{"id":9282,"date":"2019-11-07T11:30:47","date_gmt":"2019-11-07T17:30:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bestofswla.com\/?p=9282"},"modified":"2019-11-07T11:21:10","modified_gmt":"2019-11-07T17:21:10","slug":"chef-larry-mannheimer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bestofswla.com\/2019\/11\/07\/chef-larry-mannheimer\/","title":{"rendered":"Chef Larry Mannheimer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Vic & Anthony\u2019s Steakhouse<\/strong><\/p>\n

Chef’s Spotlight \u2022 By Karla Wall<\/em><\/p>\n

When Chef Larry Mannheimer, executive chef at Vic and Anthony\u2019s Steakhouse in Golden Nugget Lake Charles, was invited to be one of the 15 Louisiana chefs to compete in the 2019 Louisiana Seafood Cook-Off in Lafayette in June, it was an honor, but a bit of a daunting prospect.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cI love seeing people happy with what we\u2019ve prepared.\u201d – Chef Larry Mannheimer<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cI was a newbie \u2014 this was my first contest. I was also a guy from Massachusetts cooking in a Louisiana seafood contest,\u201d he points out.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt was nerve-wracking,\u201d he admits. \u201cBut it was also very exciting. I got comfortable and eased into it after a while.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mannheimer prepared Black Drum Pontchartrain with fried green tomatoes. And though his dish didn\u2019t earn him a placement, he says he was well pleased with it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe dish just said Louisiana to me,\u201d he explains. \u201cBlack drum is a Gulf fish; you have the Pontchartrain sauce, which is Louisiana, and the fried green tomatoes are Louisiana.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mannheimer learned to cook at home with his stepmother.<\/p>\n

\u201cHer parents were from Italy, so Italian became my go-to food,\u201d he says. In fact, lasagna is his favorite dish to make when he cooks at home.<\/p>\n

He moved to Lake Charles with his mother at age 10 and knew before he was out of high school that he wanted a career as a chef.<\/p>\n

\u201cI took courses at Sowela my senior year in high school, and went through their culinary program,\u201d he says.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

He left Sowela just a couple of (non-culinary) courses shy of a degree when he was offered a management position at 121 Artisan Bistro in Lake Charles. It was an offer he couldn\u2019t pass up.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just missed Italian food,\u201d he quips.<\/p>\n

He worked several jobs after leaving 121 and eventually found his way into the casino industry, with a short stint at Isle of Capri.<\/p>\n

After leaving the Isle, he and his wife moved back to Massachusetts; she wanted to experience the northeast, he says. \u201cThat lasted about six months,\u201d he laughs.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The couple moved back to Lake Charles, and his wife got a job at Vic and Anthony\u2019s in the just-opened Golden Nugget.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cShe came home one day and told me they really needed people over there. I decided to apply,\u201d he says.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

He began as a saut\u00e9 chef and worked his way up to executive chef, a position he\u2019s held for about a year now.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

At one point, he says, the restaurant almost lost him to the local Jimmy John\u2019s franchise.<\/p>\n

\u201cI took a delivery driver position for Jimmy John\u2019s as a second job when my wife went back to school,\u201d he says. \u201cIt was actually a nice change of pace for me. They eventually offered me a management position there.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the management at Vic and Anthony\u2019s, he says, made it clear they wanted him to stay and work his way up through the company. He turned down the Jimmy John\u2019s offer and never looked back.<\/p>\n

As executive chef, Mannheimer spends only half of his time cooking. The other half, he explains, is taken up with personnel matters, inventory (we met at 8:30 on a Tuesday morning; he\u2019d been there since 8 to do inventory) and other \u201cbookwork.\u201d That\u2019s something a lot of chefs who rise to the position regret \u2014 having to leave the kitchen and become a manager, with all the headache that can entail. Mannheimer, though, says he hasn\u2019t regretted the decision to leave most of the cooking to others.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve always wanted to move up to the top,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>Vic and Anthony\u2019s, of course, is a restaurant which focuses on steak, though they do offer a \u201cfish feature\u201d on their menu. But Mannheimer\u2019s comfortable with seafood dishes, from the lobster and clams of his native northeast to the shrimp and redfish of the Gulf Coast. And he says the restaurant will soon offer more in the way of seafood dishes.<\/p>\n

Mannheimer says his plans are to stay with Golden Nugget and \u201ckeep growing with the company.\u201d He seems happy to be where he is and seeing diners enjoy what his team produces. That, he says, is one of the best things about his job.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI love seeing people happy with what we\u2019ve prepared,\u201d he says.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And, he says, he loves the entire process of turning out those dishes.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love seeing the line flow, seeing everything come together and the food go out hot and fresh,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vic & Anthony\u2019s Steakhouse Chef’s Spotlight \u2022 By Karla Wall When Chef Larry Mannheimer, executive chef at Vic and Anthony\u2019s Steakhouse in Golden Nugget Lake Charles, was invited to be one of the 15 Louisiana chefs to compete in the 2019 Louisiana Seafood Cook-Off in Lafayette in June, it was an honor, but a bit [&hellip<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":63,"featured_media":9284,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1830,4,51,2103,2102],"yoast_head":"\nChef Larry Mannheimer - BestOfSwla<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/bestofswla.com\/2019\/11\/07\/chef-larry-mannheimer\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Chef Larry Mannheimer - 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