Home Again, Home Again: New chef brings big city creds (and Kentucky upbringing) to Dudley’s on Short

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Historically, the menu at Dudley’s On Short has leaned heavily on local ingredients, food grown and raised within a 100-mile radius. But when executive chef Eric Fowler left his post in February, owner Debbie Long launched a search for a chef who had come from well outside the Bluegrass. She sought “fresh blood for the restaurant,” a veteran personality who would help the 34-year-old dining legend grow in step with the city’s burgeoning restaurant boom but without uprooting its culinary heritage.

“With competition heating up like it is, I knew we needed to be on the edge,” said Long, who founded Dudley’s in 1981. “I wanted to bring in somebody with different ideas and experience working in different cities.”

Ironically, she wound up with a guy from Kentucky – Pikeville native Mark Richardson, whose first job out of culinary school was at Emmett’s cooking under chef Ouita Michel, now of Holly Hill Inn fame.

Still, Richardson truly was an outsider who hadn’t lived in the commonwealth for 14 years. He left Lexington in 2001 to work at the posh Four Seasons hotel in Scottsdale, Arizona, before making subsequent stops at Four Seasons in Chicago, Boston and San Francisco, where he was executive chef for nearly seven years. When Long found him – sort of – he was executive chef at The Carlyle Hotel, a renowned luxury rest stop on Manhattan’s chi-chi Upper East Side.

“In a sense, Mark found me because he was thinking of coming back to Kentucky,” said Long, who credited Heather Davey, Richardson’s sister and a Dudley’s customer, with the hot tip. She gave her brother’s résumé to Long and a meeting followed. “You know how when you meet somebody and it hits you that they’re the right one? That’s how it was with Mark.”

So strong was Long’s hunch that Richardson should captain Dudley’s kitchen, she didn’t even ask for a cooking demo, a step often regarded as the most important in a culinary interview.

“I mean, the guy’s been an executive chef at Four Seasons hotels and now he’s at the Carlyle … let’s say I was confident he wasn’t cooking out of a book,” Long said. “Sometimes your gut tells you a lot of things, and when you use all the information you have, you can make the right decision.”

When Richardson moved to Lexington in September, it felt right for him, too. It was home: green fields dotted with horse barns ringing a mid-sized city whose total population wouldn’t fill New York’s subway trains if all its residents boarded at once. And while he loved his time working in restaurant mega-markets recognized as the nation’s best, he was ready to enter a scene poised to make a restaurant rally.

“Lexington is an up-and-coming food city,” Richardson said. “There are a bunch of great restaurants and chefs here, and I want to be here when it grabs the nation’s attention with what we’re doing.”

Equally significant was his desire to rear his young son near family and in a town with a laid-back culture. Not surprisingly, the notion of holding a toddler while navigating crowded train terminals held little appeal to the busy chef and new dad.

“Having Luca changed my whole way of thinking about my future,” he said. “It was no longer about me and where I could go for my career; it was me asking where I can go to let him have the best quality of life and grow up with family.

“If you’d have asked me a year before I had a kid whether I’d have come back, I’d have told you never. I loved big cities and that lifestyle, but having him put things into perspective.”

Growing up Kentuckian

Like a lot of chefs, Richardson credits his love of food to that which his mother and grandmother fed him. Yet he never envisioned a career cooking it until his senior year at the University of Kentucky. Matriculation was slow since his desire to attend biology and chemistry classes often was superseded by the temptation to play golf. And when most of his time on campus was rendered irrelevant due changing his major, he knew that at age 24, it was time to decide on his future.

“All I knew was I wanted a job that, when I woke up in the morning, I didn’t hate going there,” Richardson said. “And every time I really thought about that, my mind always came back to cooking, even though I’d never cooked anywhere.”

He enrolled in the Pennsylvania Culinary Institute in Pittsburgh and excelled at his studies. After graduation he returned to Lexington for a brief stop at Emmet’s before heading to Arizona. He was convinced he’d found his niche and relished the chance to travel.

“This career chose me as much as I chose it,” Richardson said. “If could have any job in the world, I’d still be a chef. I love the rush of a busy service and creating new things with the food. Everything about it just drives me.”

Nearly 15 years have passed since Richardson worked for Michel at Emmet’s, yet she remembers him as enthusiastic and ambitious. That he’s established a career in elite hotel kitchens attests to his skills and abilities, she added, and she said his decision to work in Lexington speaks volumes about the city’s allure.

“All these communities in central Kentucky that are drawing great talent from around the country are doing so because they provide a chef like Mark with a great standard of living compared to a big city,” said Michel, who worked in Manhattan restaurants for two years after culinary school. “A chef’s life in a big city sucks because they don’t make a lot of money and it’s expensive to live there. Here, you can have a life and have a family and be a chef.”

If Lexington’s restaurant scene continues growing, Michel said drawing more chefs of Richardson’s caliber is crucial. Not only will they attract quality cooks who want to learn from them, the restaurants they’ll build will make the city more attractive to companies considering moving here.

“A dynamic food and restaurant culture is key to economic development in Lexington,” Michel said. “You can court all the high-end I.T. companies and other businesses you like, but if this city doesn’t develop a really strong food culture, it can kiss those companies goodbye.”

Don’t mess with success

Long expects Richardson’s imprint on Dudley’s food will manifest itself most notably in December with the winter menu rollout. She said that for now he’s working to master the restaurant’s peculiarities and assess the strengths of his staff.

She said customers shouldn’t expect dramatic changes to Dudley’s standards, such as the Tournedos Maxwell or Pasta Dudley’s, because Richardson has smartly honored those favorites by leaving them be. But she still expects him to be innovative within the Dudley’s culture, a challenge Richardson said he’s eager to meet.

“Debbie’s built a great restaurant, so it’s my job to take that history into account, pay it the respect it’s due, but still look for ways to take it all to a place it hasn’t been before,” Richardson said. Doing that, he said, takes fearless cooking that pushes boundaries firmly but gently. “Improving the whole process of how we cook is what will get us to the next level.”

Richardson admits he’s still adjusting to the pace of Dudley’s, a restaurant that feeds 200 to 300 guests three courses per seating, as opposed to The Carlyle, where 100 guests eat six to eight small courses each evening.

Starting in September at the peak of the fall busy season (made so by area horse sales, Keeneland’s fall meet and the Breeders Cup) didn’t make for an easy transition, but he said such a baptism by fire was the best way to learn in a hurry.

“I don’t think I’d really want it any other way,” he said. “I liked the action.”

Moving forward, he’s pushing himself and his cooks to lift Dudley’s food to a new level, one that “takes guests on a journey” that inspires an inevitable return.

“I want to take them on an experience that leaves them craving food to come back to,” he said. “And I want that food to be things they won’t get anywhere else in Lexington.” cc

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