Cooking at Home is the New Going Out cooking classes, curbside chef, catering Text by Joanne M. Anderson Photos courtesy of Jud Flynn
When I see Jud Flynn, he’s not dressed in chef’s whites, black and white houndstooth pants and the distinctive toque blanche (white hat) of the award-winning executive chef that he is. He is more likely wearing jeans, work boots and a plaid shirt, operating JD or Big Blue with an 800-pound round bale of hay on a spear, waiting for me to position my truck to accept the bale. JD refers to his large John Deere tractor. Big Blue is the large model New Hollander tractor, and Little Blue, his small New Hollander tractor, is stationed nearby. Flynn grew up in Blacksburg and attended the old Prices Fork Elementary and Blacksburg High School. He spent summers in the tiny hamlet of Long Lake, N.Y., inside Adirondack Park, one of the first Forever Wild Forest Preserves in the country. There he worked beside his grandmother, who was a short order cook in the family restaurant. By the time he graduated from high school, Flynn had done dishes, prepped food and worked as a chef’s assistant. After a couple years in the culinary side of exclusive B&Bs in New Hampshire, he returned to Blacksburg. Back in town, he served as sous chef under a Dutch-trained chef, who left the job, and Flynn took over as executive chef. “Though I was doing everything well, the respect for my work was not present from peers and others, so I attended the esteemed New England Culinary Institute in Vermont,” Flynn relates. “I learned a new way of analytical thinking which has served me well, along with the requisite diploma which then validated my culinary skills.” He opened a couple restaurants in the New River Valley before spending 10 years as a senior executive chef at Virginia Tech. It was here that he met his wife, Heather Flynn, a graduate of Johnson & Wales, renowned for its culinary degrees. “It’s nice to have married someone also 32
NRV MAGAZINE
May/June
2022
