By Brooke Bates   bbates@dnronline.com

Clementine’s new chef, Jeff Minnich (right), is gradually putting his own imprint on the café’s menu, aided by sous chef Robert Norris (left). Photo by Pete Marovich

Jeff Minnich’s refrigerator doesn’t reveal his profession.

Visitors are disappointed to only find a bottle of ketchup and a six-pack of beer in it. “Aren’t you a chef?” they’ll ask.

Yes, but only at work.

Minnich’s culinary creativity lives at Clementine, where he replaced opening chef Rob Loker about five weeks ago. Now he’s bringing his Asian flair and urban experience to the table — but only at the restaurant, of course.

New way to learn
Minnich’s early life — like his refrigerator — showed no signs of the tasty occupation to come.

“Like a lot of people, I backed into it,” he says of his career, which started as a way to get paid for his creativity. “Then I decided I really loved it.”

After two years of active Navy service, a then 20-year-old Northern Virginia native took a job washing dishes. Before that, he had never felt pulled toward the kitchen.
“I don’t remember thinking I was a natural,” he says of both cooking and horticulture, in which he earned a degree after his military service.

But instead of culinary training, Minnich devised his own way to learn the trade.
“I lied,” the 52-year-old says nonchalantly, wearing a double-breasted chef vest over a T-shirt and baseball cap as he lounges on a couch in Clementine. “I remember lying my [butt] off in interviews, telling the guy I had been a sous chef. Two or three months would go by before they figured it out, but by then I would have enough experience for the next one.”

At that time, it was about “trying to get enough money in the last two days of the month to be able to pay rent,” he says. Meanwhile, the experience from several short-lived jobs added up.

“By the time I got here, I had enough to be authentic,” he says. “I’m old enough and experienced enough now that I don’t have to bs my way through interviews.”
His honest experience includes time at Mantis Bar and Bar Rouge in Washington, D.C. He still couldn’t afford property in D.C. to pursue his gardening interest. So he moved to the Shenandoah Valley, where he began cooking at Camp Horizons, a Harrisonburg camp for developmentally disabled children and adults.

He put complexity and creativity on hold to fill 300 kids’ requests for peanut butter and jelly or SpaghettiO’s at each meal. But the scenery beat what he saw out the back door of D.C. restaurants.

Now he can still enjoy a landscape suited for his Japanese maples while working at Clementine, an urban restaurant that he says reminds him of D.C. bars.

Subtle Asian changes
Opening chefs have an advantage starting with “a clean plate,” Minnich says. But coming into an established restaurant, he has to chip away at tradition and routine.
He tells line cooks to lighten up on the olive oil or cut the wheat flour from the falafel. After about a month, they learned to trust him instead of arguing.
His leadership radiates beyond the kitchen, says General Manager Jeremiah Jenkins. “We can feel it everywhere — in the front of house, the serving staff. A strong piece of the puzzle is in place.”

It helps that Minnich doesn’t intend to radically change the menu. His influence will be subtle, fitting into Clementine’s original vision of ever-evolving offerings. He plans to slightly rotate the menu seasonally, based on what ingredients are available and considering the opportunity to buy local items.

“I’m trying to get the [line cooks] not to worry so much about recipes,” says Minnich, who usually works without one. “I want them to see the big picture instead of a teaspoon of this and a tablespoon of that.”

Clementine’s loosely defined style lets him bring the global flavors of his experience — including Asian, barbecue, southern and African — onto one table.
“I’ll sneak in as much Asian stuff as I can,” he says of his favorite style. He spices up southern dishes such as succotash with Asian ingredients like red curry.

Color and texture are key to Minnich’s dishes. Staff and customers rave about his presentation, from trout salad to Friday night sushi. Customers abandon familiar favorites to try tempting new chef specials, Jenkins says.

Minnich emphasizes the best of each flavor, color and texture by “deconstructing” classic dishes.

“He builds from simple to the point where it has complexity,” Jenkins says, as opposed to other chefs who often overshoot already complex recipes.

In Minnich’s hands, a classic caramel apple becomes green apple sorbet drizzled with caramel sauce served with cinnamon wontons. “The appleness is still there,” he says, but each flavor shows up in an unexpected form.

“Some people … don’t have enough experience to know what’s crossing the line from elegance into ridiculous,” he says. “I trust my skills.”

His fancy-but-not-crazy dishes, which will keep debuting as specials until they premiere on a revamped menu in a few weeks, are as much as most Clementine customers will see of the new chef.

“I’d much rather be back there cooking and cleaning than out here schmoozing,” he says, admitting he only threw the chef vest over his clothes for the interview.

"I’m more at home in the kitchen.”

Just not his home kitchen.