HISTORY
Good Food, Good Company, Good Friends
By Kay Orde
Seventy-seven-year-old Charles Duberstein’s
lifelong passion for foodservice started
when he was a young child standing at his
grandmother’s side as she cooked. “I found
that I really enjoyed the art of cooking,”
Duberstein, CEC, AAC, says, “so I decided to
pursue a career in the foodservice industry.”
It was as simple as that. With an eye to his
future career, he took his first job at Bill’s Grille
in his hometown of Minneapolis at age 15.
From there, he moved to the city’s Curtis Hotel,
billed at the time as the largest in the Upper
Midwest. Duberstein then joined the Navy, and,
on his discharge, returned to The Curtis.
Lafayette Country Club in Wayzata, Minn., was
his next stop, followed by Boulevard Café,
Minnetonka, Minn., as executive chef. He
remained in Minnesota, advancing his career in
several more venues before eventually going
into business with a friend. He took his many
years of experience and his subsequent vast
amount of culinary knowledge to DuMor, Inc., a
chef/foodservice consulting service in Otsego,
Minn. He remains in his position as consultant
chef today.
Duberstein should know. He earned the
title “chef” the hard way, by working with
seasoned chefs who taught him the ins
and outs of the kitchen and expected, in
return, long hours and dedication. But he
says today’s young culinarians have much to
offer the industry, including their increased
exposure to business courses while in
culinary school.
Those business skills are something he sees
as essential to the industry’s future. “We need
to know more about the business end of
foodservice,” he says. “It’s not enough, anymore,
to just be able to cook. One needs to know
all the other parts of running a successful
restaurant business and all it entails.
“The education background and business skills
of today’s students will be a tremendous asset
to the future of culinary arts, and to ACF.”
Duberstein joined ACF in 1965, when the
Midwest Chefs Society, an unaffiliated group
with a five-year history, began to reorganize.
“We decided it would be a great opportunity
to collaborate with ACF,” he says.
Duberstein
course of his career, but something that
means more to him than all his awards is
his influence on others in the business.
He was known as a no-nonsense boss
who expected his employees to behave
responsibly and respectfully toward each
other and the customers. His work ethic was
uncompromising: Put in long hours, seven
days a week, if necessary, especially when
you own a business. And if you’re going to
do something, do it right, a belief he lived by
and insisted his employees did likewise.
What might be Duberstein’s greatest
accomplishment and the most fulfilling
aspect of his career, however, is mentoring.
“Mentoring is an important role in any
person’s life, regardless of the situation,”
he says. “It’s where we learn most of what
we will take with us through life. And who
knows more about life that those who have
already lived many years?”
Such a complex career path—and such
single-minded devotion to a dream—might
seem foreign to today’s young chefs-in-
the-making. They are more likely to attend
culinary school and learn in a scholarly
environment than to experience the total
kitchen immersion that marked Duberstein’s
training. But although they rarely learn
exclusively by working closely with
experienced chefs in the business, some
things haven’t changed.
“If they’re serious about seeking a career
in foodservice, they need to remember
what they have learned and how to apply it,”
Duberstein says. “And they should look to the
future. It will be as bright as they allow it to be.
With a little hard work, they can accomplish
anything to make their dreams a reality.”
He is a longtime member of ACF Minneapolis
Chefs Chapter, serving as its president from
1985 to 1986. He was his chapter’s Chef
of the Year in 1978, and received the Hans
Gilgen Award “Member of the Year” in 1990,
the same year he helped start an ACF chapter
in neighboring South Dakota. He hosted Les
Amis d’Escoffier dinners (1958, 1970 and
1972), was a medalist at the Internationale
Kochkunst Ausstellung (1980 and 1984),
received a President’s Medallion from
Reimund Pitz, CEC, CCE, AAC, in 1997, and
the Naval Academy Award (1997 and 1998).
In 2005, he went to New Orleans to help in
the effort led by John Folse, CEC, AAC, HBOT,
to feed victims of Hurricane Katrina.
He has spent, and continues to spend,
time, effort and money helping others
who are trying to make it in foodservice.
Many aspiring chefs and those already
established have been helped by his
experience and willingness to give his best
effort to help make them successful. So
it should be no surprise that the abiding
passion that has marked his years in the
industry is simply this: “Good food, good
company and good friends.”
And perhaps that’s why he has no plans
to retire “until the good Lord says it’s time
to retire.
Duberstein has amassed a wealth of plates,
trophies, plaques and certificates over the
“When I do, I will spend time with my dogs
and my beautiful lady [Sally Tiede], just
enjoying the life I was given.”
www.acfchefs.org
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