Chef Profile: Bradley Montgomery
Bradley Montgomery
The Chef: Bradley Montgomery, Director of Dining and Culinary at The Solana at Cinco Ranch, an independent senior community in Katy, Texas.
The Toolbox: A knife roll.
The knife roll
The Tools: Various knives, a Microplane grater, a melon baller, and a mishmash of other tools. One item that Chef Montgomery carries but it won’t fit in the narrow-pocketed roll is his solid stainless cleaver. Besides being one of his most important tools, the cleaver also has a bit of sentimental value to him. “I bought it years ago in San Francisco’s Chinatown with my friend Shirley Fong-Torres,” he said. For the uninitiated, Fong-Torres is a local food celebrity and founder of Wok Wiz walking tours of Chinatown. “I think of her every time I pick it up,” he adds.
Stainless steel cleaver straight from Chinatown
The Tool Done Gone: “A tomato shark." Again, for the uninformed — like me — it’s like a melon baller, but with sharp jagged teeth that simplify the process of coring a tomato. “I like it,” Montgomery says, “but it’s not essential. No offense, Shark People.”
The Most Unusual Tool: “I don’t know about strange,” he says, “but my serrated spatula is pretty neat.”
A Tool That’s Inspired Him: “Who doesn’t like Microplane ?” he asks, and not entirely rhetorically. “The one that I travel with has been there for some elegant, fine touches with fresh truffles, to grate whole nutmeg that I picked up in Darjeeling, and to create dark & white chocolate ‘snow.’”
What A Psychologist Would Say About His Toolbox: “Has baggage, but travels light.”
His Voyeuristic Side When It Comes To Other Chefs’ Toolboxes: “Why so big?” he wants to know. “My knives have been around the world, but I could never carry the mammoth toolboxes I’ve seen.”
Chef Montgomery's work-a-day Cutco scissors
His Love Tool: Cutco Scissors. “As a self-confessed knife snob, I would never consider some Cutco products to be professional tools,” he admits. But after receiving a pair as a gift, the scissors blew him away. “They’re not in my daily kit, but they’re so versatile that I cannot imagine not having them. The shtick is that they will cut a penny to ribbons, but the reality is that from herbs in my garden to processing a chicken, they are simply awesome and still as sharp today as when I got them in 1999.” Does he use them outside the kitchen? “No, that would be sacrilege.”
Lisa ~ Very helpful piece which demonstrates a chef is a chef is a chef…wherever he cooks he needs his bag of tricks! BTW…if you ever get to Houston, plan to break bread with Chef Bradley and the staff at The Solana in its luxe Signature dining room.