Today we’d like to introduce you to Brett Stephen.
Brett, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
My earliest food memories all revolve around my grandparents, my fathers parents owned a small ranch Rancho Este Es (now Black Jack Winery). My fathers mom had a huge garden and raise all kinds of livestock which was food for the family and community, from Squab, Chickens, Ducks, Goats, Cows, and was a champion Hog breeder producing a number of 4H champions for decades. She was also an amazing cook, the ranch kitchen was huge, large than many restaurant kitchens I’ve worked in over the past 25 years, including a full sized walk in refrigerator that my grandfather removed from a defunct restaurant he was demolishing (he was in the construction business like my father). She was always in the garden or in the kitchen cooking for the family, a church function, a fundraiser, or the less fortunate in the community.
My Grand Parents on my mother side also had a great influence and feed me and my brother constantly. My grandfather had a half acer garden on their single acer lot in Santa Ynez, and my grandmother was always cooking. As a result of living through the great depression they wasted nothing, every bit of food grown on that land if not eaten fresh was canned or preserved somehow, a practice I came to love later in my cooking career. Additionally during the spring months they would take my brother and I to forage the wild invasive mustard greens that grow all along our coast, we would pick them until our hands were stained green. The greens would be stewed and served for diner, or blanched shocked and wrung out like spinach and frozen… waste not want not.
All this said my father was also an amazing cook as well, when he married my late stepmother, he would cook dinner most nights as he was always home first as his work days started early running his construction company. I have fond memories of making pancakes and waffles on the weekends for the whole family with him. He always encouraged my love of cooking, even to the point of helping me sign up to enter a salsa contest at the Santa Barbara fair while I was in middle school, I spent hours finely dicing a pico de gallo which earned me a blue ribbon.
Once I was in High School I needed to get a job if I wanted to have spending money, I had always worked on my fathers jobsites as a kid during the summers, breaking down concrete molds after the foundations had set or cleaning up but construction was hard, hot, and dirty work, so I found my first “real” job at Giovanni’s Pizza in Solvang, starting as a dishwasher and table busser I quickly moved into making salads then pizzas, sandwiches, and pastas. I never thought at the time I would make a career in the kitchen, in the 90’s a kitchen job wasn’t really something to be proud of yet. As soon as I got my drivers license I moved on to delivery boy as the pay was much better due to tips. During high school I bounced around working at different pizzerias including Tower Pizza in Solvang, and finally Gino’s Pizza in Buellton.
After graduating high school I started started studying computer science at SBCC, I had always been a computer nerd and thought I wanted to make a career in this still exciting newish field. But between sitting at a computer all day at school, and while at work I started to burn out. After three semesters I called it quits. I thought my father was going to kill me for wasting his money, but I kept taking my core classes while I thought about what I wanted to do. It was at this time I stumbled across Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential, though I was never a huge reader I couldn’t put the book down, I reread it. The outrageous depiction of life in professional kitchens reminded me of how much fun I always had working at the pizzerias only a few years before. Between that book and the food networks rise in the early 2000’s I realized that being a chef was a real option for me, a place I could be myself and hopefully enjoy my working life. The following semester I enrolled in SBCC’s acclaimed Culinary Program, where I meet my first and one of my greatest mentors Chef Charlie Fredricks. While not a star student (I never was from grade school up I did the minimum to get by and that was all) Charlie saw my potential and pushed me, he got me my first two “real” kitchen jobs, the first at Zen Yai Thai Cuisine on Lower State St, I would eventually come to live with the owners and work for them off and on for the next 6 years. The second job he got me was in my first fine dinning restaurant, Square One the brain child of the late Chef Jason Tuley, an amazing chef and absolute mad man. Working for Jason was just like reading Bourdain, cursing, hot pans and other kitchen implements thrown across the kitchen in a rage, and drugs… lots of drugs, ultimately the reason I left Square One, I had always been a pothead since high school, but the hard drugs in the kitchen they were not an option in that kitchen, they were the only way to preform on a high enough level… I was still in culinary school at that time, between work and school I was lucky to sleep 4 or 5 hours.
After leaving square one I wound up working for a short time at Epiphany, the slowly failing and dying restaurant in Santa Barbara who’s only claim to fame was that Kevin Costner was a partner in and ironically Tuley had been the opening chef of many years earlier. After graduating the Culinary program at SBCC, I took a job at La Cumbre Country Club, it was good job the first ever to give me benefits, and PTO. It’s was a huge and busy kitchen, I learned a lot in my two years their but ultimately the job was too “corporate” for my taste.
