Mike Fisher started bussing tables at the Inn in Tres Pinos
– the rest is a dream come true
Mike Fisher, who recently graduated from the esteemed Cordon
Bleu Academy of Culinary Arts in Paris, has taken a job with one of
the premier resorts in the United States.
Mike Fisher started bussing tables at the Inn in Tres Pinos – the rest is a dream come true
Mike Fisher, who recently graduated from the esteemed Cordon Bleu Academy of Culinary Arts in Paris, has taken a job with one of the premier resorts in the United States.
Fisher, a fourth generation native of San Benito County, got his start in the industry as a busboy, dishwasher and all-around gopher at the Inn at Tres Pinos at the age of 14.
It was when he started working for Mike Howard at the Inn that he got to see the ins and outs of restaurant management and fell in love with the business.
“He showed up in a shirt and tie and I put him to work, even though he was only 14. The first thing I started him doing was seating customers, then he progressed along to a busser and he worked his way up the line. He expressed a solid interest in the business and I saw that so I wanted to teach him all I could,” Howard said.
Fisher expressed an interest in studying hotel/restaurant management and Howard quickly became a mentor. Howard told Fisher that if he wanted to get a degree in hotel/restaurant management he needed to go to a four-year university, but Fisher wanted to get into the business faster.
While working part-time at the Inn, Fisher also obtained a two-year degree from Heald Business College in Salinas. After Fisher graduated Howard made him the assistant general manager at the inn and he continued to climb the ladder quickly. Then Howard said Fisher took an interest in cooking school.
Cooking was something that Fisher had always had a passion for, according to his father, John Fisher. In fact, he first became intrigued with cooking at the age of 11 when he sat in on a class taught by Dorothy McNett.
He would cook at every opportunity and was always asking for culinary tools to expand his abilities.
“As a Christmas present one year we got Mike a half-day class at the San Francisco Culinary Institute,” John Fisher said.
This was before he’d ever considered going to Paris. Fisher said that his parents told him that if he wanted to go to cooking school, he should study in France, since that’s where the best schools are located, so he went and checked it out.
“I figured it would throw me into the lion’s den and since it had a good reputation it would prepare me,” Fisher said. “I got to Paris and I had no place to live and didn’t speak French, it was an interesting experience.”
Fisher came back from France, passing up an internship experience in London so that he could return to the United States, but when he got back he found that locating a job in the industry wasn’t easy.
He talked with his old friend Howard and then began applying at several places around the Bay Area and near Monterey, but was unsuccessful.
Howard understood how difficult it can be to get your foot in the door when you’re first starting out.
“It’s like a fraternity, this business,” Howard said. “Within the industry businesses pick and choose from the people that they already know, so it can be hard to get in there at first. It’s all about who you know.”
Howard said that Fisher is like the son he never had, so he used some of his contacts and put Fisher in touch with a former fraternity brother of Howard’s.
“Mike told me about the place in Virginia and I looked it up on the Internet, it was amazing,” Fisher said.
The Homestead is a five-star resort that, according to Howard, makes Pebble Beach look like Ridgemark.
Fisher met with the management and they offered him a job. So, instead of taking an internship he’s skipping that step and moving directly into a job. He’ll start at banquet, which is a step above the entry-level cook/intern position and he’s hopeful that he’ll quickly work his way through the resort.
Ultimately he would like to someday get back to this area and open his own restaurant, but until that day comes he will continue to work his way through the ranks as a chef.
Patrick O’Donnell can be reached at po*******@pi**********.com.
