ON THE TABLE
Hooked on Cooking
Executive Chef Brian Roland helps re-create a waterfront dining destination.
BY SHAWN HOLIDAY
The seeds of Brian Roland’s interest in cooking were planted in his family’s garden in New Jersey. The small backyard provided tomatoes, strawberries, zucchini and lots of herbs, and nourished his career aspirations—even if Roland, executive chef at the new M Waterfront Grille in Naples, didn’t realize it.
“I wasn’t so into it back then, but when we would take the produce in and eat it, that I really liked,” he says, adding that he often also cooked at home. “It was a chore. I really didn’t like it then.”
That chore simmered into a career when he started working in restaurants at age 14, in addition to taking cooking classes at South Brunswick High School. He became so proficient, his high school created a fourth-level cooking class just for him. “I never was a straight-A student except for my senior year, but food I always did well in,” says the Naples resident.
SIDE DISH
What I cook at home: Cereal. That’s all I eat at home.
When dining out, people should: Be more adventurous, use more of their senses.
I would give up dessert for: Saenkanter, a cow’s milk
