Personalities: Chef dishes up passion for cuisine

Apr. 8—HEBRON — Chef Paul Krawic started learning how to differentiate flavors at about 10 years old, and with the encouragement from his father, has made a career of elevating those flavors with new dishes that blend the old with the new.

Now, Krawic, who has been living in Hebron since 2019, is the executive chef at Bridge22 at Springfield Marriott Downtown.

Born in Fullerton, California, Krawic said it wasn't long before his family moved to Florida.

Paul Krawic

Who he is: Executive chef at Bridge22 at Springfield Marriott Downtown.

Hometown: Hebron.

Quote: "You have to know the reason why. It's not just teaching a recipe. You have to know why you put the butter before the flour or the cream after the tomatoes."

"My dad had worked for NASA," he said, living across the waterfront from Cape Canaveral.

"It was a lot of fun," he said. "Literally, we'd walk down to the end of the street; across the river there was whatever thing was launching."

Krawic was about 8 years old, he said, when his parents divorced and he ended up moving to New Britain with his father.

His first job was working in the kitchen of the Holiday Inn in New Britain, he said, at the age of 15.

Being one of five children in a single parent home, he said, he had to learn how to cook at a very young age.

"We had a grandmother that would bring stuff over," he said. "We learned how to make scrambled eggs, the basics."

At about the age of 10, he said, his father was diagnosed with high blood pressure because of too much sodium in his diet.

"He came home and he threw away all the salt and bought a huge spice rack," Krawic said.

The family learned how to cook with spices and herbs instead of just seasoning everything with salt and it turned into a game for the children.

"We would blindfold each other," Krawic said. "One person would be blindfolded and ... you can guess. My older brother and sister would always end up putting in cayenne pepper at some point in the mix."

While working at the Holiday Inn, he decided to tell his father he wanted to become a chef.

"He said, 'If you want to become a chef, then become the greatest chef ever. As long as when you come home from work, you did your best. That you're happy. Don't go into a field that you're going to be miserable at, even if it paid you $1 million a year, because you have to live with that. That's the majority of your life.' I love that advice from him because it\s true. I'm very fortunate in choosing something that I love to do to this day. It's still fun."

Krawic didn't travel far for college, attending Manchester Community College's hotel and food service management program, graduating in 1986.

"It was the best decision to stay local because it was affordable," he said.

While going to school he started working for Marriott, and was part of the staff that opened the new hotel in Farmington in 1982.

"That opened my eyes to so much," he said.

He said he stayed with Marriott, eventually attending its management program in Bethesda, Maryland, and became a food production manager.

Upon completion of the program, he said, he transferred to Andover, Massachusetts, where he assisted with the opening of another new Marriott, as a sous chef.

"I was there for about three years," he said.

His insatiable craving for new foods had Krawic wanting to continue to learn about new dishes and flavors.

He said he used to watch documentary features on PBS as a teen, learning about dishes he'd never heard of.

"I remember a particular one about New Orleans," he said. "I've never even heard of like, jambalaya, what is this? It was just so intriguing that I wanted to run away and just become a great New Orleans chef."

While he was working in Massachusetts, he said, he decided to start traveling, first to Boston to see how cuisine was different in a larger metropolitan area before taking a hiatus from Marriott and working for a resort chain in Puerto Rico in 1998.

"I worked in St. Lucia for a while to help out with one of the hotels that I worked for in the surrounding islands," he said. "I got a lot of influences from people down there because they came from everywhere. Our pastry chef was from France. My first executive chef was from India and just a phenomenal chef. The guy who replaced him was German. You see how other people are from different parts of the world. It's very beneficial."

Though he has learned a bevy of recipes, he said being taught the foundation of cooking has been invaluable.

"I think I was fortunate in that when I grew up in the industry, I was taught a lot of the classics," he said. "You have to know the reason why. It's not just teaching a recipe. You have to know why you put the butter before the flour or the cream after the tomatoes."

His creativity and curiosity allow him to expand beyond classic technique.

"It's how my mind has always worked," he said. "I can visualize what something will taste like without ever having done it before."

At the Marriott Springfield Downtown, Krawic is getting his team involved to make the restaurant the best place to eat in Western Massachusetts.

"My long-term goal is to really do as much as I can in a culinary world with this place," he said. "It's basically a blank canvas. I can do whatever I want. It has to fit into our market, obviously. Typically you have to cook for your customers, but you can do both. I know that you're a meat and potato guy and you've never had anything but meat and potatoes your whole life, but I'm gonna make you a meat and a potato. But the potato's gonna be a little bit different. It's still gonna satisfy your craving for a baked potato, but now there's something added to it."

In a twist of something old becoming new again, he is bringing back a classic French dish, Coquilles Saint-Jacques.

"It's a scallop dish with Gruyère cheese sauce, béchamel, and mashed potatoes," he said.

He said the inspiration for the dish came about while shopping for menu items for Bridge22's upcoming bar menu and saw that small scallops were available.

"It's one small scallop," he said. "What can I do with that? I make a classic. Everyone who's seen a menu so far is like, 'What's that?' Because nobody know that's how old it is."

Collaboration with his staff is important to him as well.

"It's kind of rare that you can have a connection with someone," he said. "You bounce ideas off each other.

"Earth Day is coming up on the 22nd," he said. "One of our promotions is Earth Day inspires food and beverage. I put it out to the team. Make something that encompasses Earth Day."

Seeing a potential theme of reusing something, he said his sous chef took oatmeal that wasn't used in the morning and transforming it into an oatmeal muffin.

"It was so good," Krawic said. "It's recycled oatmeal for breakfast. He made a muffin for the next day."

For coverage of local restaurants, cultural events, music, and an extensive range of Connecticut theater reviews, follow Tim Leininger on Twitter: @Tim_E_Leininger, Facebook: Tim Leininger's Journal Inquirer News page, and Instagram: @One_Mans_Opinion77.