By Landon Gibson
From peeling potatoes atop a stool as a seven-year-old to becoming the youngest local executive chef, Christian Carmichael has proven that effective storytelling and a never-say-die work ethic can make the biggest of dreams possible.
Born in Meridian, Miss., Carmichael grew up immersed in southern cooking. In fact, he comes from a family that cooked food as a way to express its love. None proved a better example of this to him than his great-grandmother and family’s matriarch, Mavis Carmichael, who gave him his first orders in the kitchen––peeling potatoes.
“As I peeled those potatoes while she told me stories of old, those potatoes got a little bit richer,” said Carmichael.
According to Carmichael, his father Dale Carmichael, Jr. also spent many hours smoking various meats on a BBQ pit while Carmichael and his cousins would run around playing football or baseball in the backyard. He taught Carmichael not to manipulate ingredients but temperature instead.
For Carmichael, the lessons of cooking are forever intertwined with the stories that his family shared with him. Now, Carmichael gets to tell his own stories through his own creations.
While still a kid, Carmichael primarily relocated to Grenada, Mississippi with his mother. As he grew up and entered high-school, Carmichael earned his first restaurant job in Grenada at a local Mexican restaurant, where he said he first learned how to thrive under pressure in a kitchen.
Years later and seeking to blaze his own path, Carmichael found himself applying for a job as a dishwasher at Windy City Grille in Hernando. In around two years, he became the restaurant’s general manager. After his success at Windy City, he became the kitchen manager at another Hernando restaurant, Catfish Blues. In this role, he planned, developed and executed an entirely new menu by himself, featuring items such as blackened fish tacos and fried green tomatoes. According to Carmichael, he was able to break through due to his work ethic.
“I was raised to work,” said Carmichael. “I grew up running ductwork, working with HVAC, building carpentry and even welding. I know how to make a living by any means necessary. I never set out to be a chef, but I got myself into the industry and knew right off the bat that my work ethic was completely different from everybody else’s.”
Although he had already achieved an unprecedented amount of early success, Carmichael was not yet satisfied.
Around July of 2018, Carmichael took a position as sous chef at A.C.’s Steakhouse Pub in Hernando. Within a year, he was named Executive Chef at the age of 25. Carmichael, standing at 6 feet tall with shoulder-length brown hair, proved that his work ethic could take him to the top. Now, he’s at the top, but his passion still burns.
“You can get some educated chef––somebody who’s been to school, spent time abroad, somebody who has every aspect of the culinary world fine-tuned, but that doesn’t mean that person can take that and make a dollar. I’m about the business,” Carmichael said.
Along with his work ethic, Carmichael said another reason he is able to make money for the restaurants he’s cooked at is due to his food’s storytelling, especially when he makes thickening potatoes, a Southern variation of stewed potatoes mixed with flour.
“When I make thickening potatoes for people, they don’t know what’s behind that. For them, they’re getting a good starch on the plate; it’s nice and tight with a good sauce. What they don’t know is, for me, I’m telling a story of how my great-grandmother taught me how to make them. For me, I’m reliving the memory of being six or seven years old peeling potatoes with her,” Carmichael said.
The customer doesn’t know that. They don’t know Carmichael’s backstory, but they know that his food is unique. Through his nightly specials, he is able to showcase his creativity by making layered dishes such as bacon jam crostini topped with provolone and green onions and grilled swordfish with feta, cucumbers, scallions and watermelon. What makes his food unique is the story that he continues to tell on a plate through generations and generations.
Carmichael does not make light of cooking for others; in fact, he sees it as a deeply personal act.
“Cooking for a complete stranger is literally one of the most intimate things you can do for another person without having sex. You’re giving them nourishment, and you’re treating them like you love them,” he said.
Carmichael is also passionate about Mississippi, his home state that he hopes to never leave. He particularly takes issue with negative connotations that get thrown onto the state.
“While making sure to leave out Texas, Louisiana, Alabama and Georgia, it’s just Mississippi that gets spotlighted as terrible people, and that is not the case. We aren’t a specific landmass that produces bad guys,” he said. “Instead, let’s talk about Jerry Rice, Walter Payton, Britney Spears, Mavis and Pop Staples and the positive impact Mississippians have had on our country’s culture. Outsiders want to paint us as Neanderthals that are marrying our cousins, but Mississippi is where the culture is at and where it always will be.”
On the rare days that Carmichael gets free time away from the kitchen, he loves skateboarding at Pidgeon Park in Hernando. He has been skating since a teenager, but the thrill he gains from it refuses to grow old. Carmichael enjoys skating because no matter how good he gets, he will always be able to continue learning, innovating, succeeding and he’ll even get knocked down every now and then––just like in the kitchen.
“Cooking is literally a story you are giving somebody. Whether you receive it as that is your choice, and that’s what God does for us: gives us a choice,” Carmichael said.