LOS ANGELES
The Keystones of an Icon with Executive Chef Atticus Garant Fairmont Hotel, Century City When CW Magazine reached out to award-winning Executive Chef Atticus Garant to request his participation in a feature on him and the recently opened Fairmont Hotel in Century City, Los Angeles, he replied, ‘I will happily participate but I would like the feature to focus mostly on my stellar team.’ Read on for the LA skinny on Chef Atticus Garant and how relies on his killer team of keystones to invigorate and reopen the icon that is the Fairmont Hotel, Century City.
The Fairmont Century Plaza was initially scheduled to open on April 20, 2021 and didn’t open until the following September. Was there a silver lining to the delay? I always say the journey starts with people. The greatest benefit to us having that time was that we were able to find incredible people.
I’m a huge believer in people and culture. We can’t get anywhere anymore in this industry without a positive culture and strong relationships. Having the time to work on menus and collaborate, has yielded a better product and also refined as a unit.
What is something essential that you have learned in this experience of opening this particular property for the iconic Fairmont Hotel brand during these unprecedented times? I’m always learning. If we are not learning we are dead in the water, right? Of course, Covid has changed everything. Today’s chef is a lot different than the chef of a year and a half ago. We’re in much different waters. We’ve had to get really good at pivoting and adapting. That’s the new superpower chefs must have if they want to succeed.
Speaking of superpowers, tell us about your stellar team. There are five divisions in what I call our ‘Keystone Team.’ If you’re not familiar with the term ‘keystone’ it’s the last piece that is put in an archway that locks the whole archway together. It is the crucial piece needed to complete it. The players we have here at Fairmont Century Plaza are truly keystones. Without them, we just would not be who we are.
The Stewards The general public doesn’t truly understand what a steward does. First and foremost, without our Executive Steward Haydee Tapia and our Assistant Executive Steward Emmanuel Gomez, we would we have been nothing, we would be literally just a bunch of chefs running around the house. These two leaders have been pivotal in making sure that the systems that we put on paper have come to fruition.
Heart of House / Back of House We call our back of house, the ‘heart of house.’ We have to keep our heart of house sparkling. We have a term we like to use within our kitchens and that’s ‘surgical.’ We want the kitchens to be stainless and the floors polished, the corners scrubbed, (i.e. surgical) so that we can make the magic happen. This is the superpower of the ‘heart of house’ team.
The Lumière Team Our Executive Chef Ramon Bohorquez has worked in some phenomenal restaurants and has an awesome reputation. He’s brilliant at sourcing amazing local ingredients and has a breadth of knowledge about the LA food scene. He’s got a huge task as Century
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