A culinary career comes full circle

As a boy washing dishes in a Wareham restaurant, Jack Texiera dreamed of becoming a great chef, a desire that took him on a culinary journey across the country before returning home to the position of head chef at Warren's Harborview.

While growing up in West Wareham, Texeira started pursuing his dream with his first job in a kitchen at 11-years-old, washing dishes at Warren's Four Corners where he met Harborview owner Danny Warren.

At the time, Warren was the head chef of the family run restaurant and while Texeira began with washing dishes, Warren said the young dishwasher quickly learned to bread fish and eventually gained responsibility, shouting out orders to cooks and expediting the cooking process.

"One of the things I remember was you couldn't see me through the window that we passed food through," said Texeira. "I remember sticking it up and a couple of the local customers used to tell me they knew I was cooking because they couldn't see me back there."

After working in the kitchen at Warren's Four Corners, Texeira got his culinary career on the move by cooking for Ben and Diane's in Middleboro and then to the Windjammer in Wareham.

Texeira explained he learned one of the most important lessons of his career while working at Warren's Four Corners.

Texeira added that one time [Danny Warren] brought him a sheet pan to clean as he was doing dishes and Warren said to him 'people are going to judge you by the quality of your work' and "I've never forgotten that," said Texeira. "I've repeated that over the years of training cooks and whoever was working with me."

Texeira comes from a big family and wanted to take his talents to culinary school, something he said he found challenging because his father "wasn't around much" after he turned 16.

Texeira explained that it was Warren who assisted with his education, helping him get into the culinary program at Upper Cape Cod Regional Technical High School.

"Danny helped me get into Upper Cape and that enhanced my culinary career," said Texeira. "I thought I was going to be a major league baseball player but I couldn't hit a curveball."

Texeira said Upper Cape is where he learned many of the basics of cooking.

"There was an English chef at Upper Cape named Harry Andrews that was amazing," said Texeira. " He took me under his wing and he taught me a lot."

During his time at Upper Cape, Texeira and his classmates took a field trip to Johnson and Wales University where he was "blown away at what the students were doing."

During his time at Johnson and Wales, Texeira was given a piece of advice he never forgot. "There are a lot of bad people in this business and you need to learn to rise above it," said Texeira.

After graduating from the Johnson and Wales culinary program, Texeira and five of his college friends packed up and drove across the country to the California and Nevada line, specifically to Harrah's Hotel on Lake Tahoe where they all started working in kitchens.

"I started at 6 in the morning making omelets for brunches and my abilities helped me to be the best breakfast cook in about three months," said Texeira.

Texeira went on to be the executive chef at a number of different restaurants in the Lake Tahoe area including the Ceasar's Hotel at Lake Tahoe and the Cal Neva Resort. While running these kitchens, Texeira worked hard and put in long hours.

"I worked something like 45 days in a row," said Texeira. "My first day at the Cal Neva Resort was Memorial Day Weekend and they had lost their chef and I had 14 weddings. Me and three other guys had around 1,200 deviled eggs to make and 1,500 crab cakes to make but we did it flawlessly."

While working in the Lake Tahoe area, Texeira described himself as a "raging workaholic." But several key moments in his career made him slow down and gave him perspective on life outside of a kitchen.

While working at a restaurant in Connecticut, Texeira said his daughter was living in Las Vegas and her high school graduation was coming up. He added his staff at the restaurant volunteered their time to make sure he could go to the graduation and while he put his time off in weeks in advance, the owner told him he was "out of his mind."

"The next day I gave her my resignation and I said no disrespect but I'm 44 years old and I can get another chef's job but I can't get to see my daughters graduation again," said Texeira.

While Texeira wants to provide the community with great food, he has learned through his decades of experience that great food starts with building a strong community in the kitchen. He added it is important for a kitchen staff to support one another and not just in the kitchen but outside of it too.

"When I was working at the Cal Neva Resort the man who ran the resort stuck a plane ticket in my pocket and said go home," said Texeira. "My mother had cancer and it was terminal. I was walking around crying and he told me I would always have a job there but I needed to be with my family."

Texeira added this level of support is what he strives for in the kitchen at Warren's Harborview because he knows how important it is for everyone to feel like they are a part of a family. This includes the patrons, not just the kitchen staff.

Having now returned to Wareham, Texeira said he has taken everything he has learned over the years from washing dishes at Warren's Four Corners to running the kitchen at the historic Cal Neva Resort and he strives to build a kitchen and a culinary experience that makes everyone feel like they are a part of a family.

"We want this to be a quality place," said Texeira. "We want people to be proud to bring their families here and we want the employees to be proud of the food and the atmosphere."