Chef Jeff back at home

By Lonny Goldsmith
Sun Newspapers
(Created 10/28/2004 9:55:53 AM)

When Jeff LaBeau met Ron Achterkirch, he thought he met a “crazy old man,” while Achterkirch thought LaBeau, an extraordinary chef, wasn’t going to live long enough to make a partnership between the two work.

They were both wrong.

LaBeau, alive and kicking following gastric bypass surgery, and business partner Achterkirch, opened up the International Chefs’ Culinary Center (ICCC) in Grande Market Square with the Oct. 15 Canvas and Vines event, which both are sure is the first of many events to come.

“I am very excited about this,” said LaBeau, a Lakeville resident and Burnsville native.

The ICCC is both a banquet facility and culinary school for the professional chef and “foodies” alike.

“‘Foodies’ are hunters who shoot a deer and want to know how to make beef sticks out of the meat,” said LaBeau. “Or people who want to know how to deep-fry a turkey without burning their garage down.”

Unlike cooking classes at some kitchen stores or grocery stores, LaBeau said that students would get involved.

“This is more than a demonstration,” he said. “You will cook.”

LaBeau has more ideas brewing for the ICCC.

“We’ll have a ‘City Café’ up and running by January over there,” said LaBeau, pointing at the west side of the second floor location of the ICCC in the building on the northwest corner of Nicollet Avenue and Burnsville Parkway. “Whatever I feel like making that day will be served. There won’t be a menu. It’ll be a hangout.”

In the southeast corner of the facility will be a kitchen gadget store where people may try out items in the kitchen and order what they like.

Small town roots

LaBeau has been cooking at top restaurants and resorts for almost 20 years. The early part of his career, he and his wife, Patty, worked on the East Coast in New York and New Jersey, before a call from his brother, who owns the Longbranch Saloon and Eatery in Farmington, brought him home.

“We found the Depot Bar and Grill in Faribault,” LaBeau said. “It had character, so I convinced my wife to move here.”

There was one problem after the restaurant opened: the customers hated the food.

“We were $90,000 overdrawn on our bank account,” he said. “My wife took me aside and said ‘give them what they want to eat. They want mashed potatoes, give them mashed potatoes.’

“We didn’t have to sacrifice the quality. We had to sacrifice the type of food we wanted to do.”

Thirteen years later, the restaurant feeds between 3,200 and 3,800 people per week, or the entire city of Faribault every five weeks.

Despite being a 1984 Burnsville High School graduate, LaBeau chose to settle in Lakeville upon his return to Dakota County.

“It’s close enough to Burnsville, Faribault and Farmington, but far enough away,” he said.

Big-time talent

LaBeau, the American Culinary Federation’s 2001 chef of the year in Minnesota and a national chef of the year finalist in 2002, isn’t shy when it comes to talking about his abilities.

“I can cook,” he said. “I know that.”

LaBeau was contracted by Best Buy to be musician Lenny Kravitz’s personal chef while he played a special show for Best Buy employees. He has also been the personal chef recently for the band Counting Crows when they played in the area.

“I’ve been really fortunate,” he said. “People wonder what stars eat, but I feed them the same thing I feed everyone else.”

When it comes to feeding everyone else at the ICCC, LaBeau wants to change people’s opinions of banquet food.

“I want to get rid of the stigma of banquet food,” he said.

Walking through his brand new kitchen – what he calls “my 747” – there is something he proudly points out that is noticeably missing.

“There’s no hotbox here,” he said of the apparatus that many facilities use to keep plates of food hot. “We cook the food, plate the food and serve the food.”

LaBeau couldn’t be happier settling into his new business venture.

“I’m pursuing my dream,” he said. “And I’m up for the challenge.”