Conversations with Ty Kotz
Originally Published October 21, 2021 in South Carolina Voyager
Today we’d like to introduce you to Ty Kotz.
Hi Ty, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I had a young start in Cleveland, Ohio under the great Chef Ali Barker who mentored me through high school and then encouraged me to go to Culinary School. Upon graduating from CIA I moved to NYC where the rest of my culinary career unfolded. I was lucky enough to hold cooking positions at Oceana, Tabla, Cello, and Ilo, before returning to Tabla as a Sous Chef.
The next eight years were spent under world-renowned Chef, Floyd Cardoz. My last position in New York was as the opening Executive Chef of Tom Colicchio’s Topping Rose House in Bridgehampton NY. In 2014, I relocated to Charleston, SC, and started Interactive Home Cooking. I wanted to bring my experience over my extensive career to a more casual and intimate setting.
The goal was to provide a one-of-a-kind fun dining experience to groups of people in the comfort of their homes or rental property. What I do now is customized dinner parties for groups in their homes or rental properties. World-class food but in a fun casual environment, using as many truly Charleston ingredients as possible.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle-free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
I would say some of both. My experience certainly gave me credibility, especially at first. But putting all the pieces together was a challenge being a new kid in town. I slowly but surely started making connections with the farmers and fisherman I wanted to align with and at the same time trying a bit of everything that came my way.
Finding what it was people wanted from me was a challenge at first. What I mean is that I had one idea of what I wanted to do, but it turned out that wasn’t necessarily what people wanted. My inquiries started to determine that more and more. The trick for me was to do something very unique but also stay in tune with what people want.
I truly feel what I do now is a polished product but still has the energy of something new. This balance took time and experience to learn.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
What sets me apart is my passion for ingredients and truly using local as much as possible. This is a very challenging thing to do but at the end very rewarding. Every menu I do is not only unique to that client and their guests but it is also a reflection of what is happening at that moment in time locally. I don’t offer sample menus.
Instead, I have a conversation with my client to learn more about them and their group and from there I look at the season I will be cooking in to design the menu. This is a challenging way to put a menu together because there is no “one-stop-shop.” I only buy the best from the best and this takes a lot of planning and “out of the box” sourcing.
What sort of changes are you expecting over the next 5-10 years?
It’s a crazy time right now for my industry. Everything has been turned upside down and sideways by the pandemic. I think that there will be more of what I do in the future, but there is an undying need for us to keep our restaurants alive at all costs.
Without them, I would not be able to have become what I am now. There is no better training ground for a cook than to be surrounded by the challenging environment of the professional kitchen and its employees. Regardless of trends or changes, there always will need to be a backbone of world-class restaurants to set the bar.
Contact Info:
Website: www.cheftykotz.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cheftykotz/