True Callings of the Chefs

Favorite local chefs muse over the love of their lives and talk about what makes them tick.

Wichita is rife with fabulous chefs. As individual as the menus they develop, we count on these culinaires to make our restaurant experiences memorable. Their food sustains us, soothes and satisfies us, even excites and gives yet another good excuse to gather ‘round a table to share a hearty meal and laughter with family and good friends.

They know the difference between Champagne and champignon, coulis and couscous, and their hands are as important as any tool made of wood or stainless steel. Chefs build teams and encourage competition. One part artisan, one part supply sergeant, they never fail to come up with creative new dishes that surprise the most frequent diners—and keep everything in stock just in case a special request comes through the kitchen window.

It’s not for everyone, this life of dicing and glazing, flambéing and braising. Often working amazingly long and odd hours, swathed in heat and humidity, they perform in a virtual pressure cooker. In the blink of an eye they can convert recipes from fifty into four hundred, easily accomplishing six things while contemplating ten more. And when they finally plop into a chair at the day’s long end, they swear they still have a love affair with food and will never tire of being around it.

Satisfied customers would do well to remind chefs that their profession is, indeed, a noble one. As New York magazine food critic Gael Greene says, “To be tempted and indulged by the city’s most brilliant chefs [is] the dream of every one of us in love with food.” Wichita is no different. We love it when our local chefs tease and please us with their countless concoctions and infinite inventions.

Telling the story of four Wichita chefs with a twist, we begin by delving into their pasts to find out where and when they cut their culinary teeth. Then we pose some off-the-wall questions to provide even more insights into the creative genius. What do they find irresistible? What can they not survive without? What fuels their culinary passions and enables them to indulge our desires?

They gathered at Cibola’s kitchen and bar, leaving behind their natural environs for part of a morning to talk about living with and loving food.

Beth Tully,
Master Chocolatier/ Owner, Cocoa Dolce

Beth Tully’s diploma from the Professional School of Chocolate Arts in Vancouver, British Columbia, simply reinforces twenty years of chocolate-making experience. Bored in grad school by the thought of making baked goods over the holidays, she pored over a Bon Appétit magazine spread on chocolates. “I gave the recipes a whirl,” she says. “They turned out to be train wrecks on a plate, but I loved it.”

Over the years she perfected her skills, meeting her family’s requests each year with 200 to 250 pounds of chocolate. At Christmas, you can bet they had great, sweet expectations. “I think that when I got married over New Year’s, they were more disappointed they weren’t getting chocolate than they were excited about my wedding.”

When Tully turned 50, she had an epiphany. She could take a risk and turn her passion for chocolate into a new career. Now she likes working at the front counter, just to watch the eyes roll back in people’s heads as they sample her decadence.

What does this master of all things chocolate crave? “Any kind of kettle potato chips, but Cape Cod, especially. It’s my secret addiction.” She loves chocolate but also loves salt, thus, “I guess I’m an equal opportunity snacker.” Tully admits to eating chips on the sly, in her car, folding the bag inside out so no one can see what she’s been up to. “I probably need to go to a clinic, now that I’ve admitted I have a problem,” she says with a laugh.

Not to worry, Beth. If indulgence required medical treatment, the folks lining up for your chocolates would need to be first through the clinic door.

George Matta,
Chef/Owner, Adrian’s

He came from Lebanon and started cooking seventeen years ago, receiving most of his training from Latour Management. (The Toubia family members are his cousins.) Here, George Matta picked up on the basics that gave him a springboard to develop his own cooking style. He couldn’t have picked a better place to learn his trade.

Before he opened his own restaurant, called Adrian’s, Matta worked at Olive Tree Bistro and was chef at Piccadilly Grill East, where the menu was international. He sometimes looked to the Lebanese mothers in his life to come up with new ideas. Becoming a chef, he says, is like becoming an artist. First, you learn by watching and doing; then you feel confident enough to step out on your own and take the big plunge.

What would he do if he weren’t running his own restaurant and cooking? “If I were in a big city, I would be playing music and singing,” Matta says. “I won a singing contest in Lebanon, [something akin to “American Idol”] and sang in Paris and Africa. Now, whenever there’s a Lebanese wedding here in town, they call me. I sang to 1,000 people at a local Lebanese convention once. I also play the lute and guitar.”

Matta, whose name can be found on the liner notes of Gino Salerno’s “Equinox” CD, admits that life as a chef better suits his role as husband and father. Even so, he sometimes finds time to play with musicians as they serenade his customers.

Dana Ault,
Head Chef, Cibola

Even as a child, Dana Ault loved food. She interned at a restaurant in Telluride, Colo., with chef Jim Ackard. After a nine-month culinary arts program at Wichita Area Technical College, she was asked to go back to Telluride to cook. Her nose buried in a cookbook when it’s not taking in the rich aromas of her kitchen, Ault is modest and humble. “I’m just me,” she says. “I just cook. It’s what I love to do, so I do it.”

The head chef at Cibola only a few months, Ault started working at the local AAA four-diamond restaurant four years ago as a pastry cook. She learned the grill, then sauté, moving through the kitchen to become sous chef in August 2005.

What’s in her refrigerator? “Water, pink lemonade and stuff to make my favorite sandwich: turkey breast on a wheat English muffin with hummus, spicy mustard and avocado. I could live off of it. It’s my little pleasure at the end of the day.”

People who work in kitchens often go days without eating, she says, because they’re always around food. “I haven’t had hot food in a long time,” she confesses. “I like cold food now, or whatever I can get my hands on. I usually fix whatever’s easiest and quickest.”

Matteo Taha,
Chef/Owner, Bella Luna Café

When Matteo Taha came to Wichita from Lebanon in 1985, his objective was to study business at WSU. Little did he know that a job as a dishwasher at Olive Tree Bistro would evolve into a fourteen-year learning process that led to positions as their sous chef and executive chef. He also worked at Piccadilly for awhile.

Taha is grateful for his Latour experience, and considers it better than any cooking school. “It’s a school in itself,” he says. The once-in-a-lifetime opportunity of traveling to Orleans, France, Wichita’s sister city, helped round out his training. For three months, he worked side by side with a French chef. When he came home, he opened Bella Luna Café.

The one thing in his kitchen he couldn’t cook without? “My huge handheld mixer. It’s four to five times the size as a household mixer.” Taha bought the contraption, which looks as if it could power a small fishing boat, the first week Bella Luna was open.

“It’s very, very powerful, the only way to mix and be smooth.” Ten years ago, it was a specialty order item. Now, he says, one could walk in and buy it at a restaurant supply store.

The one thing he eats every day? “Fattoush, because it’s healthy and tasty.” Taha happens to have a steady supply nearby. Ask his customers, and they’ll tell you how grateful they are that he’s willing to share.