As Senior Most Food Service Advisor of The United States Army, Chief David Longstaff has laid down his life both for our country and his passion. Now serving as CEO for Robert Irvine foods, Chief has had an amazing journey in the Culinary Industry, and we are fortunate to be able to hear about that journey and what it took for a small boy to become the Military Chef here, on The Recipe Podcast.
Lesson of the Day: Live with Honor, Treat Every Person with Respect, and Never Forget Who You’re Serving
TAKE AWAYS
- I came from a working family, and one of the things we had to do, it was mine and my brothers responsibility to cook dinner for the family and I developed a passion for cooking. When my mother started the meals on wheels program in our community, I really latched onto that
- Theres an amazing attachment between food and people, and once that connection became obvious to me, there was no turning back
- I got in a little bit of trouble and the judge encouraged me to take a different career path… so I joined the army for the minimum amount of time I had to. And I just decided to make the best out of it. It turned out to be a bad situation that became an incredible win for me in life
- Most people don’t even realize that the military has an olympic culinary team and that we compete on the same level as other culinary teams. And Ive coached on civilian teams and military teams, and ill tell you military teams are easy to coach because they don’t talk back- haha
- The discipline as I deal with food companies and organization… having discipline within me from the army, it really translates to my life now, It comes in handy in the day to day grind.
- Working with Robert Irvine….
- As a food guy in the army, by the nature of my job at the time, I became relied on very heavily to run the convoy getting food back and forth and I became a buying agent to go into the city and purchase goods that the unit needed for survival… and unfortunately we got caught in the middle of an ambush from enemy forces during one of those convoys.
