FROM DISHWASHER TO SOUS CHEF AT MICHELIN-STARRED ATLAS

The crowd was a blur under the lights, and the clapping and cheering sounded as though it were underwater. His team was holding the plaque. This was it. He had made it.

Keith Pattrick Hyche, sous chef at Atlanta’s Michelin-starred restaurant, Atlas, says he vividly remembers being on stage when the restaurant won its first star last year. Getting to this point was no cakewalk, especially for a Black chef in fine dining, Hyche says. His career took years to build, one that started with an ad for a dishwasher job on Craigslist.

Hyche is an Atlanta native. He was born in Lithonia, Georgia, and spent most of his life between South and East Atlanta. He graduated from Riverdale Middle and High School. In 2016, Hyche was running security for musicians and DJs around the city.

“I wanted to make sure I made it home every day for my kids,” says Hyche. “You have to be there for your children, without having to risk your life.”

The dangers and unpredictability of the job left him looking for a way out. One day, Hyche found a job listing on Craigslist for a dishwasher position at the St. Regis hotel in Buckhead. Without formal experience or culinary training, he rolled the dice.

“That day turned into a career for me,” says Hyche.

Chef Christopher Grossman, who was at Atlas in the St. Regis then, and is now the executive chef and operating partner at the Chastain, hired Hyche. Over the years, Hyche did prep work in the kitchen, and went from dishwasher to entremetier (the person in charge of vegetables, soups, and eggs), then commis chef, chef de partie (commands a particular station), and eventually sous chef in 2020.

“We were doing 12-hour days. I was going home with soggy shirts, wet pants, wrinkled fingertips,” says Hyche.

“I learned how to make pasta, I learned how to butcher fish straight off the boat. Chris would send me to the library challenging me every day to read up on techniques. I was willing to learn.”

And Grossman was willing to teach – it seemed only natural because Grossman, too, began as a dishwasher in Michigan and had no formal culinary training. His first job in Atlanta was at Aria under chef Gerry Klaskala, who was his mentor. Grossman went on to the Michelin-starred French Laundry in California, returning a year later to open Atlas. He has also mentored Sahar Siddiqi, James Beard semifinalist chef de cuisine of Chai Pani. He keeps in touch with Hyche and Siddiqi on a weekly basis.

“I won’t forget Keith,” says Grossman. “That’s the expectation — to exceed expectations. Keith was doing laps around other people.”

Atlas, which opened in 2015, is a fine dining mainstay, known for its ever-evolving menu and playful ability to experiment. Hyche introduced his home-grown Atlanta flair to the restaurant, including an off-menu item of Hot Cheetos chicken, and candy grapes, a take on Sour Patch Kids candy where grapes were coated in citric acid and offered as palate cleansers before dessert.

Nostalgia plays a big role in the tasting menu at Atlas. Culinary director chef Freddy Money pulls inspiration from his upbringing in London, offering dishes like green eggs and ham, pizza puffs, and a dessert called FM Rocher, a take on Ferrero Rocher chocolates, complete with gold foil and that iconic hazelnut and chocolate combo. He has worked with Hyche since 2020, and says he remembers how popular the hot chicken dish was.

“Everybody was asking for it,” says Money. “I need to revisit some of those dishes.”

Every day at 3 p.m. chefs at Atlas get to experiment by cooking for the staff “family lunches.” A different chef of any level, from apprentice to sous, cooks for more than a hundred people. At these lunches, the chefs are invited to present a piece of their culinary history to the team. Hyche has cooked many of these lunches, making mac and cheese and collard greens for the crew. His mother’s cube steak, sweet potato, and coconut pies all play as nostalgic inspirations.

“We’re sad, we’re happy, we cook. You didn’t even think about it,” says Hyche of his childhood. “We’d shuck peas or clean corn, cut collard greens. It brought everybody together.”

Hyche hopes to take the fine dining techniques and business trade he has learned over the years and open his own restaurant someday. Until then, like the rest of the team at Atlas, he is learning and evolving. Most evidently, he is proud of his journey and speaks of his past proudly as an Atlanta native.

“Information is power. It lets you control your future,” says Hyche. “Never give up. Never let your situation define you.”

2024-04-26T14:59:26Z dg43tfdfdgfd