Peter Maiers isn't a stranger to Mid Michigan, but he's definitely bringing some new ideas to the
Table Restaurant, at the
H Hotel in Midland.
Maiers is the newly-chosen executive chef for Table, and along with the new chef comes a new menu, a new look, and even a new name for the restaurant, which has been something of an oasis of international fine dining in the area.
Previously, he was the chef for the hotel's Café Zinc, a less-formal bistro setting. After three years there--and 20 years in the business--Maiers isn't shy about stepping up to the role of executive chef for both the café and the restaurant.
"We will have a new menu," he says. "I'd say more than 50 percent of the menu is Italian, with grilled foods and that type of thing. It's a little bit of what I would call tailored international cuisine."
To understand the diversity and inspiration behind the menu, you don't have to look much further than the chef's own background. In his career, Maiers has seen many sides of the kitchen, starting out at a restaurant his father owned.
"My family was originally from Saginaw, and my dad had a trucking business," he says. "Eventually he sold it and we moved to Vermont and opened a restaurant."
It started out as family duty, but after high school, Maiers began to seriously consider a career in the culinary world.
"If I was going to be a chef, I was going to be the best one I can be, so I saved my money for awhile, and went to France," he says.
Two years of an apprenticeship in the kitchen and in pastry work followed before he came back to the U.S. to work at another of his father's restaurants. Some work in California and New York came next, and then Maiers settled in the NYC area for a stretch from 1996 to 2008, working for
Chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten at the Trump Tower, among others.
He added Thai, American fusion and other cuisines to his repertoire before bringing it all back to his home state of Michigan, but although he could be forgiven for creating high-flying dishes or the latest in molecular gastronomy, Maiers isn't at all precious about his cooking.
"I just want to cook and do my job well," he says. "It's a trade, cooking, not an art. To make anything, you have to know how to make stocks for soups, how to butcher fish. That, to me, is what interests me, working with the ingredients. After 20 years of doing that, it all comes together."
What it comes together into might be seared tuna with lump crab, coq au vin, or a pad Thai, but Maiers says at the heart of it, he wants people to enjoy the food.
"I try to do a lot of food that is recognizable to everybody," Maiers says. "Michiganders are a meat-and-potatoes kind of people. And I like to make food that has a history behind it, like cannolli. The history and the stories, that's what got me interested in food in the first place."
And, Midland's international community makes the city a better place for globally-inspired cuisine than you might think.
"Dow brings international people from all over the world, so that does have an effect on the palate of the area," says Maiers.
Whatever dish is on the menu of the revamped Table restaurant, it will definitely take place in a new kitchen as well. Along with a kitchen expansion, two wok stations for the chefs are being put in, which Maiers says is a must for doing Asian-inspired food right.
"With all that we're going to be doing in the restaurant, it is definitely going to be fun," Maiers says.
The renovations and reimaginings all are scheduled to be done this summer.
Kim Hoyum is a freelance writer based in Michigan. She is a regular writer for several weekly and monthly publications and recently started her own travel blog. Hoyum is a graduate of Northern Michigan University where she obtained a Bachelor of Arts in writing.Photo captions: 01 Chef Peter Maiers will take over as chef of the Table Restaurant in Midland. Maiers has been with Cafe Zinc since it opened, and will still oversee the menu there also.
02 Seared tuna and crab salad with seaweed
03 Seared sea scallops
04 Dessert of the month: Cannolis.
05 When not in the kitchen, Chef Peter Maiers likes to interact with the customers in the dining room.
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