To Sur, with love (or, putting innovation on the menu)

By ZELORY GREGLER //

“Anyone can cook … but only the fearless can be great.” – Master Chef Auguste Gasteau

Damn straight. Never mind that Gasteau is fictitious (and a cartoon to boot). The authenticity of his message – that everyone can try something, but only the dedicated and courageous will advance – is a great truism of human existence.

It’s true in medicine, in technology, straight across the innovation spectrum. And it’s especially true in the kitchen, if only because food preparation is such a basic human function.

To one extent or another – notwithstanding spoiled billionaires who swallow Big Macs whole without ever knowing the satisfying joy of preparing a meal for loved ones – we all do it. But few can make a living at it. And fewer still can make a living at it without first enduring years of culinary-school training.

Count Megan Sinclair among those rare culinarians.

This professional chef leveraged precious kitchen time with her grandmother – and a fortunate mentorship under a quasi-legendary sushi master – into a successful cooking career, including her current role as head chef of the Sur La Table store at Lake Grove’s Smith Haven Mall.

A super-stocked mothership of spices, cookware and kitchen gadgetry (pricey, but for the gastronomically inclined, wondrous to behold), Sur La Table is well known for its cooking classes. These ideal date nights compress four-course meals into bite-sized educational experiences, with professional head chefs – and teams of well-trained assistants – leading amateur cooks to the promised meal.

On a recent Friday evening, Mrs. Gregler and I joined dear friends Dave and Kim for Rustic Italian Dinner night, with Tuscan Rosemary Chicken Under a Brick, Parmesan Risotto with Sweet Peas, Arugula/Radicchio Salad with Balsamic Vinaigrette and Macerated Strawberries with Zabaglione on the menu – and Sinclair swinging her spatula like an orchestral baton.

In addition to showing us how to properly spell “vinaigrette” (and explaining what the hell “zabaglione” is), the class was a worthy lesson in innovation – a brick, you say? – and a true testament to intuition.

Sinclair, a lifelong cook, never really thought about culinary arts as a profession. She studied graphic design and journalism at the University of South Carolina, aiming to cook up a career in hypercompetitive 21st Century media markets.

But a chance college side job – working in the kitchen of a well-known and extremely talented sushi chef – changed all that, primarily by stirring memories of a childhood spent largely in the kitchen, attached to her grandmother’s hip.

“I loved cooking with my grandmother,” Sinclair notes. “She was from the Appalachian Mountains and I was part of a big Southern family, and from the time I was knee-high, I was cooking.

“I kind of convinced myself that that’s not what I wanted to do (professionally), so I went to college for something else,” she adds. “Then I started working in that restaurant and I realized it’s all I ever wanted to do.”

“That restaurant” was Camon Japanese Restaurant in Columbia, S.C., home base of Shigeru Kobayashi, a local legend among Southeast gastronomes. Kobayashi, who opened his regionally famous eatery in 1985, is a bona fide Itamae, a Japanese honorific that directly translates to “in front of the board” – but most commonly conveys “sushi master.”

Working under the wing of skilled sushi standout, Sinclair called a life-changing audible.

“By the time I was done with college, I didn’t want to do anything with my major,” she says. “I just wanted to be a chef.”

What Sinclair didn’t want to do, however, was spend a bunch of additional years in school – a rite of passage for most professional chefs. Instead, she took the “basic cooking skills” she’d learned at Camon and worked her way across the “really amazing food scene” between Charleston, S.C., and Charlotte, N.C., applying what she already knew and absorbing everything else.

“I went to some of the better chefs in Charleston and Charlotte and asked them if I needed to go to school (for cooking),” Sinclair notes. “I got the same answer a lot of times: If Mr. Kobayashi trained me, they would hire me.”

This was a bit of reverse engineering: Most American chefs, Sinclair notes, don’t start their education with Asian cuisine and techniques. But “what’s really great about cooking,” she adds, “is you can always roll your skills into something else.”

“French cooking was definitely the biggest difference for me,” the chef says. “I had a lot to learn about sauce-building.

“But coming from a Japanese background, I already had really strong knife skills,” she adds. “So, I just I applied that and went forward.”

A decade forward, now, including the last eight in the service of Sur La Table. After succeeding as a head chef at several company stores, corporate asked Sinclair to help reopen the Lake Grove location last year (the corner space at Smith Haven Mall’s Lifestyle Village had gone dark during the pandemic).

The Lake Grove location has slowly built up speed since last Summer, with 23 weekly cooking classes now on the board (in addition to one-hour “cooking experiences,” teaching guests everything from proper knifework to pro-grade latte preparation).

The classes regularly sell out – “especially the weekends and around the holidays,” according to Sinclair, who tells anyone interested in Christmas season classes to “sign up early.”

“We only do our Beef Wellington class from November to February,” she says. “And they’re usually sold out two months in advance.”

Recalling her earliest days of professional cookery, the sushi and dim sum classes are Sinclair’s favorite to teach – but the tamales are her favorite to eat, alongside foodstuffs prepared in seasonal Summer Mediterranean classes.

“I just love the fresh flavors,” the chef notes. “Tzatziki is one of my favorite foods, and we also do this baclava ice cream that’s the best ice cream I’ve ever eaten.”

Corporate selects the menus (leaving “wiggle room” for “adjustments,” Sinclair says), but whatever the Sur La Table masterminds throw her way, the multifaceted pro is confident and ready to share her expertise – and, perhaps, trigger a best-destiny moment in one of her amateur students.

For this chef – who majored in journalism, practiced broadcasting and marketing and joined theater groups throughout high school and college – it’s a true case of innovation through determination.

Like anyone else, Sinclair could cook. But greatness required a fearless leap of faith.

“I really lucked out when I found this job,” she says. “It’s kind of a perfect storm of everything I’ve learned over the years – it uses my marketing skills, it uses my theater and my journalism.

“And, of course, my cooking,” Sinclair adds. “I just really love cooking.”

Zelory “Celery” Gregler has been cooking for most of his life, and eating for all of it.