Paul Melchior, director of Dining Services at 36,000-student San Diego University, was thrust into cooking on his sixth birthday. Here, he talks about how that experience got him to where he is today.
“I started in foodservice really early. I’m the youngest of 10 kids. When all of us had our sixth birthday, my mom would teach us how to make breakfast. Little did we know that we were going to have to make our own breakfast from that day forward. Since I was the youngest of ten children, whom were all taught to cook their own breakfast at 6 years old, there was great anticipation for the event. I liked the idea that we could cook our own breakfast, which increased the menu options from just cold cereal. We learned how to fry bacon and cook eggs. There were also occasionally left over baked potatoes to turn into home fries. We also learned how to make french toast, Swedish pancakes and sourdough pancakes later on.
Learning to make breakfast led to my mom teaching me how to make bread, pies and cinnamon rolls. I once taught my older brother’s girlfriend, who was 21, how to make an apple pie when I was around 10. I loved kneading the bread dough and forming the bread loaves or dinner rolls and prepping the cinnamon rolls to proof.
After that, I used to make my older brothers and sisters school lunches and they would pay me. I liked making their lunches because I think service is in my heart. They encouraged me by giving praise and then sometimes tips or bribes to put extra meat in their sandwich. It also worked to keep me out of trouble from my bigger brothers.
One of my most memorable food experiences was when my mother and sisters were out of town and my father cooked a spaghetti dinner for us. We always all ate dinner together, so we started trying to identify all of the ingredients in the dish. When we exhausted all of the usual guesses and there was still one unidentified ingredient, my father asked if we give up. He said the special ingredient was love. I have never forgotten that night and try to put love into whatever I cook.”