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Debra Keller, a 2004 recipient of the Grand Diploma in Culinary Arts from New York's French Culinary Institute, is now Lilly's manager; and we're proud to have her. She was born in New Albany, Indiana, and attended Indiana University. Before entering the restaurant business in 1994, she spent 20 years in the travel and hospitality industries. Fascinatingly, she tells her own story.
Her memories of her "single-digit years" are already about food: "It is almost dinnertime, and you don't want to be late. Smells through the screen door: fried chicken, Southern-style, milk gravy complete with the 'little crunchy bits' from the iron skillet, mashed potatoes, green beans from the garden, slow cooked with ham hocks; 'made from scratch' angel food cakeÉ. No, you don't want to be late for dinner. This is my Mother's kitchen."
Another kitchen, also her mother's, but remembered from the very early "double-digit years": "Florida, west coast, the year doesn't matter. Suffice it to say it was a time when you still found the gray clapboard cottages nestled in the dunes and surrounded by Florida pines. Weekends at the beach, digging coquinas by the thousands to make soup; oyster stew, smoked mullet, cold tongue sandwiches crunchy from the added sand from your hands; fishing, swimming; sunshine, sunsets, and the sleep that only a day in the salt air can induce. This is also my Mother's kitchen, different, but wonderful. It began to be my kitchen as well. I was finally tall enough, with the help of a stool to reach the countertops and to help cook. My first cookbook - that threatens to become an antique soon - "The Better Crocker Junior Cookbook" - which I still have."
Now, Debra's teenage years: "New York, Long Island. The houses sit so close together that you cannot only hear the neighbors' televisions, but you can pick up the smells from their kitchens. Mrs. DiRosa's Sunday 'red sauce' that she began cooking on Saturday. My friends' kitchens - stuffed artichokes, matzo ball soup, pickled herring. Trips into 'the City': eating knishes from push carts, Coney Island, home of the original Nathan's hot dogs. These were my teen years with five brothers, four at home, my Mom working now. This was my kitchen, too."
And, Debra adds, "I took from all of these places and began to stumble into my own style of cooking."
Then, it was her late teens: "Backpacked through Europe for a total of 11 months over two years' time, from Copenhagen to North Africa, gathering tastes, smells, sampling all the foods that were available - and the wines. It was at this point that I recognized my two serious addictions: travel and food."
Of her schooling at Indiana University, Debra admits, she was there for three years: "my gypsy heart would not stay still long enough for me to finish - to say nothing of the fact that I could not seem to declare a major!"
So, then, 20 years in the travel business. "What a scam!" she laughs, "People were paying me to travel!" More seriously, upon reflection, "It represented the opportunity to retrace the steps of my youth, in America and in Europe; only this time I was not sleeping in a tent, or staying at a Youth Hostel."
Fast forward to a marriage, a child, and a change of career: the restaurant business. "Bartending in a British Pub in Florida; server in a waterside restaurant on the West Coast of Florida that had been in existence since 1937; general manager of a seafood restaurant - and then, the time was finally right for culinary school."
That would be The French Culinary Institute, located in Manhattan's SoHo district, and presided by the famous likes of Jacques Pepin, Andre Soltner, Jacques Torres, Alain Sailhac, Alice Waters and Andrea Immer Robinson; with visiting lecturers like Marcella Hazan and Bobby Flay. And to gain on-the-spot expertise as a chef-intern at L'Ecole, the FCI's noted Manhattan restaurant.
Debra's joy was unbounded: "To be back in the city that has always held the largest part of my heart (and stomach!); to finally be able to 'declare a major'! It was probably one of the most difficult and satisfying times of my life."
"That is," she adds, "before I came to Lilly's - the satisfying part, that is. It is a challenge, of course, because after all it is the restaurant business. You have to have a passion for it, because when the hours are long and the work is hard, you have to love it."
"So I find myself coming full circle," Debra Keller concludes, "back to the region of my birth, and working at Lilly's. The first time I stepped into the restaurant, it felt like home. From the ambience, the ever-changing menu, the wines, the professionals who work here - it feels right. The chaos, the teamwork, on a night when you look out over the dining room, the lighting subdued, the tables filledÉ. You watch the smiling faces, guests enjoying their dinners, music playing in the background; then you step into the kitchen, brightly lit, where the background music is the sound of orders being called, the hiss of the flames on the grill, where the pace is hectic but organized. It is truly as if two parallel worlds exist - two different places. The night comes to an end, and you walk through the restaurant turning off the last lights, checking the doors, and you smile. It was a great night - we made a lot of friends tonight - and you know that the hours and the effort are surely worth it."
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