Miles Grant James

JOHNSON — It started with lettuce and tomatoes.

Before Miles James was honored by the James Beard Foundation, before James at the Mill, before he worked in the pressure-cooker kitchens of New York and Europe, James was a 14-year-old kid at Fayetteville’s Ramay Junior High who needed some money.

His mother didn’t have any extra dollars to give him, but she did have a friend who was the manager at Hugo’s restaurant in Fayetteville. So Miles got a job as a busboy, clearing tables nights and weekends.

“He definitely was a self-starter,” says his mother, Linda James of Springdale. “He was so excited to have that opportunity, and then he went out and pushed to get that next move up.”

Miles James wasn’t at Hugo’s long when the prep cook quit. James jumped at the opportunity, handling the toppings on the hamburgers and nachos, and making the lemon and chocolate mousses, while still working as a busboy.

In a story that stretches from Vermont to Massachusetts to New York to Paris to Italy to London to New Mexico to Johnson, that’s where it all began for James - dispatching lettuce, tomatoes, onions and cheese at Hugo’s.

“The whole thing, the restaurant as a whole, I love it,” James says. “It’s what I’m meant to do. It’s my passion, it’s what I think about.

“Hugo’s really gave me that. I loved the immediate satisfaction of pleasing guests through food.”

James launched his worldly education when he left Fayetteville in 1988 and headed to the New England Culinary Institute in Montpelier, Vt. He had little money to his name, and that didn’t change anytime soon, as much of the experience he gained cooking around the globe was either for low wages or stage (unpaid).

Yet while James didn’t return to Arkansas much richer than he left, he came home with a wealth of experi-ence in cooking and baking. He returned in 1994, the year he opened James at the Mill with his wife, Courtney, and his in-laws, James and Joyce Lambeth. The restaurant was built next to the Inn at the Mill, a luxury hotel James Lambeth created a few years earlier out of a historic mill that was first registered as a business in 1835.

It was at James at the Mill where James launched his signature Ozark Plateau Cuisine, which has been praised in publications as varied as Bon Appetit magazine and The New York Times. It also earned him a “Rising Star Chef of the 21st Century” designation from the James Beard Foundation, a nonprofit organization that promotes the culinary arts.

“A lot of people do the New York experience and bring it back, whether it’s Savannah or Arkansas or Portland or wherever, but he doesn’t rest on that,” says renowned chef David Burke of New York. “He hasn’t lost any desire to learn, to be creative. He’s still excited about food. That’s the difference.”

James’ passion for food goes beyond the restaurant’s menu and his cookbooks, down to La Perruche, the brown French sugar lumps he puts in his coffee.

He’s also excited about the Inn, which underwent an extensive renovation a few years back, and he’s equally thrilled about 28 Springs, his new restaurant, which opens in Siloam Springs on May 11.James and Courtney will be co-owners with Todd and Shelley Simmons of Siloam Springs, and they hope to establish a place where Ozark Plateau Cuisine is served in a more casual setting.

“Miles’ enthusiasm is just so infectious,” Shelley Simmons says. “You can see it in the twinkle in his eye and the way he talks about the food - and everything from the decor to the kitchen to the way our wait staff is going to be trained. He just has enthusiasm that runs all the way through down to the tiniest details.”

GLOBAL EDUCATION

James didn’t exactly nail his resume to Burke’s door, but he seized a stroke of fortune.

James decided that Nantucket, Mass., had gotten a little small for him, so he headed to New York in 1991. He had no job in mind, and planned to knock on doors and hand out resumes until someone hired him, as had happened in Nantucket.

As James was walking down the street, he ran into Burke. He introduced himself, and said he would love to work for him. Much to James’ surprise, Burke knew who he was - the kid from Arkansas who had nailed his resume to Burke’s door.

Only that’s not really what happened.

“A couple of days earlier, I was handing out resumes around Manhattan to a lot of high-end restaurants I wanted to work in,” James explains. “One I went by was Park Avenue Cafe [which was under construction]. I asked the foreman, ‘Is the chef here?’ and he said, ‘No, you just missed him.’

