Chef of the Year: Jean-Pierre Eigenheer of the Balboa Bay Club
This is the first time I have chosen my Chef of the Year from a private club. Ordinarily, I would be weighing too heavily the fact that the general public cannot just drive up and have a meal. However, Jean-Pierre Eigenheer, the executive chef of the Balboa Bay Club, has given such life to the food at this club in the past six years that he is, on every culinary level, on an even playing field with chefs in public restaurants.
As for you, my readers, I’m sure that many of you belong to the BBC and know immediately what I’m talking about. All others should cajole an invitation from friends or associates who can get you into the dining room to taste Jean-Pierre’s food.
Modesty, appreciation for coworkers and a desire to help the kitchen staff rise to their highest potential always count for a lot when I start narrowing down choices. Jean-Pierre meets those standards and more. Over the years, I’ve attended several food-and-wine dinners at the club and I’ve taken my gourmet friends there on numerous occasions since Jean-Pierre came on board. Before that, the food had been OK but it wasn’t something I remembered after I got home. Things have certainly changed.
Chef Jean-Pierre is European, trained in the culinary arts in Switzerland. He apprenticed at top resorts in Gstaad, St. Martin and Lugano. He arrived in America more than three decades ago, taking a job in Boston. After a time, he decided that he wanted more training in various cuisines and traveled the world, working along the way in award-winning restaurants. Some were small, some were luxurious.
Before coming to the BBC, he had been doing culinary duty at the Ritz-Carlton in Rancho Mirage. When Henry Schielein, former general manager of the Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel, became president and COO of the Balboa Bay Club in 1994, he tapped Jean-Pierre. With Henry’s well-documented dedication to fine food and Jean-Pierre’s love of cooking, they’re quite a pair.
Jean-Pierre is always trying to make the food healthier by searching out better ingredients and by using fresh herbs and some wine to infuse deep flavor, so less butter is needed to give the same richness. He’s thrilled with each holiday that comes along, creating special menus to commemorate the day. Those occasions result in an overload of reservations, I’m told.
I’ve found Jean-Pierre is generous with his cooking secrets and the public appreciates that. On one occasion, he graciously told a group of aficionados how to make a dish they couldn’t find in any restaurant, how to buy and store some unusual ingredients, even how to soak meats and poultry in brine to increase their moistness. I know this, because I was there.
I’ve described some of the dishes on his current menu in the accompanying article. I was lucky enough to be at a recent table of eight hosted by Joseph and Barbara DeFranco in the First Cabin dining room. It was one more occasion that proved Jean-Pierre’s cooking is worth plenty of applause.
You’re a master in the kitchen, Jean-Pierre, and I, and many others, are so very lucky to be able to sit at a table in your dining room.
