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Artistic theater chef thinks outside the pot

Rusty Bergeron Evers has energized Maestro's menu and its food sales.

By AMY SCHERZER, Times Staff Writer
Published December 28, 2007

Rusty Bergeron Evers, executive chef at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center for eight months, poses for a portrait in Maestro's.
	[ROSS MANTLE | Times]

DOWNTOWN 

If you are what you eat, chef Rusty Bergeron Evers would be a big bowl of gumbo with a double shake of sassafras.

Evers blazed a kitchen trail from the bayou to Tampa Bay, roosting in New Orleans, New York, Australia and England, before landing the role of executive chef at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center in April.

En route, she cooked for Catholic schoolgirls, Asian drag queens and Donald Trump.

"Hey, laissez les bons temps rouler," said Evers, invoking the "let the good times roll" mantra she conjures up to keep events entertaining.

"She belongs in the arts," said the center's executive director Judy Lisi. "Her presentations are so artistic. It's a great fit."

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In the eight months since Evers took charge of Maestro's, she has energized food sales, dramatizing a menu she calls Maestro's "theatrical cuisine."

This month, 90 holiday parties were booked, which meant feeding about 15,000 theatergoers. The boost is due in part to the Radio City Christmas Spectacular, which has drawn more private parties, Lisi said.

Envisioning the performing arts center's food service potential keeps Evers thinking outside the pot.

"The play starts and Maestro's empties," Evers said. "I see a market for fine dining, not connected to a performance.

"And then, let's bring the theater crowd back up here for dessert after the show."

The riverfront bistro kitchen now sells paninis, pizza and pasta before shows, she said, and stays open for dessert afterward.

Maestro's staff has begun catering corporate parties off-site, and soon Evers plans to add gourmet takeout food and gift baskets to the center gift shop shelves. She'll sell her spicy curried KokoNutz there, but don't ask for that recipe. It's the only one she doesn't share.

"Rusty's awesome," said Rick Goodwin, catering sales manager at TBPAC. "She brings events to life. I have pages of compliments from clients."

For the past four years, Evers, 57, owned a South Tampa catering business, Art of the Feast, and for nearly two years, a retail store by the same name on West Shore Boulevard. She made her reputation catering for high-profile clients, including posh penthouse Gasparilla brunches and groundbreakings for the yet-to-materialize Trump Tower Tampa and New Port Tampa Bay condominiums.

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She was born Delores Henrietta, and her strawberry blond hair got Evers nicknamed "Rusty" in fourth grade at a Catholic boarding school in Bay St. Louis, La. She was 7 when her mother died, but she treasures memories of growing up with aunts and her "gentleman farmer" father.

"We grew our own food and raised cattle and horses," said Evers, "and every Saturday night was steak night."

She wanted to go to medical school, but blanched at the thought of anatomy class.

"I couldn't imagine cutting someone open," she said, wincing, "but butchering a cow from one end to the other? No problem."

Evers married her sweetheart at 18 and enrolled in a New Orleans culinary school. Her first job was a familiar venue. The Louisiana archdiocese hired her to supervise food preparation for three Catholic girls schools.

"That's how I learned big machinery, portion control and documentation," she said.

Both of her children, Jason, 38, of New York, and Regan, 34, of South Tampa, were born in New Orleans. She took a kitchen break when they were young to open Gingerbread Haus, selling handcrafted toys, sock monkeys and books. She sold the store and became executive chef at the landmark Gumbo Shop, which also catered the Creole Queen paddlewheel boat.

Hundreds of gallons of gumbo later, Evers was ready to run her own show, Crescent Caterers, where she was one of the Big Easy's top chefs until the family moved to New York in the late 1980s.

Then came an offer a woman who loved Mardi Gras couldn't resist: operations manager of Lucky Cheng's, the Pan Asian restaurant in Manhattan's East Village where the waiters are lingerie-clad drag queens.

"I had the time of my life, three years of fun," she said. "I took it from 50 covers to 800 a night and had to turn people away, even Barbra Streisand. Every fabulous movie star you can imagine came to Lucky Cheng's."

She helped take the concept to Miami and New Orleans, "and I might still be there if the owner hadn't wanted to open an S&M bar," she said.

Evers jumped from the outlandish to the Outback in the mid '90s. She intended to spend six months in Sydney, Australia.

Instead, she opened Three Roses, a Creole-Cajun restaurant, and stayed three years.

A month from getting her Australian citizenship, Evers sold out, moved to London and consulted for a restaurant company in the theater district.

Family pulled her back to the United States 10 years ago, ultimately to a Riverview cottage on the Alafia River, "the closest thing I could find to my home on the bayou," she said.

Amy Scherzer can be reached at ascherzer@sptimes.com or 813 226-3332.

Fast Facts:

Rusty Bergeron Evers

Age: 57

Goal: To eat an appetizer in every restaurant in Las Vegas

Do over: More time in Europe, traveling, cooking, drinking wine

Lack of: Authentic ethnic restaurants in Tampa

Specialty: Cajun-Asian. Call her crawfish sushi bayou meets Pacific Rim

Celebrity clients: Walter Cronkite, Harrison Ford and Sarah Jessica Parker and others she can't reveal since she signed a confidentiality waiver.

Holiday entertaining tip: Keep it simple and pour heavy for the first hour.

[Last modified December 27, 2007, 07:45:13]