Chef Brooks, Cooking Up a Grand Life

Sep 1, 2015 | People

[title subtitle=”words: Marla Cantrell
Images: courtesy KNWA/KFTA”][/title]

Chef Brooks is in charge of the menu for the Fifth Annual Red Shoe Shindig, which benefits the Ronald McDonald family Room® at Mercy Hospital in Fort Smith, Arkansas. This is his story.

When Steven Brooks left Alabama in 2000, he was feeling pretty good about life. Looking in his rearview mirror, he thought about his childhood in Hueytown, and the remarkable way dreams change. When he was in the sixth grade, Steven was already a big kid (he would eventually grow to be 6’4″), and his father thought playing football the following year would open many doors for him. And so, even though he wanted to be in the band, he listened to his dad and for the remainder of his school career, played football, giving it all he had. But that first year, when two-a-days began, he listened as the band practiced nearby, and when he got a break he’d borrow one of their drums and recreate what they’d been playing, note by note, all by ear.

There was a bit of heartbreak after every game, as the band marched by, dazzling in their uniforms, excited to play music, and Steven wondered each time what it would feel like to be part of something like that.

After high school, he got serious about the drums, and in two months’ time he was performing with a band: hard rock, punk, and funk. The guys he played with were good, and for a time it looked as if they might just make it. But music is a hard business, and by the time the 1990s arrived, Steven knew his dream was dying. He describes that time like this: “I was one of those people out there playing music, trying to make a living, and I was starving to death.”

Pretty serious stuff, but there were other issues. “I was on the road over here,” Steven says, and points to the left. “And there was nothing good on this road.”

Then there was a chance meeting in 1991 with a chef named Scott Berg who worked for a grocery chain called Bruno’s. That meeting changed everything. Steven helped Scott with the sound system at a charity golf tournament and Scott was so impressed he hired him on the spot.

What Scott wanted was to teach Steven to be a chef, and so he put him in one of the company’s gourmet grocery stores and started training him to work in the department that prepared meals for customers who didn’t feel like cooking. It was around Thanksgiving and Steven remembers stuffing row after row of turkeys. He also remembers how happy he felt, and how he knew he was on the cusp of something new and wonderful.

“I was in my twenties and I didn’t have a culinary degree,” Steven says, marveling at his good fortune. “I tell everybody I got paid to get that education instead of paying for it, and I tell them God’s been good to me.”

From that point on, the world became a brighter place. Steven learned quickly, and as the years went by he moved up. (He thinks it’s serendipitous that his father had worked for years as a truck driver for Bruno’s, the very company that changed his life.)

Let’s step back to 2000, when Steven was headed to Bentonville, Arkansas, to work in another gourmet grocery store that served things like hot meals and offered customers more than 250 kinds of cheese. It was a new concept in the area at the time and Steven couldn’t wait to be part of it.

Arkansas, with its rolling hills and sprawling rivers, appealed to Steven. He settled in, and one day while at work, he met a woman named Mandy who’d gotten lost on her drive from Kansas, and had come to the store for directions. Before she left the market, she’d made such an impression that she’d been offered a job, and so she decided to stay in Bentonville to work. As Steven got to know her, he found he couldn’t get her out of his mind. Soon, they were dating, and later the two married, a fact that makes him smile so wide it is as if the sun has just emerged from a bank of clouds.

His story soars from there. He worked at the gourmet market for five years. “At the end of that, Johnny Tyson, son of Don Tyson, hired me to be the chef at Blessings Golf Club in Fayetteville.

“Mr. Tyson made me better. You had to be straight up and you had to be honest, and I think that’s what he liked about me. I wouldn’t shoot him a line of crap. If I didn’t know the answer to a question, I’d say, ‘Mr. Tyson, I don’t know but I’ll find out for you.’

“After the first time I told him that, he said, ‘You know what I like about you? You don’t try to BS a BS-er.’ He made me better. He turned me into a business-minded person.”

Steven is proud of his work there. He left to open a restaurant with a partner in Fayetteville called Soul, that has since closed, and he is now the executive chef for Tankersley Foodservice, a job he adores. He also hosts Cooking Today on KNWA TV, a place where he can share his recipes and hear from those who love to cook along with him.

Not all his ventures worked out the way he wanted. He would have liked it if Soul had taken off the way he had hoped, but even closing his restaurant didn’t overwhelm him. He knew something good was in his future, and he never doubted that he’d be okay. As for his music, he continues on, playing when he can. He learned guitar after he learned how to play the drums, and he taught himself how to write music. In a way, he sees how it’s all connected. In music, you work with your hands. In cooking, you do as well. So, all those years of struggle were really just training for what was to come.

As he talks about all that has happened, he keeps directing the conversation back to that time in his life when he was hungry and desperate for a change. “God was doing something, and I had no idea what He was doing for me. God put people in front of me perfectly. As I look back, I see it now. Chef Scott Berg came into my life and then I came to Arkansas and met my wife who made a wrong turn. I just stayed focused on the road and God did everything else for me. I have been blessed. I give all the glory to God.”

In each step, he sees divine intervention. The people who helped him, the opportunities that came about, it all seems miraculous to Steven. He is as happy as a man can be. If his life could have turned out any better, he doesn’t know how. What he does know is that he is grateful every day, and that when he wakes up he says a prayer of thanksgiving. It is a beautiful world and he has been given a wonderful role. Every time he has a chance, he tells his story of how everything can turn on a dime, even in your darkest hour.

Do South Magazine

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