Today we’d like to introduce you to Dennis Glover.
Hi Dennis, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I am a Muskegon native that grew up in Brooklyn, NY. My culinary schooling and first job was in New York City almost 30 years ago. In 2000, I moved back to West Michigan and spent 10 years working at the Spring Lake Country Club before moving on to teach at the Culinary Institute of Michigan, bouncing around downtown Muskegon running successful restaurants until the pandemic. I returned to kitchen work with Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp before being tasked with running the Farmhouse Kitchen & Market.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It has definitely NOT been a smooth road. The industry as a whole is a very tough environment with grueling hours, high stress, dismal pay, and the kind of nightmare customers that retail is famous for and back when I started it was tougher still. There wasn’t a concept of work life balance or mental health care in kitchens. I’m happy to say it’s better now but it’s still not the sort of job anyone stays at for very long unless they have a passion for it.
That’s just the baseline where every kitchen employee starts. It doesn’t take into account the effects the outside world has on what we do. We are still dealing with the destruction of the supply chain from a worldwide health crisis that killed more service workers than any other profession with the exception of healthcare professionals, followed by the economic policies that caused operating costs across every column to skyrocket, the scarcity of experienced workers, and a consumer base more reluctant to go out by the day.
And I won’t even mention the personal toll caused by the pressure of this industry. If anything the incidents of abuse, drug addiction, alcoholism, assault, divorce, or any other horror stories are wildly underreported.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I am the chef and general manager of the Farmhouse Kitchen & Market in Shelby, Michigan. I am responsible for the day to day operation of the restaurant, menus, ordering, staffing, etc. It’s kind of hard to say what our specialty is because we have been kind of tailored specifically to the very unique mix of clientele that spends their summers in this area. From a thematic standpoint we are more of a traditional barbecue restaurant than anything else. We cook fresh every day and we don’t recycle product so we frequently sell out of items by the end of the night. But we are also one of the very few scratch restaurants in the area so we focus on as much fresh local product as we can get our hands on but that also gives us the opportunity to create menu items that intentionally support diners with dietary restrictions. Much of our menu is gluten free or vegan by design so that we don’t have to take extra inconvenient steps for those customers and they can confidently order menu items that start off safe for them.
That is a philosophy of building with the intention of benefitting everyone involved. Sure the food is safer and healthier for the consumer but that also means that the staff doesn’t need to take nearly as many special requests because those considerations have been made before they even sat down. By default our kitchen doesn’t have to produce redundant recipes to be inclusive if the original recipe ticks all those boxes. You don’t need extra chicken strips if all of your chicken strips are gluten free.
If we knew you growing up, how would we have described you?
Looking back I was kind of destined for kitchen work whether I knew it or not. I am a gen X latchkey kid that grew up unsupervised and learned survival skills like how to cook from television. It was my escapism that always brough me to media that showed some fantastic place where there was a sense of belonging and purpose. Usually that meant superheroes or barbarians on epic quests but even glimpses of place where a normal person could attain some degree of renown for knowing the sort of things nobody else did. I was a “gifted kid” that lacked direction and gravitated to an environment where teamwork was essential but individual skill was still celebrated. I didn’t grow up around a family with a strong culinary tradition. My grandmother didn’t want anyone in her way when she was cooking and always saw it as a chore and not a love language. My formative memories of food almost exclusively revolve around boxed foods or restaurants of varying levels of questionable quality. So for me learning to cook was more an act of self indulgence than anything else. I didn’t start with heirloom recipes and family traditions. I started with the food that I loved and wanted to eat but was too young to go to a restaurant myself and get it. Even now when writing specials I tend to think about what I’m hungry for first. “You know what sounds good?…”
Contact Info:
- Website: https://farmhousestonylake.com
