Beacon Hill with Executive Chef Luke Theaker

Executive Chef Luke Theaker joins Talk of the Town to discuss Beacon Hill, the restaurant they have onsite, their culinary program, and their involvement with the International Wine, Beer, and Food Festival.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
This is Talk of the Town onnews Radio with thirteen hundred and one of
six nine FM. Steve Kelly andBrett Pikita from West Michigan's Morning News and
joining us in studio the executive chefat Beacon Hill at Eastgate, Chef Luke
Thaker, thank you so much forcoming in today. Thank you so much
for having me. I'm excited tobe here. We had a chance to
spend a lot of time with BeaconHill when my mother in law May May

(00:22):
we called her, lived there.We had a great experience and one of
which was the food. Right.It was at a time when you were
dropping stuff off at doors because ofoh right, yeah, so if there
were any leftovers, you know,Steve was there, Chef Luke. We're
going to talk about a lot ofthings at Beacon Hill, one of which

(00:45):
is super unique, which is comingup at the Wine, Beer and Food
Festival. But let's start about you. Where did you get your training?
Where were you before this? How'dyou get the job? Sure? Yeah,
I was a nursing student to startwhen I was fresh out at high
school. So I went to nursingschool and through a process of going through

(01:06):
that experience, realized I was notcut out to be a nurse. I
was going to leave that to mywife, and so I decided to go
to culinary school. So I wentto Granux Community College for culinary and got
a job just cooking at with Essencerestaurant groups. So through the Greenwell Beach
for Bellevite Grove Restaurant and kind ofrose through the ranks. Was the Chef

(01:29):
de cuisine at Grove for about ayear and a half, and then it
was time for me to take someexecutive chef jobs and so I was the
executive chef at a few other localrestaurants, became the culinary director of Maritage
Hospitality, and then when the pandemichit and we all came back after that

(01:51):
shutdown, restaurants just really weren't thesame and there was just a palpable difference
that you could feel. With thatI had to kind of decide do I
really continue want to continue down thisroad or do I want to search out
something new? And that led meto Beacon Hill, and that first interview

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really wowed me from the overall ambianceand aesthetic of the the organization and being
able to basically have carte blanche ofwhat I wanted to do there as far
as growing food and their their philosophyof how food is so important to the

(02:37):
residents and we really want to promotethat, use that as our primary marketing
tool over the facilities, over anythingelse. We want to focus on the
food. And so that was speakingto my heart strings, and so so
I took the job and it's beenamazing ever since. I it's been such
a delight to be able to workthere. Now. I think Beacon Hill

(02:59):
at Ekate is like what people wouldthink with country clubs and so forth too.
They have restaurants, right, You'relike, Okay, what are the
rules, what are the regulations?Membership has its privileges, but they don't
realize a lot of times, samewith golf courses and stuff, that the
restaurant is open to the public.You guys have public venues that we want
to rave about that people might notknow about, so talk about that.

(03:20):
Yeah, absolutely, So yeah,our restaurants are open to the public,
especially the Garden Cafe, which isa farm to table. We actually have
about an acre plot of garden andfarmland that we right in the middle of
the city that we grow our ownvegetables on and so and that is so
that restaurant really adopts that philosophy andso buying heavily from all the local area

(03:44):
farms for that restaurant and so andthat's open to the public, and we
love to see our neighborhood come andembrace that. We also have a b
stro which has a marketplace attached toit and which is kind of like your
deli style restaurant, and that isopen breakfast, lunch and dinner, and
that's open to the public for themto come in and get lattes, cappuccinos

(04:08):
if they want to come and graba grab and go meal, should they
want to from the marketplace, orgo ahead and have a have a full
blown lunch or dinner or breakfast.We're talking about Beacon Hill at Eastgate from
the culinary side of things, asthey will also be featured in the Wine,
Beer and Food Festival which is comingup at DeVos Place, something we

(04:28):
hear at Wood Radio will be talkinga lot about. But I want to
step back and talk about the importanceof you know, farm a table was
the sort of catch phrase, butyou people on the other side of the
executive chef thing really take this toanother level. And I like the fact
that your training includes nursing it it'sin the family, because, after all,

(04:50):
isn't that what this food is supposedto be doing for us. It's
an important health component of the experienceat Beacon Hill too. Talk to us
a little bit about but where youcome from with that, Yeah, I
think that that's a really important philosophyto adapt that the food that we consume
is something that's going to benefit us. And I think that that benefit can

(05:13):
be a multitude of ways that Ithink ice cream can have its benefits because
the emotional mental like benefit that itcan give us in those sort of aspects
of it too. It brings mejoy, you know, And so those
things can have its benefits as well. But I think the farm to table
movement was so strong because I thinkit gave the importance of ingredients. So

