Jay Herman, Executive Chef, Countryside G&CC
Executive Chef Jay Herman is leading Naples, Fla.-based Countryside Golf & Country Club’s F&B operation through a $14.5 million renovation. Despite working from a temporary, 300-square-foot kitchen with a reduced staff of five, Herman and his team have been keeping members engaged thanks to special events like block parties, theme nights, concerts and more, plus fun social media series like one-bite reviews, in which staff and members give honest feedback on upcoming menu items.
“Our clubhouse kitchen was about 3,500 square feet originally, and now we’ve moved into a 300-square-foot kitchen trailer—it’s pretty tight,” says Herman. “But we try to do the same quality of food out of this trailer that we used to do in the clubhouse.”
C+RC: Tell us about the one-bite reviews.
JH: We’ve done it with different team members—from front of the house, to administration people, to the golf pros—and now we’re getting the membership involved. We try to focus on future months’ menu items so members look forward to new menu items.
C+RC: Do you ever star in the videos?
JH: I did one. But I’m very biased; I like my food a lot. So I try to just step away and let [others] honestly critique the food.
Not everybody’s tastes are the same, and I totally get that—you’re not going to please 100% of people 100% of the time. So I just stand back and let them critique it, and then I watch the videos when they’re produced.
C+RC: What’s your typical menu-planning process like? How do you involve your team?
JH: On [our current] menu, I asked my four cooks to give me [an idea for a dish] they’d like to see on the menu. We went through them all and worked together to tweak them.
And they take ownership; they get their name on the menu. Each one of my cooks has at least one, and some of them have two. I’m really not a tyrannical chef; I try to involve everybody. You can learn something from everybody. No matter how long you’ve been in the business, if you eat food, you can have an opinion.
One of my favorites is a zesty, candied bacon BELT: bacon, egg, lettuce and tomato. We’re doing it with hand-cut bacon that we put some spice, a little bit of heat, a little sugar, with a sunny or over-easy egg, lettuce and beefsteak tomatoes.
My sous chef wanted to do a roasted root vegetable salad, so it’s golden beets and carrots and parsnips, gem lettuce, toasted garbanzo beans, heirloom tomatoes, with a pomegranate-molasses vinaigrette.
I think there’s seven or eight items on this current menu, but I have what we call the secret items. It’s things like hamburgers, hot dogs, deli sandwiches, tuna fish, chicken salad, egg salad. It’s those necessity foods that we have in-house all the time. I don’t use menu space for them. I use menu space for something that’s just a little more creative.
C+RC: Tell us more about some recent theme nights or special events.
JH: A couple times a month, we do things like bingo night, karaoke night, and then we also do tribute band concerts here, [where we host] anywhere from 500-700 people. And we do the food for that out of our kitchen trailer—a limited, themed menu. We’re doing a lot in a little box.
The last [concert] we did was Elvis’ Blue Hawaii. We had poke bowls, pork sandwiches, all things you might find at a luau.
Last month, we did an Italian night where I did the cacio e pepe tableside. [This month], we’re doing tacos and tequila. It’s all Mexican food, from tostados to burritos, chimichangas, fresh salsa and guacamole. The goal is to keep the membership happy and active with us.
