Thierry Debailleul: A fire is something that I just absolutely love. It could be a blowtorch, could be just a big bonfire, it could be anything that's cooked for you in front of you, in front of your eyes, and it's totally fresh. You take the kitchen outside, basically. That's the beauty of Pinehurst. We're not a high-rise tower, we're not stuck downtown. We're kind of in a semi-wilderness in the pines. And I think it's phenomenal to utilize that, exploit that for a lot of people. Now my stomach is growling.

Crew: Yeah, that was good.

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Thierry Debailleul: My name is Thierry Debailleul, commonly called a Chef T or Chef Thierry. I'm the executive chef at the resort. And I've been here 14 years this year. I started cooking as a kind of a hobby. I was just bored. I grew up in a very small town in France, South of Paris, in a suburb. There's really nothing to do.

I ended up in a school run by the Chamber of Commerce of Paris. And my journey took me all around Europe. I moved to the Caribbean for a while, moved to the States in '95. I went from New Orleans to Hawaii, to Dallas, Texas; Phoenix, Arizona, and then to land in beautiful Pinehurst, North Carolina. So that was kind of fun.

There's no real typical day. The Caroline kitchen is kind of the hub. I like to set up camp no matter what, every day in the middle of the kitchen. So I have eyes on everything. And then if anything is needed, I might not touch anything but everything is ready here. Our size operation requires a very large team and competent team, so that basically, are able to read the music and play the music, and then able to really play on the same tune every day, all across the day, breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

This evening, we have 200 people. They're here for three days. Tonight, they decided they want an off-property location. So we take the whole show on the road.

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Today is kind of a country chic buffet we doing. So the Southern repertoire. So that during their three days, this group will experience different, different things. Becoming a resort chef, you have to be able to do everything.

So it's not like you're going to just open them in your Pinehurst and see Cajun cuisine in Dallas. You're not going to necessarily see all this. But anything comes into play into the resorts. And no matter what in the restaurant or in banquets, in catering, and weddings, you'll find bits and pieces of all this.

So typically, in season, I count 12 dining rooms where you can eat, anywhere in the resort. That includes some lunch only, some full-day operations, some breakfast, lunch, and dinner operations. So what's important is that as we have a lot of casual restaurants, there's something unique in every one of them. Some dishes that are kind of uniquely made. Like we don't have the same burgers everywhere, we don't have the same Reuben everywhere, those kind of things.

You could be rushing between two rounds of golf, but whatever we can do to make your lunch, either just the speed of service was phenomenal, that burger was just amazing, cooked to order, yet it went out in 12 minutes, 10 minutes, phenomenal, spot-on, that's kind of why we go out there. It's always an experience. Cooking is just-- it's not an act of feeding yourself. It's an experience.

In order to be in culinary, you have to be passionate no matter what. You have to have some kind of love for it. It's a demanding job by definition, by design, but it's still a job that's amazes me. I was here. You know why I never worked in my life? Because I love what I do. It is true but it requires a lot of work in the kitchen. And that's just if you have respect and reverence for the work, then with the passion, the rest is just-- it's easy. It's easier, not easy. [laughs]

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