Got a Minute with Rob Keener

How long have you lived in Hendersonville?

We have been here about nine years.

You were formerly a commodities trader but have experience in fine cuisine that goes back even further than your financial background. Tell me about how those two careers have played out?

I first started cooking or working in kitchens when I was maybe 13 or 14 years old around the furniture market in Hickory and just kind of liked the, I guess, nocturnal lifestyle of the business and continued through high school to work at several restaurants around Hickory. I went to North Carolina State and I thought I was going to be an engineer until I found out what an engineer does. The geology class was more interesting so I switched my major ... just because it kind combined the outdoors with science. After graduating I moved out to Colorado, worked at a couple of restaurants in Vail. I ended up moving back to North Carolina, did some computer consulting work. Then I moved here to Hendersonville to work as a trader for a guy that ran a hedge fund. And as they say the rest is sort of history ... The way the requirement is, you work for somebody else for two years and you can go out on your own. That's what I did. I started a fund on my own and I actually moved into the Federal Building right across the street so I could see the back door of the restaurant, which was kind of interesting and I literally was just kind of drawn back to it. I started working a couple of nights a week and they said can you work more, and in a year and a half I run the restaurant.

What drew you back to cooking?

I came in and started out working as a line cook. I just honestly was tired of sitting at a desk and wanted something that was more active and something that was more creative than the trading business. It's a pretty cutthroat business.

Are you a self-taught chef?

Yes, I grew up beside two grandmothers who had big gardens. I had no idea that that was the beginning of training. Both of my grandmothers, we would go out and pick the vegetables out of the garden in the morning and shell peas and wash onions and eat it.

So you started out sort of classic southern home-cooking cuisine?

And then I worked around the furniture market and that was a lot of big volume caterings ... for two to three thousand people on Friday or Saturday night and get up in the morning and do it again. Then I went to work in a French restaurant for a chef that was trained at Johnson and Wales (University) in Rhode Island. So that is where I really started to learn the more classical French techniques. Then after my freshman year at State I went and traveled in Europe for about three months. Probably the most memorable meals were in France and Austria and different places where the cultures are just kind of intermingled along the borders of Italy and France and different places like that.

Was that specifically a culinary tour?

No. I just went over there (at age 19) with some money and a Eurail Pass and just I think probably to ... about 18 different countries just went all over the place, bungie jumping in France and I actually did some kayaking there but nothing that was like what we have around here.

So that's how you moved from down home Southern style cooking to the south of France?

Yeah, I mean that was the first time I was ever exposed to, you go in three or four courses and at the end of the meal they bring out a big, a really big, board of cheese. I had never sat down to a meal where there was a cheese course.

You are a whitewater kayaker. How long have you been doing that?

I have been, really just picked it up when I moved to Hendersonville, so I guess about nine years now.

When you say you run the restaurant by yourself, do you have other people who work for you?

Yeah, we have other guys that work in the cooking. I don't cook everything by myself. But as far as, traditionally you would have a front of the house manager that manages the servers and different things like that and you have a chef that manages the kitchen. In this scenario it is just me.

So you have to do the financial side and the cooking?

Yeah. And it is kind of like the commodities business was, sort of training. I had no idea, but I have that ability and it is interesting. I probably work 60 or 70 hours a week. I was working more when we initially made the transition but I quickly figured out I couldn't do that. So now what I do is I usually will bring my kids over here in the morning for 30 or 45 minutes and make sure everything is going the way it should be going and take off and come back at 2 o'clock or something like that.

What is your favorite dish that you create here.

I think the seafood seems to be to me to be one of the most delicate and easily manipulated mediums to work with. One of our signature dishes is the sea bass dish with pickled ginger and sweet Thai chili sauce. And then we have to kind of stay true to the region we are in, we have those dishes that are classic Southern dishes like a pan-fried trout with a bourbon pecan butter and we also have shrimp and grits, giant steaks, all those things like that.

- Interview by Harrison Metzger; photo by Patrick Sullivan