Get To Know Dan

Meet Dan Alston

Me: I wanna know everything about your cooking life.

Dad: You got enough time? Haha.

Me: So how did you get started with cooking?

Dad: 1976, in a restaurant—the Anchorage Inn in South Carolina. It was a fine dining place. A Swedish chef approached me and asked if I had ever thought about cooking. He put me in the dessert section, and I started making chocolate cups. He even told me I could name them whatever I wanted, and that’s what jump-started everything. I got the hang of it pretty quick. From there, I began learning the layout of the kitchen—first with desserts, then making salads. After that, I started focusing on different styles of cooking.

Me: So, you started in college working at small bars and grills. You watched family members cook, too, right? You picked up a lot of details from that. Tell me about what made you passionate about it all.

Dad: Yeah, I loved watching people cook. I liked the art of food—presentation and everything. It was great to see people enjoy what I was doing. As I bounced around in life, I had different jobs at hotels and country clubs. I ran kitchens, controlled the food in and out, and as I advanced, I learned different styles of cooking and how to run every aspect of a kitchen.

Me: What was the next place you worked at after that?

Dad: That was Biscayne Bay. I did fine dining there, at the Airport Hilton in Minneapolis. That’s where I really dove into fine dining and explored my culinary creativity more. I started to educate myself through videos and books and eventually developed my own recipes.

Me: What year did you decide to start your own catering business?

Dad: 2002.

Me: Why did you start it?

Dad: I wanted to have my own business. I figured, I’m creating all this stuff for someone else to make money off of, right? So why not do it for myself? I also wanted to reach more people and show my work.

Me: What are some of the fun highlights in your cooking career that you remember?

Dad: Well, cooking for former President Gerald Ford was a big one. He was visiting Minnesota and stopped into Sherlock Holmes Brewery, where I was working at the time. The owner was a friend of his, so the Secret Service came and checked us out before he came in.

I also cooked for Walter Payton. He asked to meet the chef after I made this butterscotch bean dish. He liked it so much, he asked for the recipe, and I got to meet him!

Oh, and Kirby Puckett! He was a member at one of the country clubs I worked at. We cooked food for him, and I got to talk BBQ and recipes with him.