Chef Rameaux has teamwork recipe

Nation's Restaurant News, March 18, 2002 by Dina Berta

Chef Rameaux creates more than a pot of gumbo or steaming jambalaya at his cooking school in Raleigh, N C. The former university communications professor turned Cajun chef cooks up teambuilding skills for corporate clients, who come to learn not just how to dice celery but also how to work well with their colleagues.

Rameaux -- a play on his real name, Raymond Rogers -- launched his business, Chef Rameaux's School of Cooking and Louisiana Market, four years ago. The Shreveport, La., native thought he would teach Cajun cooking to individuals and groups. But corporations looking for low-cost and local training programs for employees came calling. He has developed cooking lessons designed around team efforts for law firms, dentists' offices, pharmaceutical firms and many of the high-tech companies in the Raleigh area. He even has given lessons to a group of managers for Red Lobster restaurants.

How does one go from being a university professor to being a cooking-school chef?

I've been cooking since I was 10 years old. I always enjoyed doing it and showing off at it. I was a tenured professor at North Carolina State University. I left to pursue a department head position at McNeese University in Lake Charles [in southern Louisiana]. I retired after about five years, and we came back to Raleigh so that my wife could take a job as an elementary-school principal. I opened the school about a block and half from my house.

Did you plan to incorporate team-building lessons with the cooking?

No. I'd like to claim I surveyed the market and discovered this potential, but they came to me and asked me for it. My first call was from Nortel Networks in Raleigh. I had taught small-group communication for a long time -- leadership and followship and how groups work together to solve problems. I came up with a basic syllabus. We talk a lot about interpersonal communications.

What is it about cooking lessons that lends itself to team building?

I divide them into three teams. One team prepares an appetizer; one prepares the entree; and one prepares the dessert. They all wear Chef Rameaux aprons. They are assigned to workstations with ingredients, chopping boards, knives and spoons.

I talk about team building. I tell them we're going to solve new problems with new materials and new tools and new processes in order to achieve new results. To do that, they have to work together. Each person makes different contributions to the problem solving. It all comes together as one coherent meal.