The Unlikely Success Story of Per Se’s Eli Kaimeh
Yahoo Food is proud to present a new weeklong series called “Master Class.” Throughout the year, we’ll visit with some of America’s top culinary talents and share a behind-the-scenes look at the worlds they’ve created. All this week we visited with the country’s most revered chef, Thomas Keller, and his team. Below, our final story in the series, the charming tale of Per Se’s chef de cuisine, Eli Kaimeh.
Eli Kaimeh stands outside the dining room of Per Se. (Photo: Daniel Krieger for The New York Times)
If Martin Scorsese ever wants to make a movie about a chef, he need look no further than Eli Kaimeh.
From Kaimeh’s childhood as the first-generation son of Syrian parents in working-class Brooklyn to his current job as head chef under Thomas Keller at New York’s acclaimed Per Se, Kaimeh’s life has been inspirational and cinematic.
Take his first day working in a kitchen. It was the ’90s at Lot 61, a now-defunct trendy Manhattan restaurant frequented by the likes of Puff Daddy (aka “Sean John Combs,” aka “Diddy”) and Jennifer Lopez. His previous experience was as a teenage busboy and waiter in Brooklyn, but he bluffed his way into a job as a cook. He didn’t have any tools, just a knife he had borrowed from his mother’s kitchen. His first task: cut a case of scallions on the bias. “Really quick, sharp knife,” he was told.
Kaimeh was in heaven. “All I could do was look around,” he remembered. “I was mesmerized. Next thing you know, I basically cut my whole entire fingernail off. I was like, there’s no way anybody can know I did this.” He grabbed some paper towels and fashioned a tourniquet of sorts. “I didn’t feel any pain yet because I was kind of numb. I said to myself, ‘OK, let’s go.’ Then, boom—I cut my other finger off. Like, off. I’m profusely sweating. Finally, I said, ‘Okay, I’m done with the scallions,’ and I was told to cut 200 lemons into wedges.’ That was painful.”
No one ever found out, and yes, Kaimeh came back the next day.
Food had played a big part in Kaimeh’s life early on. In the ’70s, his parents and several members of his extended family had moved to Sunset Park, Brooklyn, from Syria. Like many immigrants to this country, they were looking for opportunity, religious freedom, and a better life for their children. Every Sunday was a celebration that centered around eating and drinking. Uncles, aunts, cousins, neighbors, everyone would come over. His mother and grandmother would start cooking mid-week; the men didn’t go near the kitchen. Kaimeh had three older sisters, and as the only son he was doted upon. “I sat on a lot of laps, and people loved to feed me,” he recalled.
The meals were epic, with big platters of tabbouleh and hummus, and multiple preparations of lamb, which his father would buy freshly slaughtered from a butcher in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. There was roast lamb, of course; kibbeh nayyeh, a tartare of lamb with bulgur wheat; and grape leaves rolled cigarette-thin and stuffed with rice and ground lamb. The grape leaves came from the vines his father had planted in the backyard of their row house. “You’d wake up on Sunday morning and get punched in the face with the smell of garlic and lemon and mint,” said Kaimeh. “It felt so right.”
The adults drank arak, an anise-flavored drink, and let young Eli have a few sips. “Before you knew it, people were sitting around the table and hours had gone by. Everybody was happy and full. That was a pretty special time.”
Kaimeh remembers the specialty food stores in the neighborhood where his mother would buy spices, olives, and pita bread. She also blended her own spice mixes and dried meat for charcuterie, and would make batches of homemade cheese with their relatives. “They took a lot of their heritage with them from Syria,” he said. “They must have been taught really well because they knew what they were doing.” Family and friends would bring ingredients back from their homeland to trade — bags of Aleppo pepper; za’atar; pine nuts from Damascus.
Kaimeh attended Catholic school around the corner and would run home every day for lunch, made by his grandmother. “I would watch cartoons and she would stuff me until I couldn’t eat anymore. She’d make lots and lots of grilled cheese sandwiches with this Syrian string cheese, almost like a mozzarella, and one of the best things on earth. You take two pieces of pita bread, you pull the cheese apart, take lots of really fresh fruity olive oil, mint, dried chili peppers, and press it flat on a griddle pan. She’d give me one after another.”
Not his grandmother’s lamb. The Elysian Fields lamb, served at Per Se. Photo: Deborah Jones.
Then there was his aunt and uncle’s grocery store where he would hang out, work, and eat. It was his first introduction to American classics such as SpaghettiOs. As he got older, he began helping his father, a carpenter, at his job sites. He relished the time spent listening to his father and his Syrian colleagues reminiscing about the old country. “America was still new to all these guys. They fed me all this information about culture and I just tried to imagine the things they were talking about.”
Despite his early culinary influences, Kaimeh didn’t make the connection between food and a career until years later. His parents wanted him to get an education, so he headed to Manhattan College in Riverdale, N.Y. He lasted less than a year, but he had a roommate, Jack, who happened to have a brother with an interesting job.
“He was a chef, and Jack used to talk about him all the time and this school he went to.” It was the famed Culinary Institute of America, aka the C.I.A., in Hyde Park, N.Y. “I didn’t realize there were schools you could go to and learn how to cook.”
Thomas Keller with Eli Kaimeh. (Photo: Scott Wittle)
After he dropped out of college, while trying to figure out his life, Kaimeh remembered conversations about the C.I.A. and called Jack to learn more.
Chef Keller, Kaimeh’s boss, often talks about the significance of one decision. For Kaimeh, the decision to make that one phone call set him on his path to Per Se.
There is a lot more to Kaimeh’s story. Moving to Miami for a job that didn’t quite pan out. Returning to New York unemployed the week of 9/11. Working the line at the legendary Gramercy Tavern. Getting a job offer on Thanksgiving Day to work at Per Se as part of the opening team. His self-described disastrous first few months. And his eventual promotion to lead the team at the illustrious establishment.
Kaimeh modestly chalked up his success to energy, a great attitude, and discipline. “As long as you have those attributes, you can do well.”
As for his family? “They love it,” said Kaimeh, sitting in the Per Se lounge, on a rare break from the kitchen. “When my father comes here, he tears up. He tears up a lot. My family’s very proud I was able to make something of this.”
More from inside Thomas Keller’s world
Meet Laura Cunningham, the quiet force behind America’s best restaurants
Do you have what it takes to run a world-famous restaurant? This guy does
