry don’t want to see women succeed. “I just want to go to work and not think about the fact that I’m a woman. I want to go in, and be allowed to do my job like everyone else.” She tells me their support of women in leadership is among the many reasons she loves working at Rolo’s—they’re doing all they can to highlight the women on their team. I mean, look at their other two operations! Completely run by women, Kelly Mencin at Radio Bakery and Yara Herrera at Hellbender; their support is undeniable.
What’s R&D like at Rolo’s?
There’s never a good time for research and development when working as a sous. Your main use of time is answering questions for others, assisting with prep, and then expediting through service. Nadine tells me her “R&D ends up being spread out over four days just trying to test one dish.” For Nadine, the best part is the collaborative process of the seasonal management meeting. At the turn of each season, the entire weekly meeting is dedicated to seasonal menu changes. When she knows this is coming around, she gets excited to prep ahead by digging up her favorite cookbooks, looking at menus of places she’s been eating, or is inspired by, and come up with pitches. Oftentimes, a pitch is just a pivot point. Chef/Owners Howard and Rafiq will not necessarily love the whole idea pitched, but maybe get excited by an ingredient you chose and continue to develop it with you. Once the idea is set, you have to make it happen on your own— “bringing it to the whole” as it were, is what Nadine says is the hardest part for her. “I like to be guided, I still feel I have so much to learn, being relatively new to this industry, and suddenly I’ve have all the responsibility. You have to believe in yourself and push to figure out solutions.”
With just four years in the industry, I think Nadine offers the perfect point of view for R&D because she still has recent memories of what it’s like to be working as a line cook.
“When people are in the industry so long, they can become disconnected and forget what it’s like every day. I try to ride the fine line of being empathetic of the line, what they’re already pushing out and also how to appropriately challenge them.”
This involves thinking about what they have going on already on their station, what they can handle skill-wise, and what dishes may need to come off to make room for something new. “Does it have too many steps? Can we simplify it? Questions like this are running through my mind in the decision-making process because Rolo’s is very high volume, insanely busy.” Nadine tells me this balance, challenge versus, let’s call it ‘approachability’ is a problem with their coveted oven station—the cook on their wood-fire oven is responsible for cranking out hundreds of polenta breads a night, along with lasagnas, and management of half of the proteins on the grill behind them. “The tricky part is the oven can only hold like 5 lasagnas at a time, but it’s common to be fired on way more than it can hold. It’s a huge mental challenge; understanding how to work in the heat, manage the fire, and all your dishes at the same time as working the skirt steaks, and chickens behind you. It’s exhausting on any given night.”
What is your dream restaurant concept?
Right now, Nadine dreams of incorporating Lebanese and Iranian flavors from her childhood into a future menu. Aside from that, she’s especially interested in the idea of mimicking the sensory aspects that music provides in a dining experience. Somehow, she’d love to figure out a creative way to sync the music with the flow of the entire experience, “like small bites and drinks being matched with an energy that signifies the excitement at the beginning of the meal. Or if there’s a bright green puree, for example, the music will feel just as bright and match that feeling.”
Can’t wait to hear the bright green songs come through the speaker, Nadine. That’s all this week, thank you again Nadine for chatting with me; it’s new leaders like you who are going to help cooks to believe in themselves! And I’m so excited to see how you help your team get there.