Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Merick Devine. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, Merick thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?

What’s the saying? 10,000 hours to be a master? Well, I disagree. After 10,000 hours, I think you’re just  beginning to really understand what you’re doing.

I’ve always enjoyed working with my hands. Whether it’s cooking, building a cabin for my dog, putting together Legos, playing guitar, whatever. There’s something cathartic about connecting your thoughts to your hands and creating something that didn’t exist before. I felt this way long before I ever got into cooking but cooking certainly gave me a wider outlet for it.

Given my kind of innate disposition for this kind of work, it’s not surprising, although it is a little punny, that I choose to go work at “Craft” for my first real kitchen job. Relatively new at the time, Craft’s approach to cooking was technique-driven. The plates were simple and without any fluff. If you ordered the Short Rib, that’s what you got. A perfect piece of Short Rib and nothing else. There weren’t vegetables, or starches, or purees and gels to adorn the plate and hide your mistakes. It had to be perfect, or it just wouldn’t work. I loved that and its stuck with me to this day.

That’s where I started to think of myself not just as a cook but more of a craftsman. I’d bring a ruler with me and measure my cuts each day. I timed EVERYTHING I did and kept a ledger to track it. If one foie torchon was fatter than the other, I’d unwrap it and do it again. I’d go home at night and roll up a towel on the coffee table and practice butcher tying it while I watched TV. So many young cooks want to immediately start working with tweezers and do all this avant-garde stuff before they ever really learn to understand food and what cooking really is. At Craft, I learned to appreciate how complex the “basics” really were and how the seemingly most trivial of steps can be the one that makes all the difference. The differences between making good food and outstanding food can be so subtle, but it’s like the difference between firing a bullet and throwing one.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I didn’t grow up dreaming of becoming a professional chef one day. I don’t even really remember liking to cook all that much as a kid. For me, this didn’t start because of the process. It started because of the product. It was all about food and how I just really liked to eat.

I was very fortunate growing up. I have a great family with strong values and family dinner was always one of them. Almost every night we ate together around the table. My mom (and sometimes dad too) would cook. The kids would set the table. This was before cell phones were the distraction they are today, but there was no TV, no radio, no calls on the landline. It was 3o minutes each day where everything else stopped and the only thing that mattered was the food and the company. Something about that always stuck with me.

As I got older and graduated high school I went off to college because that’s just what you did when you graduated high school. I had gotten into black-and-white photography and I was alright at it, so I figured I’d wander down that road for a while. I headed off to Penn State to pursue a career in photojournalism. Now, I don’t remember exactly how much time had passed, but after a semester or two of eating hot pockets, ramen noodles, and Sheetz every day, I really started to miss those family dinners at home. I missed eating really good food. And that was it. It was only that little feeling that became the catalyst for everything else to come.

I started buying cookbooks and practicing recipes in my little college apartment kitchen. The more cookbooks I bought, the less I looked at my schoolbooks. I was skipping class to try new recipes and throw dinner parties for a bunch of college freshmen. My grades suffered but damn were my roommates impressed with my hollandaise and understanding of emulsions. Eventually, the scales tipped to the point that it just didn’t make sense to be in a traditional university anymore and I set off to attend the Culinary Institute of America.

Fast forward about 15 years and it feels like there was only ever one path for me and it was always leading to right here. After spending time in LA and Colorado, I made my way back home to Pennsylvania to be closer to my family. This is when I met Marty and became a part of Fearless Restaurants. I started working at The White Dog Cafe while putting down new roots. Before White Dog though, most of my time working in professional kitchens was in Italian restaurants and despite my best efforts, I had a really hard time turning that off. After a couple of years of forcing Italian food into an American kitchen, I was given the opportunity to cook my own food the way I wanted to. That opportunity came in the form of Rosalie. We bullishly opened our doors in August of 2020 despite the chaos of COVID around us. That was a crazy time to be in the hospitality industry and an even crazier time to be opening a restaurant, but we did, and the public responded. Rosalie has seen enough growth and support from the local community that we are developing Testa Rossa, a second Italian concept for Fearless Restaurants.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

I just want to cook food that will make people happy. Earlier in my career, I think I was cooking more for myself than the guests. I only wanted to work in restaurants with stars and I wanted to use tweezers for everything. It was ego-driven. Like, look how precious I can make this dish. Look how many steps it takes just to get here. Look at what “I” can do. As I’ve grown through this industry, I’ve realized that you’ll never make someone else they’re happiest if you’re thinking about yourself first. We found our biggest successes at Rosalie were when we took a step back and asked the question, “How do we make this better and make our guests happier by making it simpler?”

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

At one point I got really into the history of pirates. One very common misconception about pirates and, more particularly, the captain, is how they lived while on board the ship. In the movies, you always see the crew doing back-breaking work all day and retiring to the dark, crowded underbelly of the ship to sleep at night. Meanwhile, the captain’s living lavishly in a private cabin with all the food and rum they could stomach. This wasn’t true though. The captain lived amongst the crew every day. They ate with the crew. They worked with the crew. They slept with the crew. They were all equals. They all had a voice, And they were all expected to pull their own weight. It was only in times of war when there could be only one voice, that the captain was separated from the crew in any way. Something about that always resonated with me. It how’s I lead my team.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @merickdevine

Image Credits
All photos are via Casey Robinson. Jaimi Blackburn will most likely have more info about her if needed.