‘Our People

From Chicken to Brussel Sprouts

In The Kitchen with Chef Adam Dietrich

BY L’MONIQUE KING QNOTES STAFF WRITER

Adam Dietrich is passionate about food. He calls North Carolina home, but he’s a native Floridian. He’s also a chef and food safety instructor. While at home in his kitchen (his favorite room of the house) in Newell he spoke to us about the joy of cooking, dangerous food myths and living his best life with his partner and three dogs (May, June and August) on their farm in the University City Neighborhood he lives in.

Even at home, Adam is clothed in a pair of chef pants and kitchen Crocs with bananas on them. He said his pants are “black and white stripes; they make me look taller, and my black shirt makes me look skinnier – that’s what I’m going for, taller and skinnier.”

Having met Adam Dietrich, two things are certain – he has an awesome sense of humor and he looks like he’s living his dream, at peace, doing what he loves. Adam’s passion for cooking began at a young age.

“I started working in a hotel in St. Pete beach when I was 15 years old,” Dietrich recalls. “I was cooking and making salads at the Sea Porch Café in the Don Cesar Beach Resort and Spa.”

He points to his family as the impetus behind his career in food and cooking. “I like to eat and my parents are both notoriously terrible cooks,” he laughs. “The only reason they had a kitchen is because it was built into the house.”

Dietrich has resided in Charlotte for 17 years. It’s been almost two decades since the witty and candid culinary artist moved to Charlotte from Charleston, S. C., by way of St. Petersburg, Fla.

And it’s a good thing too, because Charlotte has plenty of QT Gas stations – Dietrich’s first stop for the one food he could eat continuously and forever if there weren’t anything else. His guilty pleasure? “Egg rolls from the QT Gas station. They’re so damn good! I put on a disguise when I go in there. I’m so embarrassed about it, but I love those damn things. I had four yesterday. It is what it is. I’m living my truth.”

Adam Dietrich attended Johnson & Wales University in Charleston, S. C. When the campus closed in 2005 and shortly after reopened in Charlotte, Adam moved to the Queen City, where he shares his life with his partner, Tim.

The two have been partnered for nine years. “Tim is wonderful – so supportive of all the things I want to do [and] my ideas. I’m an idea guy and he is the sounding board and the support. He grounds me. When you’re a personality like me, you need someone to ground you and tell you when you’re just being ridiculous.”

Currently, Dietrich owns his own company, Expo – where he trains restaurant professionals in food safety and sanitation. “In particular, a program called ServSafe, which is required for restaurant managers and chefs. It’s required by the NC Health Department for them to have this certification. I also teach [at] Central Piedmont Community College (CPCC) in their Corporate and Continuing Education Program. It’s a passion project. I created a class along with my boss at the college. It’s a 10-week class for adults looking to get into the food service industry but have no skills that the industry is looking for. I give students entry–level jobs skills for food service, then we find them employment and then mentor them for two years.”

For qnotes readers with a devotion to culinary art, Dietrich shares his best holiday cooking tip, something his students and budding chefs in his CPCC program know well.

“Reheat your leftovers to 165 degrees,” he explains. “Typically around the holidays, we eat, have a big family gathering and the food sits out. If there’s a small amount of bacteria present and food sits out [unrefrigerated], the bacteria can grow to an unsafe level.

“You can get very sick from consuming just a small amount of bacteria,” cautions Dietrich. “Most folks can accept that. [But] no one wants to end the holidays in the hospital from consuming unsafe food.”

That’s a fact, though everything you might think you know about food and food safety isn’t. That considered, Dietrich offers to put to rest a myth that seems to leave him vexed.

The myth: You should wash your chicken. “You should not wash your chicken,” he says matter-of-factly. “What are you doing with water that heat is not going to do for you? Washing your chicken will only spread the bacteria around your kitchen. Water splashes.

“However,” he laughs, “if you wanna’ wash chicken, have at it. I’m not coming in and telling anyone’s mama or grandma that they’re doing things the wrong way. But don’t walk into a professional kitchen and wash some chicken. They’ll laugh you right out of there.”

Unwashed chicken aside, we wanted to know what Dietrich’s favorite holiday dish is. When it comes to what he enjoys eating, without hesitation and right in line with the season he said, “Pumpkin Pie.” When it comes to cooking though, it might surprise you to learn it’s brussel sprouts. “My in-laws have always requested my bacon braised brussel sprouts.” His secret ingredient, which apparently makes his dish so popular, is a simple but unexpected one: vanilla extract.

In the spirit of the season, Dietrich shared some words of advice for culinary entrepreneurs: “Set small goals that lead to larger goals. Dream big dreams and pursue them with intensity.”

That’s great advice for us all, no matter what the chosen field or profession. : :

Chef and food prep expert Adam Dietrich, owner of Expo, trains restaurant professionals about food safety and sanitation (Photo: Timothy Ray)

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MU: It was a lot more fun than my experience with her on Swan Song since we never crossed paths. I loved making Swan Song, and my part of the movie was shot after her part of the movie, so it was really fun to show up and hear all of the stories about how fun it was to have her in a small town in Ohio. I will say working with her is as fun as you would imagine, as surprising as you would imagine. On the one hand, everybody knows her thing, everybody sort of knows what she does. In fact, Chad Hodge, our writer, wrote the role in hopes that she would play it. In the script, when it says, “Enter Aunt Sandy,” in parentheses it says, “Think Jennifer Coolidge.” That was always the hope and the plan. And yet still, knowing that it was written for her, knowing her body of work, she still surprises me. I still don’t know how she’s going to spin a line. And when she goes off-script, you have no idea what she’s going to say, and it’s always something amazing. I knew she’d be funny; I knew she’d be cool. I knew we’d have a good time and she’d be terrific in the role, but I didn’t know how surprised I would be. Luckily, in the movie, all the characters are just as delighted by Aunt Sandy as all of us are of Jennifer Coolidge. There’s not a lot of acting going on in those scenes. GS: You mentioned the fact that Netflix is joining the fray of gay-themed holiday movies. What do you think of this trend of streaming networks creating queer holiday movies such as Single All the Way and 2020’s Happiest Season?

MU: I think it’s good and it’s important. I think romance is not isolated to heterosexual relationships and neither is Christmas. The gays love Christmas, and the gays love Christmas movies. So, throwing them some, I think, is going to be really good. Because they’re so popular, I think providing a movie like this or Happiest Season to the cross-section of people who will watch any Christmas movie is only going to broaden people’s ideas and give people a real sense of how we’re ultimately the same. The movie is not about how we’re different. It’s about the ways in which we are alike. Christmas, romance; we can meet on a lot of things, queer people and straight people. I think it’s exciting and inspiring to be part of that.

GS: Finally, Michael, are there any upcoming projects you’d like to mention?

MU: I’m in the movie of Jersey Boys, the musical about Frankie Valli and The Four

Seasons which played Broadway forever. We put the show up this summer and filmed it for a streaming service. Nick Jonas played

Frankie Valli and he was so good. It was a lot of fun. That’s going to be out sometime; but I don’t know when. Nov.26 -Dec. 9, 2021 qnotes 19