By Amy Eddings
Food “to go” takes on new meaning after meeting Carlton Jaquess.
He’s the chef for The Cadets, and when the drum and bugle corps ends its spring training camp at Ohio Northern University on Sunday and heads toward Indianapolis to launch their summer touring season, Jacquess will go with them in his semi-trailer truck-turned-kitchen.
“It’s a gypsy-like lifestyle,” he said. “Most cooks couldn’t do this. They’d quit in the first week."
The truck sitting at the edge of a parking lot outside ONU’s Dial-Roberson Stadium, is a marvel of economy. Cooling racks for trays of hot food from the oven fold up flush against the wall. Pots and pans hang over the small, two-burner range top. Over a stack of two double convection ovens, stainless steel trays are lined up, straight and tall and side by side, like members of the drum line. There’s a walk-in cooler, a wall-mounted water heater, and racks of bread in wooden cabinets that close with a latch, to prevent the doors from flying open while the truck is moving.
One of the most important tools, by the looks of it, is a CD player. It’s covered with old, curling bits of masking tape marking various functions that were rubbed off of the original steel casing a long time ago.
“You gotta have the music, I love music, it’s gotta be going all the time,” he said, giving his shoulders a little shimmy. “It keeps the kids going, too."
Chef Carlton cooks, by his estimates, about 700 meals a day for the 200 staff and members of The Cadets. He’s up at 4 a.m. and is in the truck by 5 a.m., firing up the griddle and stove for the day’s menu.
"I can come in and, just, off the top of my head, start putting things together,” he said. Things like a breakfast casserole of hash browns, pieces of grilled strip steak, and sautéed peppers and onions. Or like shrimp scampi, pasta alla vodka and chicken marsala.
“Lunch today was chicken and pasta,” he said, a bit sleepily at 3 p.m. in the afternoon, with The Cadets’ dinner yet to prepare. “It’s one of my creations: a sauce made out of chicken broth, grilled chicken, penne pasta, cheese, garlic bread, and a salad."
On tour, there’s less prep time for Jacquess and his staff of volunteer helpers, and he relies more on canned goods. But he insists on having fresh fruit around for the corps.
“I always try to push the fruit thing,” he said.
Jacquess started his cooking career in a French restaurant in St. Louis, where he grew up. During the school year, when most corps members are at university, he cooks for the Delta Tau Delta fraternity at Penn State University. This is his first year feeding The Cadets, but he’s no stranger to the competitive drum and bugle corps lifestyle.
“I grew up in drum corps,” he said, as he prepared himself a cup of coffee from a Keurig coffee brewer. “I was in drum corps from age 9 to 21. In St. Louis, back in the day, that was the activity for us. There were five drum corps in St. Louis and I marched in three of them."
He did a little of everything: trumpet, drums, drum major. He finished his active membership in drum corps as a member of the color guard, the section that interprets the music through the synchronized work of flags, sabers and rifles.
“I still have my rifle,” Chef Carlton said, visibly brightening, as he gestured toward a white rifle leaning just inside a side door of the semi. “I still practice and mess around. The kids get a kick out of it."
Perhaps more than his music and his rifle moves, color guard member Oliva Ormond, 20, appreciates Carlton Jacquess for his artistry in the kitchen.
"Today, I almost went and got thirds with lunch today, because it was, like, garlic pasta something” — she must have meant Chef Jacquess’ chicken penne pasta “creation” — “Something like that. It was amazing."
