Richard Hamilton: diversity sweet inspiration for Spiced Pear chef

Nation's Restaurant News, March 22, 2004 by Erica Duecy

From Cajun-Creole to classic French, the menu at fine-dining restaurant Spiced Pear reflects chef Richard Hamilton's many culinary inspirations. He has studied, interned and worked in myriad restaurants from France to the Bahamas and stateside destinations from Las Vegas to Nashville, Tenn. In pursuing his dream to become executive chef of a fine-dining restaurant, Hamilton has had to juggle the demands of a family and a culinary career.

Title: executive chef, Spiced Pear at the Chanler Hotel, Newport, R.I.

Birth date: April 21,1967

Hometown: Oklahoma City

Education: some undergraduate studies at Oklahoma State University and Cornell University; Master diploma from Ecole Ritz Escoffier, Paris; grand diploma from Le Cordon Bleu, Paris

Career highlights: cooking with Alain Ducasse; finding an owner who believes in his vision and allows him to buy amazing ingredients and cook in the wonderful environment of Spiced Pear

How did you get your start in the restaurant business?

My mom had a Cajun-Creole restaurant in Oklahoma City, where I grew up, called Hamilton House and also a Southern-style family restaurant called Brandy's. I started working at the restaurants at 6 years old, doing anything they'd let me do: washing dishes, doing a little prep, stirring salads. I loved the omelet station. Sometimes they'd let me cook for customers.

Did you start taking on more responsibilities when you entered your teens?

When I got older, I stopped wanting to work for my family and wanted to move around to other restaurants. It was getting a little boring, so I started bussing tables at restaurants around town. Then I started working as a prep cook at various kitchens and started working my way up, working with different styles of food.

How did you end up at the Ritz Escoffier?

I left college a year before graduating because I had decided that schooling wasn't what I wanted, but I really wanted to be a chef. I got married to the woman I'd been dating since the eighth grade. And she said, "If chefing is what you want to do, you need to go to culinary school." So we decided that the best thing to do was to go to France so I could cook at the Ritz Escoffier.

What was your first job out of culinary school?

I was a saucier at the two-star L'Espadon in Paris under chefs Michel Roth and Guy Legay. I was there for about four months and then went to intern with Alain Ducasse in Monte Carlo at Le Louis XV. I was basically working all stations, rotating from station to station. I kept working at different restaurants until my work permit expired several months later.

What did you do back in the States?

I worked as a sous chef at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Laguna [in Dana Point, Calif.] and then moved to Tennessee. While in Tennessee, I started a catering company called The Ritz Inc., in Nashville. I was the personal chef to Pink Floyd, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and MCA Records. I traveled around the country with country singers like Tim McGraw and Faith Hill and Garth Brooks. That was 1993 to 1997. It was fun for a little while, but what I really wanted to be was a chef at a restaurant. My wife was staying in Tennessee while I was traveling, and she didn't like me to be gone so much. She just said, "Enough's enough." So I sold my share in the business and helped open a restaurant in Nashville called Magnolias, where I was the executive chef. It was a very successful high-end Southern restaurant.

And then you moved to Las Vegas?

I was at Magnolias for two years and left in 2000 to work as chef de cuisine at MGM, for their Mirage, Bellagio and New York, New York resorts in Las Vegas. I was there for more than a year. I loved the job and the company, but Vegas just wasn't our kind of town. By that time we had a son, Christian, and my wife was miserable living there. There wasn't a lot for families to do there.

So you moved again?

I took a consulting job as the executive chef at Dunmore Beach Club on Harbour Island in the Bahamas. It had been a sleepy resort for years, and they wanted to take it up to a five-star resort. So I was hired to redo all the menus, get a staff in place and get them trained. My wife and son went back and forth between the Bahamas and her family in Tennessee.

You've lived in so many different places. Have your travels influenced your cuisine?

It's influenced me dramatically. A lot of young chefs make the mistake of thinking that the grass is greener on the other side, that if they just knew how to cook island cuisine, for example, they would be better chefs. The nice thing about seeing all those cuisines was learning that they're all based on the same techniques, and you need that good technical foundation. From there it's really just cooking what's in your imagination and in your heart.

What prompted your move to Rhode Island?

I got a call from a headhunter who said they were interested in me for this project, and it was perfect timing. I was looking to settle down in a smaller property and really do a signature top-of-the-line restaurant. I had done the traveling thing, I had done the let's-explore-your-wild-side kind of thing, and now my wife and I wanted to finally put down some roots and send our son to school. With this restaurant I could put everything that I'd preached and taught for years to the test and find out if I could launch myself as a top-level chef.