It’s was at this time I realized my mounting credit card debit was going to bury me alive if I didn’t move out of Santa Barbara, it’s an amazing but expensive place to live and being a cook has never been a high paying job. My mother graciously allowed me to move home back the Santa Ynez Valley, I committed that I was going to work for the best chefs in the area each for as long as I could stand or until I was no longer learning and enriching my culinary knowledge, while paying off my debt as fast as possible so I could get back out on my own. I got a job working for Budi Kazali at The Ballard Inn, I worked my way up from the Salad and dessert station to sous chef before leaving after a little over two years. I would go on to work run the cafe/deli at the Los Olivos Grocery store for a short while, then I landed at Full of Life Flatbread for a few years where I feel in love with cooking in a wood fired oven until the physical stress on my body caused my to tear my rotator cuff badly enough I was relying on painmeds to get through a shift in front of the giant 900 degree stone oven in the dinning room, I loved that job and probably would have burnt myself out if my chef hadn’t caught me popping a pill preshift and insisting I go to a doctor. Chef Brian went over the owner head and signed the workers comp forms so I could see a doctor. I spent the next 9 months recovering from my injury before I helped an old friend open a short lived seafood restaurant. The failed Kingfish in Solvang was soul crushing and nearly pushed me out of the industry.
I needed a change of pace from the grind of a restaurant kitchen. While working at Flatbread I had meet another local chef, Jeff Olsson he ran a high end catering company. While working at Flatbread I had done a fair amount of catering adjacent jobs from Out Standing in the Field Dinners, to Winery Functions, to baking thousands of pizzas at festivals like outside lands and Coachella. Events were hard but in a different way. So I went to talk to Jeff and see if I could land a job with him. He had a tight knit crew so he didn’t have stable work for me but said he would be happy to take me on as help for event days. I knew this wasn’t going to enough to pay my bills but I wanted it to work, so I found another catering company whom I will not name to also work for that first catering season. Jeff was an amazingly talented chef and the calmest, nicest, and all around best boss I had ever known. A stark contrast to the other company I worked for that first catering season. After that first season Jeff’s sous chef was preparing to move and Jeff told me he could bring me on in a full time capacity, so I ditched the second job and their sketchy practices in a flash. Lets just say that first catering season I learned a lot about the catering business from Jeff how things should be done and from the other company what not to do from treating employees to food handling. Jeff would become my greatest mentor and inspiration. I would spend the next 6 years under him working my way into the position of Sous Chef, helping him to open Industrial Eats in Buellton and train the opening kitchen staff how to use the two wood fired ovens at the heart of it’s kitchen. I could write a book on all the things Jeff did for me, from taming my wild temper the Tuley had fostered, to teaching me how to be a leader in the kitchen, to just being a better human being. In addition to what he taught me he helped me to learn more skills on my own by putting me in charge of Eats butchery and charcuterie program. Jeff graciously allowed me start taking on catering gigs of my own for local wineries utilizing his kitchen free of charge, he only requirement was my side gig not interfere with me keeping up on my responsibilities to Eats. He told me I don’t care if you want to come in at 2AM to get you work done here so you can do your own event, and I did a few times. He not only allowed me to start my own business while working for him he encouraged it and in my earlier years of starting High on the Hog Catering he was always their to lend me advice and even equipment. A few years after i departed working for him, he fell ill with cancer and later passed, we talked frequently and he never told me he was sick, I knew he was I heard the gossip from my former coworkers and I could see the drain on his body, I don’t know if he didn’t want to tell me because he didn’t want my pity or he knew how hard it was watching my stepmother lose her battle with cancer years earlier. On his death bed I was able to spend half a day just sitting telling him how much he meant to me and how he made me into the man I am today. I’ve never loved another man as much as I love Jeff, other than my father and brother, he was a second father to me.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Not at all, I think I mentioned them all in my last answer, but in short. Toxic Kitchen culture including drugs and physical and mental abuse by chefs. The physical strain of this job, long hours on your feet, heat, smoke, etc. Mental strain of failing. Lose of loved ones
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
I stared high on the hog in 2017. We are a catering company that doesn’t specialize in any one kind of cuisine, we specializes in delivering the highest quality food we possibly can in any location. We will do anything we can to make our clients meal as close as possible to their dreams/wishes/desires.
I’ve go so far as to buy nearly a dozen books on Indian cuisine and spend nearly two weeks making and eating Indian food to prepare for an event that wanted Indian food catered for 200 guests. We do everything from Classic Santa Maria Style BBQ, to 4 course fine dinning style meals on a remote polo field for 500 guests.
We partner with several local farms most notably Sunrise Organic Farms, Tutti Frutti Farms, and The Garden of…
I think our versatility and our amazing staff is our greatest asset.
Who else deserves credit in your story?
again mentioned in my background. mentors, Charlie Fredricks and Jeff Olsson. Cheerleaders, my family, my mother and father 1000%
additionally my wife and business partner Amber Stephen, she is a world class pastry chef and puts up with my shit all day every day at both home and work… I don’t know how she does it
team mates, I couldn’t do what I do without my team, everyone of them. From my dishwashers to the weekend warriors that have day jobs but show up nearly every weekend during our busy season to serve our guests. But the two most important are my wife/business partner and my Sous Chef Johnny Jimenez.
Last but not least our amazing farmers, Sunrise Organic Farms, Tutti Frutti Farms, The Garden of…
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.highonthehogcatering.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/highonthehogcatering
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/highonthehogcatering/
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/high-on-the-hog-catering-buellton-2
- Other: https://sbcountywines.com/portfolio_page/high-on-the-hog-catering/