“He said, ‘We’ll put it on the front door.’ There happened to be a nail there, andthey put it over the nail.”

More than two decades later, James looks back and says he has been incredibly lucky, that he has often “been at the right place at the right time.” Park Avenue Cafe was certainly a case of near-miraculous luck, but also of James subsequently making the most of that luck.

James badly wanted to work for Burke, who was just a few years older but was already a well-known chef and restaurateur. His fame had come as the executive chef of the River Cafe, where James believed Burke was still working.

PARK AVENUE CAFE

But Burke had left River Cafe to start Park Avenue Cafe. James didn’t know; he had no idea who would head the new restaurant.

“Thank God the construction workers got it to me,” Burke says. “He wanted to learn and work for the best. He still has the same personality today, high-energy, inquisitive and sincere.”

Burke hired James to be the pastry cook, the final spot open on his opening-night crew at Park Avenue Cafe. In that role, James worked under pastry chef Dan Budd.

In the first month, a baker quit, and James convinced Burke and Budd to let him make some breads. One was a red-pepper semolina roll.

“Those were pretty darn good,” Burke says.

James was promoted - albeit without a raise in his $364 weekly salary - and began making all the restaurant’s breads in the mornings, while keeping his pastry job at night. Those red-pepper semolina rolls, meanwhile, caught the attention of a food critic at New York Magazine, and earned James a write-up in the magazine.

He stayed at Park Avenue Cafe for about a year, when he took a job as the sous chef at Tribeca Grill, owned in part by Robert De Niro.

It was “a ton of responsibility,” James says. He worked six days a week at Tribeca,from noon until closing, and was responsible for coming up with five specials every day. The seventh day James was given $300 and told to go to two restaurants, so he could constantly come up with new ideas.

“It’s like playing in the Super Bowl, only you’ve got to do it every night,” Burke says. “You’re on your feet 12-15 hours a day, stopping only for breaks to go to the bathroom. If he didn’t have passion for this, and if [his food] wasn’t good, he wouldn’t have lasted two weeks in this industry.”

Then James’ hometown mentor asked him to return to Arkansas.

THE RIGHT MAN

Before James was going to be a chef, he was going to be an architect.

Prior to leaving for the New England Culinary Institute, James spent two years at the University of Arkansas, majoring in architecture. He was - and remains - fascinated by architecture, and as a teenager he had been taken under the wing of internationally known Fayetteville architect James Lambeth.

“Jim was a strong male figure in his life, particularly when Miles was in high school,” Linda James says. “Jim and Joyce saw Miles as someone with a lot of potential. Jim was totally a mentor to Miles.”

The Lambeths’ daughter, Courtney, who was the same age as James, wasn’t immediately as crazy about him. She liked James well enough, and they became friends who shared a mutual appreciation of great food, but it was years before they began dating.

James and Courtney went their separate ways after graduating from Fayetteville High School, but he made sure they always stayed in touch. He would call her when she was at Vassar College or in graduate school in London, and tell her about all the exciting experiences he was having.

“It all came down to him cooking me a dinner,” Courtney James says. “He brought home loads of products from Manhattan when we were both home for Christmas in 1992. He cooked for me, and that was it.”

Courtney says that her parents saw James as someone capable of great things, and encouraged him to ask her out. Even before they began dating, though, James Lambeth had decided to go into business with Miles.

While James was still in New York, he was contacted by his future father-in-law. Lambeth had opened Inn at the Mill in 1992, and wanted to create a restaurant on the property, offering to make James a partner.

James liked the idea, but insisted that he needed to gain some European experience. So in early 1993, he headed to Paris. He had a job lined up working for chef Joel Robuchon, but Robuchon fired him upon discovering he was an American.

ON THE SPOT

Deflated, James went down the street and met with chef Guy Savoy, who offered him a job on the spot.

“He said, ‘You show me how these big New York restaurants work, and you’ll get to work every position in the kitchen,’” James recalls. “This is working for free, stage, for a place with three Michelin stars.”

