Executive chef views food as art

Mark LoParco will insist it’s just a coincidence that the new executive chef for University of Montana Dining Services shares his name with UM’s mascot.
LoParco, the director of Dining Services, said the executive chef, Monty Colby, was hired for both his accomplishments and his talents.
“He really is a leading-edge chef,” LoParco said. “I’m really excited to work with this guy.”
When Colby steps into the head chef position Sept. 8, he will immediately take on all campus-wide culinary responsibilities.
“He will be the chief culinary expert on campus,” LoParco said, which means he will be in charge of decisions that have to do with menus, catering, cooking and kitchen processes. He will also be the chief trainer for all culinary staff on campus.
Both LoParco and Colby acknowledge that this is a large responsibility, but Colby said he’s up to the challenge.
“I don’t want to come across as full of myself,” Colby said, “but I am confident.”
Speaking to Colby, it’s evident that he’s aware of his abilities. With measured pride, he talks about the time he was hired by the Lexus car company to suspend an edible Lexus logo in a backlit giant platform of gelatin for a convention of Lexus employees. He’s nonchalant about being a guest on the “Today” show to promote a live cooking show he’d developed for audiences in California. During his appearance, he and his co-host chop food with gardening tools, cut up bananas blindfolded and play vegetables like a guitar.
“Kind of like Wayne’s World,” he said.
Colby said that, although he has a showy attitude about his cooking, it’s not as if he didn’t earn it.
“I went to school, and I learned the foundations of cooking,” he said. “Only by knowing the rules, can you break them properly.”
A 1995 graduate of the world-class culinary school Le Cordon Bleu in Portland, Colby went to work for hotels all over California, applying a philosophy of self-expression to all his culinary endeavors.
In his younger years, Colby, now 52, played guitar in a rock band that toured the west coast with such cult bands as .38 Special and the Lover Boys. But as time passed, Colby said, “It just got old.”
So Colby chose cooking as another way to express his creativity.
“It was an artistic choice,” he said.
It was this creativity that LoParco said cemented Colby’s position with UM Dining Services.
After one round of applications and interviews failed to yield a viable executive chef candidate, Dining Services went on a national search which drew in so many applicants that the committee responsible for reviewing and hiring them devised a two-tier system to organize the possible employees, LoParco said. Colby was immediately placed in the first tier.
Colby made his way through an initial phone interview, then a face-to-face with the committee before competing with three other applicants in a kitchen practical in which the chefs were ordered to cook a three-course meal for six.
LoParco said Colby’s entire menu was made up on the spot as the day progressed.
“That’s pretty darn impressive,” LoParco said.
Colby said his approach to food as an art is what sets him apart as a chef. When he arrives to take over the executive chef position, he wants to add that artistry to the menus on campus.
“I don’t like to keep up with trends,” he said. “I’m ahead of the trends.”


Source