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LTRW Blog.

June 7th, 2010

Fresh Ketch Executive Chef Bill Belair: Creating feasts for the eyes and the palate

By Melissa Siig

Bill Belair was drawn to cooking from an early age. While a kid growing up in Miami, he would cook for his brother and two sisters. By age 16, he got his first job in a restaurant.

“I liked the whole atmosphere of being in a restaurant,” said Belair.

Thirty years later, Belair is still in the kitchen, but a long way from Miami. As the executive chef of The Fresh Ketch in South Lake Tahoe, Belair continues to cook on the “front lines” while dreaming up creative steak and seafood dishes for his guests.

Belair, 47, is a self-taught chef who started out as a bar back in an Italian restaurant in Miami. But Belair always preferred to work in the back of the house. When the kitchen would get busy, he would jump in to help. Gradually, he moved from the bar to doing prep work in the kitchen, then to cooking on the line.

“And I just kept going from there,” said Belair, who went on to become the chef at a seafood restaurant, bar and grill and steakhouse in Miami.

In 1999, Belair made his move out west when he got a job on Catalina Island in Southern California as the executive chef of Two Harbors, a resort on the northern half of the island. With only 40 year-round inhabitants and a two-month summer tourist season, life at Two Harbors was a unique experience.

“Talk about a small town – to get to Avalon, the so called ‘city,’ we had to drive 22 miles across a dirt road, and we were one of the only people with a car,” Belair said.

Despite living in an isolated area, Belair said he and his wife Ally never got island fever, and in fact never left Catalina once in the 12 months they lived there. But after a year, the couple was ready to leave. In trying to decide where to move, one thing came up – Ally had never seen snow before.

“So I said, ‘Let’s go to Tahoe,’ he said. And with that, their destination was decided.

Belair’s first job in South Lake was as the chef and general manager of The Brewery at Lake Tahoe. At the time, the brewery was strictly a pizza joint but later opened up an outdoor barbeque in the summer. In 2002, Belair was hired on at the Hard Rock Café as the assistant general manager; three weeks later he also became the chef. After two years there, Belair decided to take a break from restaurant life and moved back to Miami to work in the real estate business. But with the housing market crashing, Belair returned to Tahoe in 2006 to work as the chef de cuisine at Kalani’s, which served Hawaiian fusion and Pacific Rim fare. Finally, in 2008, he arrived where he is today, as Fresh Ketch’s executive chef.

As the waterfront restaurant’s name implies, seafood (and steak) is Fresh Ketch’s staple, with six different types of fish on the menu each day. The fish, which ranges from mahi mahi to orange roughy to Chilean sea bass, is flown in fresh from San Francisco daily. Belair’s signature dish, and a customer favorite, is the stuffed halibut, which is baked with lobster, shrimp, scallops, Brie cheese and dill inside and served with garlic mash and a lemon beurre blanc sauce.

Belair’s favorite things to cook are sauces and wild game. Every month the restaurant has a wine dinner, which Belair pairs with wild game like antelope, venison and buffalo. His main goal is to give guests a new dining experience.

“I like to do things that other people don’t do. It gives people a chance to try something new,” he said. “When I got out to eat, I like to try different things, and that’s how I want it to be here.”

In addition to taste, Belair also recognizes the importance of presentation. All dishes are towered for effect. The filet mignon, for example, is served on a pillar of mascarpone cheese mashed potatoes, haricots verts, caramelized cippolini onions and porcini demi-glaze.

“People eat with their eyes,” Belair said. “We try to make every dish as beautiful as possible.”

While the food’s presentation may be fancy, Belair’s philosophy about food is simple: “Make it the best you can. I want people when they leave to be happy and tell their friends they can’t wait to go back.”

Although Belair’s job as a manager keeps him busy - he is in charge of two restaurants that can seat up to 320 people in the summer (the downstairs Seafood Bar/Lounge and the upstairs fine dining establishment) along with 60 employees during peak season - he is still a cook at heart.

“I like the creativity. I like to be on the line with the guys and getting dirty,” he said. “The whole reason I got into the business was to come to work and have fun. Now it’s a profession and I’m happy with that.”

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