CRESCENT PEOPLE: Chef Brent Quiggle — Not Serving Revenge as a Dish but Serving Dishes at Revenge

Scheduling a sit down with chefs isn’t easy.

First, they generally don’t sit. They’re working in a ridiculously fast-paced environment where they’re on their feet, and they don’t have time to become idle. Second, if you schedule the morning they’re getting ready for lunch service. You obviously can’t schedule during lunch because they have diners trying to get in and out for lunch. There’s a small break before they begin prepping for dinner service. Then there’s dinner service, and after that, depending on their domestic situations, they’re either going out to blow off steam or going home to get some well-earned family time.

Brent Quiggle, Executive Chef at Queen Anne’s Revenge on Daniel Island near Charleston, acted like we’d done him a favor by stopping in. When we came by for that brief period between lunch service and dinner prep, he welcomed us as if we were old friends, and we left the same way.

We start our feature with Chef Quiggle learning what drew him to South Carolina and what makes him tick. Later, we’ll learn about more about him, his philosophy as a chef, and Queen Anne’s Revenge.

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Your first job was a line cook in Upstate New York. What was it about that experience that kind of drew you and said, “You know what, I want to do this from now on.  This is where I want to be.”

The family aspect of it…in a restaurant, you work hard, especially when it is busy.  You can give a lot to it.  Does that make sense?  You can put so much into it and then everybody around you kind of a grabs and hands you…”Let’s get this done…”  It’s the family aspect of it, if that makes any sense to you.  The bond that’s created in the heat of the rush is a turn-on to me because I like it.  I like family, obviously.  The other parts would be I guess the adrenaline.  The restaurant business to me…I don’t want to skip around, but it has so many things that are prefect for my personality.  Under pressure, working well with others, the business aspect of it, the culinary art, the chemistry.  Amongst all those things, really, put together, that’s what I like to do.

You like the pressure situations.

I like the pressure.  I do, I have to say…

You almost have to be Type A and OCD, at the same time.

I agree, I agree, but able to…what’s the word I’m looking for…able to keep it all together in the middle of it and have at least fifty things going through your mind at once.  And be able to play the violin, to keep it smooth.

And do the Happy Dance for everybody outside who doesn’t see what’s going on back there.

Right, right.

Because people understand exactly what goes on in a kitchen.  It’s not like…if you’re at home and you enjoy cooking for your family and your friends, that’s a totally different situation and you get people that go into this line of work because they enjoy cooking but they don’t understand what all goes along with it.  But there is…it’s not just flipping a steak.  It’s amazing that you’re able to do everything you do because it really is a juggling act.

Absolutely.

You’re starting…I think we’re starting to see a lot of chefs move from all over the country but specifically, I’d say, the Northeast, coming to South Carolina and making it home.  What drew you from Ithaca to this corner of the world?

Absolutely, the people.  The people, I would have to say.  You know, I was a typical Upstate New Yorker, believing in the whole Civil War in the South is still not over because we used to visit in Georgia and got called “Yankees” a lot, so I didn’t have the great growing up picture of the South.  But after doing traveling from Europe to California, Atlanta, different cities I lived in, it was really Atlanta I gained a respect for the people.  It reminded me of home.  It reminded me of Upstate New York, the quality, the genuineness when you go to the store, when you say, “Hey, how you doing?” And people actually respond to you.  It’s not a programmed response.  It’s a genuine, “Hey, how you doing?” instead of, “I got to go to work,” with the busyness of like, let’s say, New York City or something.

Where everybody is keeping their head down and going straight forward.

Yeah, and going as fast as you can because you’ve only got this much time in the day and you go, “Don’t take up my time.”  But, really, for myself, the genuine qualities that South Carolinians and people from the South have, to me, in Upstate New York, is the closest thing that I could get to being home without living in Upstate New York. It’s too cold there.

We have seasons.

Yeah.

Upstate New York seasons are a little different.

Granted, I did leave in 1992.  I’ve been out of New York for quite a while.  I’ve been here since 2001.  I moved here to open Queen Anne’s Revenge.  It’s what specifically brought me to South Carolina from Atlanta.  And I just…the longer I stay in the South or…I was on…some of the best chefs I ever met in my life did a lot of traveling so that’s what I felt I had to do – was to continue to travel but, after traveling for many moons, many different places…you know, the Neighborhood Dining Group here and then in Atlanta.  I found a group of people that I really enjoyed to work with, that I could put my heart and soul into and they saw that I put my heart and soul into it and rewarded me, such as, giving me a great position and always paying their bills.

Which is a plus.

Yeah, because restaurants…they can be tough.  They can be really, really tough, but I guess to answer your question “Why move to Charleston?” I guess to go back, ever since I’ve been here, I’ve always known, after the first six months, eight months, this is my new home and will be my children’s home and probably my children’s children’s home.  I just love Charleston.  There are only two bad things and that’s the bugs and the heat in July or August.  Other than that, this is just a wonderful, wonderful…and you get used to heat, too.  It’s not…like my first two, three years, where the heat was hot.  Even in Atlanta, they call Atlanta Hotlanta.  This is…the humidity level is just much higher and much hotter, but now, I don’t notice it as much.  I mean, ten years of living here.  It used to be something that is one the forefront of my thoughts, but it is not as big of a deal.

What draws other chefs here?

You know, as far as the chef being drawn to Charleston or South Carolina…Charleston, you know the seafood is just incredible.  It is…every day…there are seasons with the restrictions and trying to keep everything sustainable, you still have a huge variety of fish that are off the boats hours before you get them and able to cook them up and I know why people from the Midwest, land-locked…my wife, she’s from Illinois, she doesn’t like fish but I know why they don’t like fish.  Because if you’ve ever had frozen fish…I don’t like that fish either, but fish is my favorite food in the world. The fish that we get here in Charleston, just being on the coast is just a natural… The seafood is what I think would bring more chefs here.  It depends on what you’re looking for, what kind of quality of life you’re looking for to say why a chef would come to Charleston.  Does that make sense?

Yeah.

I think the competition here is, in Charleston, is extremely tight.  There’s not much room for error.  It’s a small big city and so you got to be one your mark at all times.

• Follow Chef Quiggle on Twitter at @ChefQuiggle.
• Visit Queen Anne’s Revenge online HERE.

Stay Tuned for Part 2.

PHOTO CREDIT: Queen Anne’s Revenge / Neighborhood Dining Group