The Faces behind your Food: Jim Lachance

Over the next few months, we will be featuring a series of interviews here on the Food, Farm, and Sustainability Blog that focus on the people behind Hampshire’s Healthy Food Transition. From local farmers in the field to seasoned chefs in the campus kitchen, we will explore the faces behind our food. Our first conversation is with Jim Lachance, the General Manager of Bon Appetit Dining Services at Hampshire College. Get to know the man in the Hawaiian shirts!

James (Jim) Lachance, General Manager of Bon Appetit Dining Services at Hampshire College

How did you learn how to cook?

“I learned how to cook from my Mom, growing up in Texas. But I’ve lived a lot of different places throughout my life so I was influenced by a lot of different cuisines. I knew when I was really young- maybe 9 or 10 – that I wanted to be a chef. I never wanted to do anything else, ever. So when I was finally old enough, I just started working at restaurants. My first job was at a Ramada Inn in Goodyear, Arizona. I never worked the front of the house if I could help it – I just wanted to be in the kitchen. When I started out, I’d finish washing the pots and pans and I’d ask the other people working in the kitchen: “Hey can you show me how to do that?” I had to be persistent. If you want to do something, you can always learn how to do it if you are persistent. By the time I went to the Culinary Institute of America, I had already been pretty high up in the ranks in the kitchen. From the Culinary Institute, I worked at restaurants in Florida and then at the Peabody in Memphis and eventually ended up in Alaska. I wanted to see the world so I looked for jobs in places I wanted to go. At that point in my life, I could carry everything I owned in a 25 lb duffle bag.”

How did you end up in Alaska?

“When I was 25, I answered an ad for Holland American Lines in Alaska, and started working for a glacier tour company there doing big salmon bakes for wilderness camps. I met my wife doing that and then we opened a restaurant in Valdese, Alaska. It was a small café and we served hot entrees like biscuits and gravy, and sandwiches, and coffee.
People there are very easy to get along with and I had a lot of regulars. Alaskans are very independent people but there were only 1200 people in the whole town, so everyone supported each other. They were supporting local businesses long before it was even popular.”

The students here know you as the “Guy in the Hawaiian Shirt.” From your beginnings in the Southwest, to your time in Alaska, when did Hawaiian shirts become your uniform?

“My mother actually lives in Hawaii now. When I lived in Alaska we went to Hawaii at least once a year because it was cheap to fly there. There is a Hawaiian shirt for every occasion- some are formal, some are celebratory shirts, and some are just everyday shirts. They are very comfortable but in Hawaii people won’t think twice about wearing them to business meetings and formal occasions, and neither do I.”

Having lived in so many places, do you have a favorite cuisine?

“Southwestern! That’s where I grew up and it’s my go to. I love smoked foods, Andouille sausage…my favorite meal to come out of our kitchens in the last few weeks was a Turkey Enchilada Pie with homemade enchilada sauce.”

What inspires you in the kitchen?

“What inspires me right now is being able to teach other cooks and to be able to learn from them as well. In the kitchen here, there are 25 chefs and 65 employees total. I believe the kitchen should be a collaborative place. That’s hard for some old-schoolers to grasp but I like to learn from my cooks. The food is almost secondary to me now to spreading the craft.”

Bon Appetit Management Company prepares food from scratch as a rule. Why do you think that is important?

“Cooking from scratch is important because you know where your ingredients are from and you have much more control over the flavor. Opening a can of beans is not the same as cooking them from scratch on the stovetop. Cooking from scratch is knowing the food. It is a lot more work. But it’s really all about scheduling. We have assigned prep cooks who wash and cut vegetables and they start early in the morning. But everyone helps each other out in our kitchen, there is a lot of teamwork.”

Bon Appetit sources fresh produce, milk, eggs, and meat from up to 15 local farms, including the Hampshire College Farm. Why do you like working with local farmers?

“I love working with farmers. I have a passion for the work that we do here working with local ingredients. It’s fun to go out and see the farms and it’s fun to meet real people who are growing your food. You get to know them personally, and you get to know what they are working with and what they grow best. That’s always been of interest to me, but I’ve only been able to really connect with local farms since I started working for Bon Appetit. I love the local greens especially. They are so versatile- you can put them on the salad bar raw, or you can even sauté them with bacon.”

What is it like working directly with the Hampshire College Farm?

“When you are 500 yards away from the source of your food, it’s really cool. Nancy has done a wonderful job keeping us supplied. It’s like a toy box for us- we open up the crates of vegetables from the farm and we kind of know what’s coming, but on the other hand there are so many variables so we have to be flexible with the fresh produce. We base our menus around the food coming off the farm in the fall. We will put a sautéed vegetable on the menu, but we don’t know until we get the delivery from the farm what that vegetable is going to be.”

Jim is pictured with a Hampshire College hog that he butchered himself and prepared with an espresso barbeque rub for Convocation dinner.

This summer, the farm raised several hogs for the dining hall. You took the carcasses whole and butchered them yourself. How did you learn how to butcher and why is it important to you?

“I learned how to butcher at culinary school. It’s a dying art and you see that more and more meat is being butchered in factories now and animals are cut up with bandsaws. It’s important to me to be able to butcher my own mea, because you get to learn where you food is coming from and you can use more parts of the animal, like using bones to make soup stock. I’m not a vegetarian by any stretch of the imagination, but when you are the one butchering the animal, you understand that animal gave its life for us to eat. You have to almost shed a tear for each animal when you are butchering it. I think that’s something that people have to understand. And you don’t understand that if you only get your meat on a Styrofoam plate from a grocery store. ”

If you could cook a meal for anyone in the world, who would it be and what would you cook?

“Probably my mom.
I would make her a lamb rack, crusted with mustard and bread crumbs, and instead of the typical mint jelly, I would make my apple pico-de-gallo, and rosemary roasted potatoes, and grilled asparagus, but only if it was in season. And I would make her my favorite dessert, which I will make for anyone who asks: soufflé. Chocolate soufflé would be too rich to go with lamb, so I would make a nice lemon, lime or raspberry soufflé.”

Do you have a question for Jim? Enter a comment below.