For Chef Pete, Cruising to a Delicious Destination

For Chef Pete, Cruising to a Delicious Destination

By Leonard Shapiro

It’s not at all difficult to pinpoint when

Pete Smith’s fascination for food began percolating, then coming to a full boil when he was still in high school in his native Jacksonville.

His travel agent mother always believed in taking her children on a short cruise to learn how to read a menu, order a meal, and proper table manners.

Chef Pete Smith at Salamander Market

“I was ten,” said Smith, known at Middleburg’s Salamander Market as Chef Pete. “We went to the Bahamas, June 7, 1990, and it was three days. That was a big turning point in my life. I learned about food, hospitality, how to use the right utensils. The chef on the ship was African- American; that made a big impression on me. I also learned how to swim in a salt water pool.”

He also learned that preparing food could very well be his life’s work. In highschool, he enrolled in a work-study program in culinary arts. That lead to a scholarship at the Southeast Culinary Institute in St. Augustine and an internship with renowned Chef Matthew Medure at his restaurants in Jacksonville and Ponte Vedra Beach.

After finishing at the culinary institute, Smith began working full time for Medure. By 23, he was the youngest head chef in northern Florida, and also the first African American chef in the region.

Between 1999 and 2005 he ran his own catering business he called Sweet Pete’s and started one of the first food trucks in Jacksonville. After seven years, he wandered over to St. Vincent in the Grenadines in the eastern Caribbean to work at the posh Buccament Bay resort.

When the financially strapped resort closed in 2016, Smith returned to the U.S. as chef at the Sea Island Resort, sated his entrepreneurial instincts when he moved back to Jacksonville to open his own restaurant, then became head chef at the Olde Pink House restaurant in Savannah.

He started at Salamander last October after one of his colleagues at Sea Island, Salamander chef Bill Welsh, asked him to do a food tasting at the Middleburg resort. One taster that day was its owner, Sheila Johnson.

“She loved it,” Smith said. “And it was the first time I ever got a standing ovation at a tasting.”

He soon was offered the head chef position at the Salamander Market, and now lives in The Plains and is learning to love the area as much as his tasting patrons loved his food.

In addition to revising the breakfast and lunch menus and overseeing the Market’s kitchen, he also plans and executes the menus for the two special, reservation only dinners a month, holds tastings and teaches cooking classes.

“I’m trying to transform the market into a destination for tourists and for locals,” he said. “I want to support local farmers and give all our guests a beautiful experience.”

His style of cooking?“French techniques with a Southern flair,” he said.An example?“My foie gras and barbecued short ribs over a pimento cheese risotto.”Magnifique, y’all.