Chef Spotlight Chris Nadobny

Soaring Eagle Resort & Casino (Mount Pleasant, Michigan) 1-888-732-4537 | SoaringEagleCasino.com

Soaring Eagle Resort & Casino is in Mount Pleasant, Michigan is home to 210,000 square feet of gaming space, a hotel with 500 rooms and suites, and a Spa & Salon with everything you need to relax and be pampered. In addition to the gaming and leisure activities, the dining at Soaring Eagle also offers guests plenty of options from casual bites at Legends Diner or Asced Sports Book & Lounge to fine dining at Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse or Siniikaung Steak & Chop House.

We recently caught up with Soaring Eagle’s Food & Beverage Director, Chef Chris Nadobny, to chat about the dining options at the property as well as his background and culinary influences. He has been at the property for twenty-two years and is a true treasure with his vast experience and creativity.

Be sure to stop by and tell him hello on your next visit to Soaring Eagle!

G. Douglas Dreisbach: What originally led you to become a chef? And how did you end up at Soaring Eagle?

Chef Chris Nadobny: My parents owned a retail wholesale fish market in Bay City, Michigan and I got my start there cutting fish, delivering fish, working the counter, those sorts of things. So that got me started with food handling, quality control, so on and so forth. In my teenage years, going to school, trying to get a date smelling like fish just wasn’t a thing. So, I ended up getting a job at a local restaurant cleaning dishes and then it just kind of grew. A lot of times in the food industry, a line cook or someone will quit and they look to the next guy to take their place. Well, the owner looked at me and said, “You want to move up?” And there it was.

GDD: What kind of restaurant was it?

CN: It was a mid-level to high-end restaurant in a local community but there were a lot of tourists. We have a great fishery on Saginaw Bay, so there’s a big tourist crowd there, so it was more of a tourist-based restaurant. GDD: At what point did the light turn on in your mind and you knew you wanted to have a career in the culinary business?

CN: Actually, I got a job offer through a country club, and when I got there, I started getting a feel for seeing the refinement of how to handle food, prepare food, and present food. That really sparked my interest. The rush of being on a line, throwing down on a line and working as a team really kind of sparked and intrigued me to take it further.

GDD: Did you get your early experience more hands-on in the kitchen versus going to a culinary college?

CN: Well, that’s where I started out, but down the road, I did end up going to the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York. It was there that I refined and furthered my education in both the culinary arts and the business end of it, as well.

GDD: So, you came through as maybe somewhat of a novice, and then they polished you up and put you back out into the finer dining preparation of the world of culinary?

CN: Absolutely. And I knew how to run a line. I knew how to throw down. I knew how to work as a team. But you go to school, and that kind of refines everything and it builds on your experience. The experience is, in my opinion, one of the more important details of being a culinarian or a chef or anybody in food and beverage. So they just took the experience I had and kind of refined it a little bit.

GDD: Are there any types of cuisines you like to cook? And how does that transcend to what goes on the menus for your guests?

CN: I still have a sweet spot for anything seafood. I love handling seafood. I love cooking seafood. I love serving seafood. It’s just a great palette and if the product is fresh, looks good and smells good, you can do little things to enhance it. I am an outdoorsman. I like to hunt and fish, so a lot of wild game is consumed at the house, and we try to do some here at the property as well.

GDD: Soaring Eagle offers a great variety of culinary offerings from casual to the Siniikaung Steak and Chop House. What is your role in menu development and how is it derived?

CN: I have the final say on the menus for our internal restaurants. I was recently promoted from Executive Chef to Food and Beverage Director, so those menus go through each of the outlets department chefs and work their way through the executive sous and the executive chef who will put their touches on it. Then between how that menu is presented, how it looks, how it rolls out, how it’s made sure it’s financially feasible for both the organization and our guests, I will have that final say-so on it.

GDD: It sounds like team camaraderie is important in the food and beverage department as the team presents something to you, and you say, “Yeah, this hit the nail on the head.” That is probably a pretty good feeling for them, almost like presenting a project to the teacher in class and getting it right.

CN: Absolutely, having the chefs that oversee the outlets write those menus gives them a sense of ownership and pride in what they’re presenting. I, myself, as the Executive Chef, could write a menu, develop the recipes and give it to these individuals, and say, “OK, this is what you’re going to execute,” but then where is the ownership in that? Where is the pride in that? When someone creates something of their own, it just creates a level of ownership in that end product that, no matter how professional you are, you might not get that if it’s something that’s forced on us.

Now, where the executive chef and beverage director comes in is that final refinement, that final tweak, that, “Well, what if we do this? Or what if we do that?” We discuss it as a team and make a decision as a team.