c h e f p r o f i l e
Tim Williams of Café Thirty-A b y R y a n L o f t i s
W hen doing a job for more than 25 years, there’s always a danger it will start to seem stale and repetitive. What keeps Tim Williams, Cafe Thirty-A’s executive chef, inspired? Unpredictability. “In the restaurant industry, every day is different,” Williams says. “Each person who walks through the door has a different set of expectations. The challenge adds fuel to the fire. You want to make sure everybody’s happy, and not only leaving happy but exceeding expectations. If you can send somebody out going, ‘Wow, that’s really great, that’s more than I was bargaining for,’ that’s our goal every day.” Originally from Brooklyn, N.Y., Williams didn’t always aspire to become a chef. He initially dreamed of working on Wall Street, only to find actually having a job there unsatisfying. It was during a summer vacation to Cape Cod in the early 1980s that he found his true calling. He met and befriended a couple, David and Eileen Gibson, who had just bought an inn with a restaurant. The Gibsons, who had more than 20 years of restaurant experience between them, wanted Williams to work for them. His plan was to be a busboy, but they wanted him in the kitchen. “Once they threw me in there, I realized this is where I need to be,’” he says. He wanted to attend culinary school, but the Gibsons felt doing so wasn’t immediately necessary. “They said, ‘Hold on, we’ll teach you what we learned there.’ It was very hands-on training from some very talented people. I was very fortunate.” Williams returned to college in New York when the summer ended, but his days at the restaurant weren’t over: the following spring the Gibsons sent him a plane ticket to come work for them over Easter weekend. That May, the restaurant’s menu was changed from German to American. Even the wine would be American, an unheard-of development in Cape Cod at the time. The gamble paid off: following a glowing review in the Boston Globe that August, the restaurant’s business exploded. After the Gibsons sold their property, Williams went to work in Vail, Colo., but when his father became ill he returned to New York. He went back to work with David Gibson, this time at a restaurant in Syracuse, N.Y., for a year, when he returned to Cape Cod to work at a fine dining restaurant, spending 2 years there before his future wife told him it was time for him to attend culinary school. The Culinary Institute of America’s Hyde Park, NY, campus was the only school Williams considered. “Going through the core courses was a pretty good reinforcement
the people I had previously worked with knew what they were doing,” he says. But the lessons weren’t confined to the classroom. “All the instructors at school had a side business going on. I got to learn a lot working on projects they had going on.” He learned about building relationships with clients and coworkers, how to upsell to clients, how to determine what clients are looking for. The biggest lesson, however, was “they worked from the heart. It mattered to them.” One particularly noteworthy example was a professor turning down what Williams calls a “ridiculous” amount of money for an event where the clients were more concerned about pomp and circumstance than the quality of the food. “That kind of blew me away. But I never forgot it.” That commitment guides Williams’ philosophy as a chef. “You can read and be exposed to all kinds of things intellectually, but if it doesn’t feel right don’t do it. If there’s a hesitation, there’s a reason for that.” Williams worked at a Mexican restaurant while attending culinary school and continued working there after his 1992 graduation. In 1994, he moved to Atlanta to work for Hilton Hotels as an executive sous chef. He had several jobs over the years, including serving as the corporate executive chef responsible for all menu development for the Miami-based Tango Group, before opening his restaurant Dantanna’s in 2003. Williams remains a partner in Dantanna’s, which today has two Atlanta locations. While his time in Atlanta was successful, eventually Williams became ready to move on. His children were grown, his day-to-day involvement was no longer necessary at Dantanna’s, and he had grown tired of the Atlanta traffic. He fell in love with 30-A and began visiting the area as often as possible. Williams bought a property in Panama City Beach in 2016 and became a permanent resident in June 2018. It wouldn’t take long to find his new job. Williams had been considering opening a cafe or sandwich shop when an acquaintance forwarded his resume to Cafe Thirty-A’s management. A 90-minute conversation with management inspired him to take the restaurant’s executive chef position in July 2018. Williams believes the ability to manage people and products is essential for being a successful chef. “If I’m not giving the people who work with me what they need to achieve their goals, then I’m not doing my job,” he says. As for managing products, “You have to set up a system to make sure to offer the highest quality. Number one is where you purchase from and number
Executive Chef Tim Williams
You want to make sure everybody’s happy, and not only leaving happy but exceeding expectations.
two how you handle it. If you take care of it, respect it, cook it properly, and it goes out, you usually don’t have any issues.”
Cafe Thirty-A is located at 3899 E. Scenic Highway 30A in Seagrove Beach. For more information call (850) 231-2166 or visit cafethirtya.com.
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