Have Menu, Will Travel

It's not too surprising that Syosset's Antoinette Gillespie found success as a personal chef when her former career dried up. When you work for an airline you're used to being rerouted.  

After growing up in Glendale, Queens and graduating from Richmond Hill High School, Gillespie went on to study accounting at Queens College. She worked for almost 30 years in offices, 28 of which were at Swissair.

"I was single and young at the time and I flew around the world," she recalled. "I would go to Switzerland a lot for training."

In the process, she traveled throughout Europe. "Going to Germany, Portugal..." she remembered fondly, "that inspired me, just being exposed to the different cultures and food."

"And Swissair's class of service onboard was like elegant dining. They actually served you from the aisle–you didn't just get that packaged food," she added. "...It was top notch. We had our own caterers."

Gillespie, however, found herself unemployed when Swissair went bankrupt in 2002 in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.

"I was scratching my head. "It took me a couple of years to find another niche," Gillespie noted, adding that along the way, she was sure of only one thing: "I said, 'I'm not going back into an office.'"

After much soul-searching, she came to a very logical conclusion.

"I had a large family. I was always entertaining. I was always catering,'" Gillespie remembered. "And I said, 'Wow, why not do this? I love it.'" And having come from a large Italian family, Gillespie was confident she had the best trainers: her mother, aunt and grandparents.

She joined the American Personal Chef Association in 2005. "And with that I started cooking for families... going in and preparing two weeks of meals, for example," she said, noting that "so many people don't want to do take-out anymore. It's not as healthy."

Gillespie quickly branched out to accommodate requests for catering services. "People wanted a Christmas party, a housewarming party, a little cocktail party..." she said, "and I loved the catering side because you get to create. Every menu is different... every party is different."

For Gillespie, the challenging part of the job is the logistics of packing and getting everything to the location.

"I bring all my platters, spatulas... everything," she pointed out, "so the cooking is the easy part. It's the packing that's hard, making sure you have everything you need with you... because nothing unfolds until you actually get there." 

Gillespie has catered events of all sizes, including a wedding with 125 guests in Sag Harbor and a 30th reunion for 60 Merchant Marines. She recalls one unique aspect of the latter event.

"[The hostess] had a 12-foot boat with three compartments she wanted filled with little neck clams, shrimp and oysters," Gillespie said with a smile, "so I hired a friend to shuck for three hours."

But intimate occasions are also a specialty.

"I do romantic dinners, seven courses from soup to nuts," she said. "Usually it's a surprise from a wife to a husband, or a husband to a wife... those are always fun."

One such dinner was particularly memorable.

"It was Valentine's Day three years ago," she recalled. "There was a blizzard, and it was in the Hamptons." Following the old show business mott,o "The show must go on," she braved the roads in her minivan and put on the dinner as scheduled.

Afterward, amid concern about her making it back home to Syosset safely, the client–who happened to be a car dealer–offered a solution.

"He lent me a brand-new Nissan SUV to drive home," she laughed, "and then had a driver deliver my van to my driveway on a flatbed truck the next day."

For more information visit www.personalchef.li, e-mail chefantonetta@aol.com or call 516-721-2550. You may also sample her cooking at the Syosset Chamber of Commerce's Chefs Nite Out event on Wednesday, Oct. 6.