National Culinary Review

HISTORY
Exploring New Horizons

Kasper

He decided it wasn’t a prudent investment,
and found an office in Manhattan that placed
culinary employees. There was an opening in
Greenwich, Conn., where a Swiss chef had
a bake shop. “I worked there a year,” Kasper
says. “Then I went west. I wanted to go to
Hollywood—I had heard so much about it—so I
drove across country.”
Kasper loved being in charge of a bake shop.
“I liked the challenge of providing the best
product, and having good relationships with
employees and management. It was like
having my own business. I spent a lot of time
on the job, but it was very fulfilling to me.”
He finished his apprenticeship and went to
work in the French part of Switzerland in a high-
end pastry shop in a hotel. He did his military
service, which is mandatory in Switzerland, then
went to Denmark, to a pastry shop appointed
to the Danish king. While there, he worked on
his own time with a staff person whose job it
was to represent Denmark at competitions and
exhibitions all over the world. “He was, of course,
extremely skilled and knowledgeable,” Kasper
says. “I learned as much as I could. ”
He found Los Angeles to be “an endless
village,” so he headed to Reno, Nev., where a
friend worked. He got a job, and on his days
off, he’d go to Lake Tahoe. “It was beautiful,
and I was hooked,” Kasper says.

The urge to travel kicked in again, and he
went to Hawaii to take a position at the Hilton
in Waikiki. “Then I was given the opportunity
to open the Kahala Hilton, behind Diamond
Head—234 rooms, and money was no object.
It was my dream.”
Kasper joined ACF in 1987, when ACF High
Sierra Chefs Association formed. “Through
ACF, I made excellent friends and contacts,
and I learned a lot,” he says. He became an
ACF-certified judge, which he considers a
great honor. “I still judge, and what I learn
today is incredible. I have to prepare myself.
I like best to judge students, then see them
a year or so later when they’ve moved up
in their careers. It is such a pleasure to
positively critique young people and give
them technical pointers.”
He went next to Sweden, and then to
England. But Kasper had his eye on wider
horizons. He had applied for an American
visa, and when he got it and a permanent
resident (green) card, he was ready to go.
Although he didn’t have a job, he arranged
to be his own sponsor (with enough money
documented in the bank to support himself
for three months), and flew to New York.

With that project accomplished, Reno, and one more summer in Tahoe, beckoned. “Now I had been in the States for five years, and said, it’s time to go home,” Kasper says.

“Coming to New York was quite an experience
for me,” Kasper says. “I was not used to going
to a property to ask for a job. In Europe, we
would check the job openings in the trade
papers or newspapers. But I got some offers,
including one from The Waldorf Astoria.”
Back in Switzerland, which by then he’d been
away from for nine years, Kasper found that
not only had he changed, but those he’d left
behind had changed, too. “But what really
dissuaded me was I didn’t think I could
financially afford to open my own shop in
Switzerland. So I went back to the States, with
plans to open a bake shop in the Bay Area.”
In 2008, Kasper became part of the WACS
Train the Trainer pilot program (a program
similar to Doctors Without Borders), and was
asked to go to Yangon, Myanmar, to teach
advanced pastries. “They are the nicest
people I’ve ever met. They are receptive and
grateful—and so eager to learn,” he says. “It
was an extremely satisfying appointment
for me and was probably the most valuable
experience of my career—that and being
inducted into the AAC.”
Kasper didn’t make it that far west. He got
a phone call from Lake Tahoe—someone
had heard he was coming back and offered
him a job as pastry chef at the Sahara Tahoe.
He spent 26 years there, until the property
changed hands and the bake shop was
ultimately closed. Kasper moved across the
street to Harrah’s Lake Tahoe, and he was
there until he retired in 1995 at age 62½.

Kasper, now 77, is still an avid skier. After
he retired, he interviewed to be a volunteer
mountain host. “Five hundred interviewed for
50 positions, and I thought they’d want young
people, but I got one of the positions,” he says.
“I had a fantastic time giving skiing mountain
tours to people from all over the world.”
The hitch was that he would have to apply for
the job at the local trade union. There, Kasper
discovered that he was No. 37 in line for job
placement. “This was totally new to me,” he
says. “Plus, they wanted a $400 fee—this was
in 1959—for me to join the union.”
He calls his retirement years “the best years
of my life. I am very happy. Although I miss
contact with people, I was ready for retirement.