Bob Kiebler - Chef of Morton's
Bob Kiebler - Chef of Morton's
When you order a cappuccino at any branch of that ubiquitous Seattle-based coffee
house, you know you’ll get the same drink. Does the same apply to prime rib from Morton’s? There are, after all, 76 restaurants in this venerable high-end steakhouse chain worldwide.
Absolutely, says Bob Kiebler, executive chef at the downtown D.C. branch of the legendary Morton’s chain. He’s been with the company 12 years, about half of them at the Georgetown branch, and he should know.
Besides, he graduated from the Morton University in Chicago. It’s not, obviously, a college of academe, but it has the same goal: to turn out people who know everything in their subject — in this case, how best to cook different cuts of beef the Morton’s way.
Kiebler gets deliveries of 2,000 pounds of the stuff each week, for the Connecticut Avenue restaurant alone. It comes, like all Morton’s steaks eaten everywhere in the nation, from two vendors in Chicago, in massive refrigerated trucks.
The corporation identifies just how the steaks should be handled, from the moment of delivery on. In the training, Kiebler says, aspiring chefs are taught to maintain consistency and learn standard company recipes. The 10-day course is followed by six to eight weeks of hands-on work at a Morton’s that puts them through every station in the kitchen. Chefs are never coached at the restaurant they’re destined to run.
It all promotes what Kiebler describes as “the Morton vision, the Morton philosophy: Always use the best products any time, anywhere, no matter what the cost.” There’s even a cookbook, for sale to the public, called “Morton’s Steak Bible.” If a chef, once established in his own branch, wants to cook off-message, then, says Kiebler, there’s the opportunity at the two meals a day prepared for employees.
Arnie Morton and his first chef, Klaus Fritsch, started the chain in 1978 in Chicago. They went into business together, Kiebler explains, “to open a saloon for the rich, a neighborhood bar for the rich.” From the beginning, “The place served only the finest ingredients. Nothing too complicated, but excellent — U.S. prime cuts, lobsters” — food for the affluent, who make up most of Morton’s clientele, he said.
“Steak has a lot of pull for everyone,” said Kiebler, with filet mignon the best seller “in most all places.” His own favorite, though, is the rib-eye steak. “It’s got a lot more flavor: more marbling, more fat.”
Kiebler came to Morton’s with experience already as a chef at different locations around the capital area. Raised in Takoma Park, he had started young in cooking, when his father, an engineer with NASA, and his mother, a court reporter, sent him away to preparatory school in New England. There the boys were put into teams to take turns working in the kitchens and making meals for the students.
When he graduated, he went to Montgomery College to study hospitality management, working throughout his studies at restaurants in the area. It wasn’t quite his first pick. “I would much rather have been like Richard Branson, a captain of industry,” he says with a grin, referring to the head of the Virgin companies.
After college he worked in restaurants and small country clubs in the Washington area, until arriving at Morton’s in Georgetown.
The branch there was the chain’s second. Kiebler was sent to run it following his schooling at Morton’s University and his eight weeks of training, which took place at the Morton’s in Tysons Corner.
Wanting to spend more time with his son, who is now 8, Kiebler requested in 2001 a transfer to the downtown location. The Georgetown restaurant isn’t open for lunch, so it draws the dinner crowd, which kept him at work late. And then came the drive home to Howard County.
Although it’s open for dinner, the focus at the Morton’s near Farrugut Square is primarily lunch, for the business-suited crowd. So Kiebler can be home not long after school lets out. His son, he says, “is a rib-eyechicken- meat-kinda kid.”
As for himself, Kiebler says he’ll eat anything that doesn’t eat him first. If it’s a meal out with the family, it’ll probably be Mexican or Italian. But given the time, he would head down to New Orleans and tuck into a dish from Antoine’s or Brennan’s. “I really love classic food.”
He and his wife like to give big parties where Kiebler will don the apron and demonstrate his skills, happy to show off for those not used to cooking for quantities of people.
He’s laid-back about what it takes to pull off a successful Thanksgiving dinner. “There’s no special secret. I use convection to transfer heat from fuel to turkey, then I transfer turkey to my mouth.”
Morton’s of Chicago (http://www.mortons.com) is located at 1050 Connecticut Ave. NW (202-955- 5997) and 3251 Prospect St. NW (202-342-6258). Main courses cost $26 to $46.
This article by Julia Watson first appeared in the Northwest, Dupont, Foggy Bottom and Georgetown Current Newspapers. Photo Bill Petros/The Current. .