(05:34):
and I think now you see therole switching a little bit more from just
farm to table, but now thefarm has to be really quality, so
it's almost more like quality to tableis like the really the new movement where
we're going to buy the best ingredients. We're going to buy the most premium
products that we can from eggs andflour and butter, because those things make

(05:58):
it difference, and that is aless preservatives. We have more control over
the salt intake that we are ableto give the people that are consuming our
food, and those all have tremendousbenefits. If you're eating more natural products,
those are going to just have atremendous benefit for your lifestyle. And
so we really try to adopt thataspect of it when we're approaching food because

(06:24):
that's really important. The odd partof being a chef is there's an aspect
of it being art, but inmy form of art, people are physically
consuming it, so there's that levelof there. You have to take that
responsibility of them ingesting it seriously andyou'll get to sample it. Right.

(06:46):
That's exciting stuff. And our favoritequestion now I get to ask. We've
got Chef Luke here, the executivechef of Beacon Hill at Eastgate, going
to be a part of the Wine, Beer and Food Festival. One of
our favorites for food is everywhere WestMichigan. They make it a staple on
their calendar. What are you goingto bring to this experience because there's a
little bit of pressure, right,yeah, I mean there's a lot of
chefs. You compete with a lotof people that you know, so you

(07:10):
know, tip us off a littlebit. What can they expect to find
at the Beacon Hill location inside thewine, beer and Food Festival. Well,
I think that this is the thingthat we are most excited about.
And the moment I had the opportunityto even think of it being possibility for
us being a part of it,my mind just started racing. Because our

(07:32):
philosophy and the food is to reallygo against the grain of what people normally
associate senior living facility as producing.So I wanted to make sure that we
take that to its fullest. Soif you had come in thinking, well,
senior living facility is going to serveX, Y and Z because that's

(07:54):
what older generations prefer eating, Iwant to completely flip that on its head
and say, no, this iswhat we serve here, and these are
the things that we're that we're providing. Give a completely new mindset to what
senior living dining can be, becauseI think it's it can be really elegant,
it can be really familiar and comforting, but it can also be really

(08:16):
fine dining, and it can bereally elevated and so we're gonna take that
opportunity to give everybody a roasted chickendish that is marinated with apple cider that
we've made with an apple ginger chutneyfrom apples from our garden. We have
multiple apple trees that grow and wepicked them all, harvested, made cider

(08:41):
out of it. We've made achutney out of it, and we're gonna
pan roast chicken for you and beable to serve that. One of my
comfort foods of sort is Latin foods. So we're gonna take mole, which
is really traditionally long and low andslow cooking of chilis and nuts, and
there's over twenty five ingredients. Wetake that. We're going to braise really
nicely, nicely raised short ribs andcook them really nice and slow till they're

(09:09):
tender and falling apart, and we'regonna serve that on like masa polenta.
So and that's masa is that flowerthat's the main component in tortilla. So
it's like eating a an elevated versionof a short ribbed taco almost. And
then we're gonna have a really nicepumpkin trifle like shooter dessert for people just

(09:31):
that are craving something a little sweeter. And then we will also our our
fine dining restaurant is our Clubroom,and that is really premium ingredients, but
also focusing on seafood. I thought, what could be something different that people
really aren't experiencing, And I thinkthat big movement is some preservation techniques.
And so we're gonna do what's calledlike a tin fish. So you think

(09:54):
of when almost that like sort oflunch box tintunea but we have like real
really well crafted small company doing thebest type of tin tuna and then or
sardines, and we're going to makecrackers for it and give you all the
accompaniments that you're normally associated with it, but all things that we've made and
crafted specifically for that dish. Soit's going to be really given opportunity for

(10:18):
you to take those and to thinkof Beacon Hill in a totally new way
and seen you're living in a totallynew way. And the thing that we
really are thinking about is maybe whatis our other people not thinking about,
Like do these paarwell with wine?What are the wines that we're going to
suggest and the companies that we're goingto work with at the food show to

(10:39):
say that this wine, go andtaste this wine, then come back to
us, eat this dish it,see how it enhances it, and start
to really encourage that interaction between beveragebeing so so important to a dining process
as well and then also the foodthat you're eating. The event, the
International Wine, Beer and Food Festivalis it Devas plays the sixth through the

(11:00):
eighteenth. By the way, We'regoing to be giving tickets away for that
on Wood Radio, just so youknow. And the level of this type
of culinary experiences for everybody that isat Beacon Hill and Estate and Executive Chef
Luke Thinker, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for your time
today. Thank you so much.I look forward to seeing everybody there.
Now I'm starving and I don't knowexactly. This is Talk of the Town

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on news radio Wood thirteen hundred andone oh six nine FM.