After working in Paris, James took a job in Florence, Italy. Everything to that point in his career had been very structured, but it was there he saw how to take a more artistic approach to food. That meant changing the menu all the time, based upon what was fresh and available in the market.

This approach is a majorcomponent of Ozark Plateau Cuisine. As James defines it, the cuisine is “a celebration, as much as possible, of local ingredients and traditional cooking methods from this region.”

James worked at an Italian restaurant in London, and at a Southwestern restaurant in Santa Fe, N.M. - pausing briefly to take classes at the International School of Confectionery Arts in Maryland - before returning to Arkansas. James at the Mill served its first meal on Dec. 13, 1994, less than three months after Miles and Courtney wed.

James and his father-inlaw were among the partners who saved the University of Arkansas’ Carnall Hall from the wrecking ball, transforming the aging former women’s dormitory into an inn and restaurant. The Jameses sold their portion in 2005, two years after Lambeth died.

James has always loved Fayetteville, where he and Courtney live with their daughter, Paris. He’s a big fan of its schools, in 2001 becoming one of the youngest-ever inductees into the Fayetteville Schools Hall of Honor.

Every year since then, his staff has catered the ceremony, charging the Fayetteville Public Education Foundation just pennies on the dollar to do it.

“We’ve had a much broader profit margin because of his donation,” says Treva Hamilton of Fayetteville, the recently retired director of the foundation. “I think it’s the best banquet meal in town for any event, because he does it to perfection. He’s upped the level of excellence for that event.”

Back at James at the Mill, Miles and Courtney work together, just not directly on a day-to-day basis; her role is more behind the scenes. A self-described “‘foodie’ before there was such a thing,” Courtney serves as a sounding board when James is considering menu and wine changes. (James’ younger brother Lyle is a chef at James at the Mill.)

Although neither James nor Courtney has formal training on the subject, they designed the restaurant’s wine list, beginning with 50 reds and 50 whites that tastedgood to them. The wine list was cited by Wine Spectator that year, which has happened every year since. In some years, it has been the only restaurant in the state so honored.

“He lives with great gusto and passion,” Courtney James says. “This sounds sappy, but he’s a really fun person to be married to. He always jumps in headfirst.”

There was a time when the James family used to take long vacations all over the world, studying great hotels and restaurants and observing what made them shine. When the Inn underwent its renovation, Courtney and James made three trips to Thailand to acquire custom carpeting and furniture.

Today, the family still loves to travel and soak up art, architecture and hospitality. But the trips are shorter, because James can’t stay away for long.

“We plan a trip around a hotel, a restaurant and a museum, and we hit the ground running,” Miles James says. “We’ll have a lot of fun, but after two or three days I’m itching to get back and see what’s going on at the hotel and the restaurant.”SELF PORTRAIT

Miles James

DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH March 10, 1968, Savannah, Ga.

ONE SKILL I’D LIKE TO HAVE IS The ability to speak multiple languages.

MY FAVORITE DRINKS ARE Laurent Perrier Brut Rose, Talbott Chardonnay, Talbott Pinot Noir, or a Bellini at Harry’s Bar in Venice.

THE BEST PART OF MY JOB IS The ability to please our customers while cooking with the ingredients we like to use.

MY FAVORITE HOTELS, OUTSIDE OF MINE, ARE The Peninsula Beverly Hills and the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Bangkok.

A PERSON I REALLY ADMIRE IS Chef Guy Savoy, whom I worked for in Paris.

THE BEST ADVICE I EVER RECEIVED IS “Never lose the ability to have fun while cooking.”

MY FAVORITE TIME OF DAY IS 7 p.m., because that’s when everyone wants to eat!

A BOOK EVERYONE SHOULD READ IS Kitchen Confidential.

MY FAVORITE TELEVISION SHOWS ARE Shark Tank or The Amazing Race.

SOMETHING FEW PEOPLE KNOW ABOUT ME IS I’m ‘addicted’ to pho (Vietnamese noodle soup).

ONE WORD TO SUM ME UP Passionate.