Sean Kennedy
By now, everyone in town knows about Madison chef Tory Miller’s triumphant victory over Iron Chef Bobby Flay on the Food Network’s Iron Chef Showdown. But the two men have a history that predates their meeting on the cooking show.
It was a commercial for the French Culinary Institute featuring Flay that inspired Miller to go to New York City to pursue his dream of becoming a chef. But when Miller submitted an application to work at one of Flay’s famous restaurants, the sous chef laughed him out of the building. “It was one of those moments when I was like, ‘Oh man, Bobby Flay sucks,’” Miller says. “I was really kind of hurt by it.”
A few years later, Miller was working at a different New York City restaurant where Flay was a partner. At one of their meetings, Flay asked Miller to make him an espresso. Remembering the snub, the South Korean-born Miller pretended he didn’t speak any English. “You should have hired me, son!” he recalls thinking. “I would have made it for you a long time ago!”
Miller shared the anecdote Wednesday at a meeting of the Rotary Club of Madison. His invitation to speak predated his Iron Chef Showdown appearance, but the afterglow of his national television debut made his presentation on the future of Madison’s food scene all the more timely. “My mission now in my life and career is to promote Madison as a food destination, as a city that is worth visiting — and not just in the summer,” Miller says. “If some magazine would anoint Madison as the next food city, then all of a sudden what we do is validated. But if all of us work together, we can anoint ourselves. We want to live that every day.”
In recent years, Madison has seen a boom in new restaurants. The rapid development of high-rise apartment buildings has brought more residents downtown — and presumably more restaurant customers. But there’s concern about supply exceeding demand. Miller says promoting tourism will help. The industry is also experiencing labor shortages, and Madison is not immune. Miller says chefs need to be proactive about providing opportunities and outreach to people interested in culinary arts.
“To me, the future of our food scene is going to lie with young people, and especially women,” he says.
Named “Best Chef: Midwest” by the James Beard Foundation in 2012, Miller is the closest thing Madison has to a celebrity chef. He’s built a mini-empire with his restaurants L’Etoile, Graze, Sujeo and Estrellón. He's further elevated the culinary scene by founding the Madison Area Chefs Network, an organization that aims to strengthen connections between local farmers, producers and restaurants as well as augment community among chefs. Miller has also launched an educational program called Cooking Healthy Options in Wisconsin (CHOW) at Sherman Middle School.
“As a chef, you never start out thinking, “Man, I want to be an advocate,’” he says. “But we all have to be advocates. You have to get out of the kitchen and use the platform you have.”
