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VUE | Winter 2020

The Digest | New Jersey Magazine

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M y first bite of Chef Leia Gaccione's food was met with equal parts joy and envy. Admittedly, I didn't want to like chicken and waffles as a legitimate entrée. I was much more eager to try her jerk oxtail hand pies, or the spicy lamb meatballs— they felt less trendy to me. But, Gaccione, as did many of my friends who have eaten her food before, insisted that the chicken and waffles be the first thing that I try when eating at her Morristown restaurant, South + Pine. So, I reluctantly stuck my fork into the amber-hued chicken and took a bite. And with that one bite, I was hooked. Gaccione made a fool of me with one perfect piece of chicken, and I am so happy that she did. at has been her game from early on in her career. Whether you want to hear it or not, women in professional kitchens have always started from a step below their male counterparts. Even at the same position, a societal expectation has always been prevalent that women have more to prove. "When applying for a job, I just had to accept the cat-calling, and people grazing up against me in what they would call an accident. It was not right, but it was normal," Gaccione explained. She never took this as a threat; instead, she turned it into her greatest strength. As a young girl, Gaccione drew inspiration from Julia Child on television. Later on, Alton Brown came along to strengthen her interest in food. However, as a senior in high school, she put her fictional knives away and applied to Montclair State University for Psychology. It was the first step in transitioning from high school into her career—until they lost her application. When fall came around, and the school she thought she would be studying at told her that she could not attend, she had to step back and think about what she would do. And so, her love for food brought her to the New York Restaurant School to study the cra she was destined to master. Just three weeks aer the September 11 attacks, a scared 17-year-old Gaccione was taking the bus into Manhattan daily not because she had to, but because she wanted to. "When I first walked into the school, it was just a building filled with kitchens. I had never seen anything like it. It made me feel all warm and fuzzy, and it also reinforced the idea that this is where I want to be," she told me. Gaccione takes a modest approach with almost everything. Even when discussing all of her successes to date, she still finds a way to downplay them. Take for example her work with the late Carl Ruiz, a NJ- born celebrity chef with several television and nationwide appearances under his belt. I was shocked to discover she worked so closely with Ruiz for several years, even opening the well-known Montclair restaurant Cuban Pete's with him back in 2005. Even more shocking was her eight years of work for chef superstar Bobby Flay. When a 23-year-old Gaccione had the opportunity to trail in one of Flay's renowned restaurants, Bar Americain in Manhattan, she saw it as an opportunity to gain knowledge (and maybe even pocket a few of his legendary recipes). When her trail came to a close, she failed her mission of bringing some secrets back to her Montclair job because they immediately asked her to come back the following week as executive sous chef. With one three-day period of work, Gaccione, without even trying, surpassed nearly everyone in that kitchen. An inconceivable task for a woman in the industry, yet, for anyone who knows even the least about her, it was anything but unexpected. V U E N J . C O M 115

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