Chefs tell all: The fast-food cravings they’re willing to admit

Some of Chattanooga’s best chefs have attended top culinary schools, trained with big-name mentors and can create memorable meals.

But like many of us, they too have their fast-food cravings.

It seems almost blasphemous to admit, when slow food — healthful, locally produced fare — is the trend in so many area restaurants and fast food is blamed for high obesity rates.

So much fast food is processed, sodium-laden and calorie-high. But it’s also the kind of food that you just can’t get out of your head.

And the cravings begin ...

Daniel Lindley, a two-time James Beard nominee and owner of three of Chattanooga’s favorite restaurants — Alleia, St. John’s and The Meeting Place — knows how unhealthy some fast-food offerings can be, so he limits himself to early morning Bojangles’ biscuits.

“The guilt lasts for about three months,” he said. “So I just go every three months, and going in the morning for breakfast lets me have the whole day to try to work it off.”

Annika Stensson, director of media relations for the National Restaurant Association, said chefs have cravings for fast food for the same reason the rest of us do.

“They like it because it tastes good,” she said. “Fast-food restaurants haven’t grown to tens of thousands of locations and billions of dollars in sales by making food that people don’t love.”

In fact, according to statistics from the association, the quick-service restaurant industry is projected to post $164 billion in sales for 2010, up 3 percent from sales reported for 2009.

“For chefs, though, I think it counts as guilty pleasure because fast food has a bad culinary rap,” Stensson said. “But it’s a form of comfort food that has its place, whether you’re a person who eats to live or lives to eat.”