RJ Cooper III (2nd on the left) doesn’t anticipate going out to high end restaurants any time soon. Chef de cuisine at Vidalia since 2004, he has two-year old twin daughters who like eating out with mom and pop. “The mess used to be two feet wide. Now it’s 10 feet,” says Cooper, stretching his arms wide to demonstrate. It’ll be some years before they’re let loose in a fine dining room again. They can probably wait it out. Already they’ve been in more of them than many people have in a life time.

Several times nominated for Chef of the Year by the Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington, Cooper knew early on knew he didn’t want to be part of the bureaucratic culture, didn’t want a job where he’d have to wear a suit and tie. He would have been a rock star – if only he could sing. Or play an instrument. Cooking was the obvious alternative. He’d grown up playing in the family’s Detroit, Michigan, kitchen while his mother and Sicilian grandmother, both good cooks, put meals together from scratch. In high school he apprenticed at a local bakery, caught the culinary bug and took himself off after graduation to The Culinary School at Kendall College, Illinois.

Food drove him from Chicago via several stages in France, to Atlanta, where he worked a year and a half with Gunther Seger at The Buckhead Ritz Carlton before helping Le Bernardin's owners and Eric Ripert open up Brasserie LeCoze with Gilbert LeCoze. This connection led to time with Eric Ripert at the New York temple of seafood gastronomy. Then love took him to Anchorage for three years, where he headed up the kitchen of the Crow’s Nest Restaurant in Anchorage.

Eventually, in the late 90s, he moved back to Washington DC, working first at The Oval Room, then New Heights followed and so did marriage. It was time, Cooper felt, to take a couple of years and look into opening his own restaurant. “Jeff Buben said, Why are you doing that!” Buben offered Cooper a job at Vidalia and he’s been there ever since.

Several things have kept him focused on a career he admits his mother understood  better than his father did. She could see it wasn’t just about knives and heat but a rounded profession involving business acumen to keep things running smoothly. It’s this aspect of the job that makes him recommend culinary school, for its programs on food and labor costs and general management techniques. Cooper added to that experience what he learned from Ripert’s ability to “get down and dirty with his staff.”

What he loves in working with Buben is the respect his mentor shares for the produce they use. “One of the lost arts in modern cooking is taking whole animals, using the product from snout to tail.” He calls for a crispy pig’s tail to be sent out of the kitchen. In the interest of full disclosure, I will tell you I didn't turn it down and it barely rested a second on my plate. “It takes a tremendous amount of skill, butchering time to work with a whole animal. The challenge,” which he loves, “is how to be creative with it”.

In the years between his two stints in the capital eaters have become adventurous, he says. Cooper can sell them tete de veau, pied de cochon, beef heart where previously they were only comfortable with prime cuts. He thinks bloggers may be partly responsible for the change. Diners' ages have altered, too. He’s seeing a younger demographic, particularly since the change in administration.

“With the economy I want to bring flavor and comfort back on the plate.” He brines the Wagyu short ribs for 30 days. He’s bringing in shoats (baby pigs) and there’s a woman who raises rabbits for Vidalia. Cooper uses every part of the animal, “Lots of different ways -  for rabbit bacon to a pappardelle sauce.” Nothing goes to waste. To make 20 orders of those crispy pig tails, he takes 25 pounds of them and slow braises them for 24 hours, then picks off the meat to roll, and bread in two parts cracker and one part Panko before frying.

He’s made it his mission to pass on this passion to the young chefs who work with him in the kitchen.  “I know where I’m going to go: it’s about teaching the young cooks not to waste anything, to have total respect for food. Everything costs money. If you waste a dish it’s not the money that goes into the dish, it’s the money that comes out of the dish you lost. You’ve lost $40, not $20 dollars. When you work for people who have that kind of philosophy you are going to take it through the years of your career. Those younger kids out there throw away something someone else could eat. It’s a lack of respect for product. There’s nothing we can’t find a use for. Trash, plastic, paper - that’s it”

Cooper grins with pride over his crew. “There’s a tremendous team here. All restaurants can never be about the chef. It’s got to be about the team. Not everybody is going to be TV chef. When you are a cook, you have to find something to make better than yesterday.”

Vidalia is located at 1990 M St NW, 202 659 1990. Main courses cost from $26.50 to $34.50.

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