THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, April 7, 1996 TAG: 9604040053
SECTION: FLAVOR PAGE: F1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY BILL RUEHLMANN, SPECIAL TO FLAVOR
LENGTH: Long : 173 lines
INTERNATIONALLY KNOWN food maven Julia Child is noted for her sense of humor - remember how she used to heave the rolling pin over her shoulder? But the grande dame of haute cuisine was not smiling as she moved in on Richmond chef-skydiver-raconteur Jimmy Sneed.
It was 6:30 one morning last August at the chateau Child in Cambridge, Mass., where Sneed, 43, had been summoned to shoot ``In Julia's Kitchen With Master Chefs'' for the Public Broadcasting System. Child, 83, selected him after viewing a videotape of Sneed stuffing quail with crabmeat and sausage.
``He looks,'' Child had said, ``so manly.''
But that was before he stank up her house, right in the middle of the makeup call.
``What happened, Jimmy?'' Child inquired direly.
The manly chef, momentarily nonplused, responded: ``My crabs died.''
Too many in the tank. But, hey, nobody's perfect - and Sneed had plenty more velvet soft-shells in reserve for the shoot, which went, after that, swimmingly. And he managed to clear the air with an inspired piggyback segment on preparing turkey a la Sneed.
``Julia,'' the chef reports, ``is awesome.''
She's not only in charge, he adds, but inquisitive. Genuinely curious and very supportive. ``In fact,'' concedes Sneed, ``she was downright frisky.''
So is Sneed, who departed Windows on Urbanna Creek, a restaurant in Urbanna, Va., to open The Frog and The Redneck at Shockoe Slip in Richmond three years ago.
Washingtonian magazine said the Virginia quail at Windows justified the 2 1/2-half-hour drive from D.C. Food writer Robert Shoffner raved. He pronounced Sneed's soft-shells ``one of the 10 best dishes in Washington.''
Esquire called The Frog and The Redneck ``one of the best new restaurants in America.'' Food writer John Mariani raved. ``Despite Sneed's in-your-face personality,'' he said, ``this guy is very serious about his food.''
``Brash, my bottom,'' protests Sneed, who does not say bottom.
He recently was nominated Best Mid-Atlantic American Chef in the James Beard Foundation competition celebrating the organization's 10th anniversary. The prestigious Beard Foundation Awards, to be presented April 29, have been called the ``Foodies' Oscars.'' In his category, Sneed goes up against the likes of Jeff Buben of Vidalia and Roberto Donna of Galileo, both in Washington, D.C., and Susanna Foo, of Susanna Foo in Philadelphia.
Sneed helped prepare the reception grub for Vice President Al Gore and wife Tipper at Richmond's Berkeley Hotel a while back. Sneed also was asked to provide the Gores with a ``light lunch,'' which he defined as a cold plate with ratatouille ravioli, cured salmon and seaweed salad, crabmeat-stuffed shiitake cap, and tuna tartare. He also presented the couple with two packed coffee cups of his patented Old-Fashioned Pearl Tapioca; the couple demanded two more of those to consume in the limo on the way home.
``Light lunch, indeed,'' sniffs Sneed.
The tapioca was the same stuff Julia Child sampled with aristocratic approval on the set in Cambridge.
``God, I love this woman,'' he says.
Manly, in-your-face, serious. Like this. Jimmy Sneed on ``How to Get Invited Back to Important Cooking Shows Like Julia Child's'':
1. Keep it simple.
2. Make it fresh; product is everything.
3. Feed the crew. LOVE FOR FOOD, FAMILY
At 10 a.m. on a Friday, Sneed bursts into the crowded office behind The Frog and The Redneck at 1423 E. Cary St. to begin another full-tilt 12-hour day.
``Listen to this, listen to this!'' he shouts at an unstartled staff, already long at work and fairly accustomed to these outbursts. ``I've got the title for my new book! Listen to this!''
Sneed clears his throat and reads from the notebook in his fist.
``THIS JOB SUCKS: THE MUSINGS OF A CHEF!''
There is a pause.
``Perfect, right?'' exults Sneed.
``Well,'' murmurs director of sales and marketing Cathy Arevian, 31, ``maybe for a chapter.''
Enthusiasm unabated, Sneed marches to his desk with a secure sense of already having accomplished something substantial for the day. Relentlessly up, he retains the bristling eagerness of a cruise director and a boyish countenance, ruddy with excitement behind a wire brush of beard and long brown hair that curls at the collar. Sneed sports a white sweatshirt with Peninsula Skydivers emblazoned on it.
He stopped diving two years ago, after 496 drops. Popped a knee on a landing. Decided he would have to get back down to 200 pounds before he put that kind of stress on the leg again.
