A life-changing moment struck Jim McManus while he was in Nepal, in the shadows of the Himalayas. Burned out and disillusioned after working for a couple of years as a chef in Chicago, he needed some decompression time.
In late 2000, he headed off to Nepal, seeking both direction and adventure. While hiking through the mountainous country, the 1980 graduate of East Ridge High School marveled at the meals the sherpas would prepare after guiding visitors up a mountain. He was struck not only by the meals, but the passion the sherpas had for cooking and climbing.
"I decided that's what I wanted to do. Cook for people with a sense of wonder and adventure," he says.
McManus, 52, has followed his passion for food and adventure all across the world, from Chattanooga to Chicago to Nepal to the Virgin Islands, with stops in Peru, Thailand and Alaska along the way. His travels have only enhanced his love for being a chef.
"The only thing better than cooking and eating is talking about food," he says.
On this particular day, he's preparing for another day of cooking at Shipwreck, a fine-dining restaurant with a casual attitude in Coral Bay, St. John, Virgin Islands. But this morning he wants to spend a few minutes talking about his latest passion, a collection of seven spice blends he created and is marketing.
The Kitchen Creole spices are based on the blends he uses every day in his own cooking, both at home and in the restaurant. There is a Jamaican Irie blend made from allspice, black peppercorns, granulated molasses and orange peel that makes a nice rub or marinade for meats, fish or vegetable.
The Quintana Roo with toasted hemp seed, epazote (a wild herb from Central America) and a blend of such peppers as pasillaoazaca, pasilla negra and habanero is a good kick starter for soups, beans or sauces or as a rub for fish or chicken. The Primavera blend uses elderflower, chamomile and lemon thyme as well as "grains of paradise and lemon zest for pungent citrusy pepper flavor."
McManus has always had a passion for learning and discovery, according to childhood friend and brother-in-law Mike Butler.
"He's always been passionate about traveling and I've lived vicariously through him. He was the first in our group [of friends] to leave Chattanooga and move to a big city in Chicago.
"I remember him telling me years ago that he wanted to tour Vietnam and not for the sites but the food. He wanted to learn about the food."
McManus says he created the blends to both save time in the kitchen and to create a new revenue source while also sharing his passion for food with like-minded foodies.
"I would come in and make my mix and season up the protein and over time I realized I needed to get myself off of the line and do something different," he says.
The blends, which he began marketing three years ago, are currently available online and in a few select markets, mostly in and around the Virgin Islands. They sell for around $10 and McManus has included some recipes utilizing the blends on the website, kitchencreole.com.
In looking for places to sell his spices, McManus says he is primarily targeting locations where he has a connection, either by having lived there or having visited. Chattanooga, where he grew up, is an obvious place and he is currently looking for a local outlet.
Chef Jim McManus"I'm looking for small independent places that kind of share my values and sense of discovery. It's more than just selling spices and making money, though I have to do that, but it's not the only point. Are they passionate about it? I know that sounds contrived, but it's how I feel."
The blends themselves are based in part on his travels to places like Peru, Nepal and Thailand, as well as living in the Virgin Islands for the last 13 years. McManus, who spent time studying Buddhism in a temple in Chicago, says it was his own sense of discovery and passion that put him on his current path.
He originally left Chattanooga in 1989 to attend the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In order to pay bills, he found work at The Gap and Banana Republic and, when he was laid off from those jobs, he decided to change courses entirely by finding a career that suited both his need to feel passionate about the work and his need to pay his bills.
"I reassessed where I was and thought 'Why have two different things? Why can't I have one thing and that be good enough?'"
After graduating from the Cooking and Culinary Institute of Chicago in 1999, he worked as a line chef at several Chicago restaurants. At the same time he was cooking at Tru, a high-end eatery in the Windy City, he was also cooking at a local Buddhist temple, where he felt more connected while making a simple squash soup than he did churning out much fancier fare at Tru, he says.
"They used to make fun of me for how much I enjoyed cooking at the temple, but I realized the high-end environment wasn't for me."
That's when he took the trip to Nepal and had his food-based epiphany. Returning to the Western side of the world, he ended up cooking at a restaurant in Denali, Alaska, leading a team of young people "who were more interested in getting high than cooking. It was awful. The place was beautiful, but the work was awful."
Inspired by chef, author and TV host Anthony Bourdain and his working adventures involving foods from around the world, McManus loaded up his backpack and headed to St. John, where he spent his first season cooking for a 70-year-old man on a 40-foot sailboat who was traveling to Venezuela.
The next year, he met his wife, Christy. She was working with Virgin Islands National Park Archaeologist and Cultural Resource Manager Ken Wild, whom McManus knew from his days when both lived in Chattanooga.
Because he lives on an island, getting a wide supply of fresh produce and spices on a consistent basis is not possible, so McManus' spice blends are created with ingredients from a variety of distributors in the States. "It has to be about consistency and quality."
He has plans to create new spice blends in the future, but right now he is focused on the first seven.
"Food is an art form, and you never really perfect it. The spices are really about me, but they have to make money, too."
Contact Barry Courter at bcourter@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6354.