At 5-feet-10, Sneed weighs in at 232, and that's with daily sessions of racquetball. He also shoots skeet. And rides a black BMW motorcycle.
A sticker on the office wall reads: THE BEST THINGS IN LIFE ARE EDIBLE. Under that, another: NEVER TRUST A SKINNY CHEF. But Sneed is not overweight, he argues.
He is merely a foot short.
The smaller desk in the inner office belongs to Adam Steely, 33, Sneed's partner, urbane floor man and resident wine expert.
``Jimmy,'' he says, ``is the highest-energy person I know in the industry. Well, aside from the manics. He is the highest-energy in-control person I know.''
It is an astute assessment. For while Sneed is notably a showman - his caricature leers out from the menu, the newsletter and the life-size cut-out at the restaurant entry - he also is a family man. That means stability.
``When he goes somewhere,'' says Stacey, 39, his wife of two decades, ``Jimmy always takes one of the kids with him.''
They have three - Jenn, 14; Jamie, 12; and Kalie, 9. So when Sneed did dinner for sausage king Jimmy Dean not long ago, Kalie went along. And she played poker with the man who wrote ``Big John.''
Jenn and Jamie run the coat room Friday and Saturday nights. Stacey irons Sneed's trademark white cotton Bargarde. Sunday is family day, when The Frog and The Redneck shuts down.
``My greatest strength as a chef,'' says Sneed, ``is standards. It's quality control. I don't have the natural talent a lot of chefs have, but being great at what you do isn't winning awards.
``It's turning out good food, night after night after night.''
The record shows he does it. Sneed's 108-seat, dinner-only, closed-Sundays restaurant turns out 1,000 meals a week. Last year the 39-employee business grossed $2.3 million.
``He's got the heart for it,'' says Jerry Bryan, owner-chef of the Coastal Grill in Virginia Beach. ``Jimmy has so much love for the product, the service and the restaurant. He's spiritual about the food.'' THE SCREAMING FROG
In the foyer to The Frog and The Redneck, which resides in a reconverted brick warehouse, you can purchase inscribed frog-and-redneck shirts ($45), hats ($12) and peppermills ($22).
Then you can go within and look at a neon-lined cartoon mural titled ``The Evolution of Fine Dining.'' Sneed, of course, is in it. Featured are his patrons, waxing wise at table:
``You like steak, Diane?''
``I'd prefer veal, Oscar.''
So who is The Frog, and who is The Redneck?
``I,'' concedes Sneed, ``would be The Redneck.''
The frog is a species of French muse. He probably has his origins in Sneed mentor Jean-Louis Paladin, the Michelin-rated superstar owner-chef of Jean-Louis at Watergate in Washington, D.C.
Paladin instructed Sneed in screaming.
``You know how to handle a salmon? NOT BY THE GILLS! You slide one hand under the head and the other under the body, and you lift it like the baby!
``YES?''
But of course.
Paladin in full cry made Julia Child look like Little Orphan Annie. LEARNING UNDER FIRE
France is what happened to Sneed on his way to becoming a lawyer. The son of a Charleston, S.C., veteran's hospital director, he attended several colleges in pursuit of jurisprudence. One summer - after the University of South Florida at Tampa and before George Washington University in D.C. - he went to Paris to learn French, walked into the Cordon Bleu cooking school and hustled himself a job as English interpreter for the chef.
So long, law.
There followed apprenticeship as sous chef for the Republican Club in Washington. After that, the Four Seasons Hotel. Look good, work clean.
He had had the equivalent of culinary Marine Corps boot camp by the time he encountered Paladin, for whom he worked 5 1/2 years.
``I learned,'' notes Sneed, ``that it was possible to feed 600 Chrysler dealers on the Queen Elizabeth II while wearing knee boots because of 8 inches of water in the kitchen. I learned how to prepare dinner for 200 at the Ritz in London after the chef sabotaged us by canceling our entire order for fish, meat and produce. I learned how to turn a semi-trailer into an oven with 600 cans of Sterno, and how to remake soup and sauces at 7 p.m. for 150 people in San Francisco because the hotel used iodized salt instead of sea salt.''
He learned, in short, to be a chef. ILLUSTRATION: COLOR PHOTOS BY LAWRENCE JACKSON/The Virginian-Pilot
Jimmy Sneed oversees preparations in the kitchen of The Frog and The
Redneck, named for Sneed (the Redneck) and his French mentor
Jean-Louis Palladin (the Frog).
KEYWORDS: PROFILE BIOGRAPHY COOKING
RESTAURANTS CHEF by CNB