Constant creative

At age 19, Ric Trent decided he didn’t want to sit at a desk for the rest of his career.

A year into a computer engineering degree at Mississippi State, he moved home with four semesters of both calculus and physics under his belt.

Four years later, the 2009 Oak Mountain High School graduate is the chef of Primeaux Cheese & Vino at The Summit. He believes the establishment prizes the quality of food he had grown accustomed to as the sous chef at Ocean and 26, yet it offers a more laid-back atmosphere.

Trent, who first started working in the kitchen at Mellow Mushroom in Inverness, said he’s still getting used to serving as a head chef at age 23, but these days he mostly thinks about how he gets to create food day in and day out.

At any given time he and his sous chef, Cory Bolton, whom he brought from Ocean, are working on five to six menus. They work 60 hours a week in the restaurant, but each morning they said they wake up excited to go to work. Even when they go home, they get together to write menus and try to poke holes in each other’s ideas to make them better. For them, ideas are always flowing.

The biggest draw to Primeaux for the young chef duo was not just running their own kitchen but taking charge of creating a new menu each week for the restaurant’s Chef’s Table Dinner for eight. Each Thursday they prepare a six-course meal with seven wines selected by their sommelier.

One week, a Taste of Europe theme offered traditional dishes from six different countries, each with Trent and Bolton’s own spin. Another week, they researched the ingredients and techniques found on the French Riviera. A menu in the works will create “fine-dining fast food” with dishes such as fried duck confit and foie gras fries in place of chicken nuggets and French fries.

Trent said he invites the challenge of requests from customers for menu items or themes.

“I want you to tell me what you want, and then I want to blow you away,” he said.

Special dinners also allow them to experiment with modernist techniques such as foams, galettes and liquid nitrogen. At a recent dinner they served a scallop foam on a chilled coconut curry soup that they had been working to create since their days at Ocean.

Trent and Bolton’s work is part of the ever-evolving food culture on 280. Growing up, Trent remembers when the only dining options at The Summit were chains like Macaroni Grill and P.F. Chang’s, and eating at independent restaurants meant going downtown for fine dining at Ocean or Highlands Bar and Grill. 

“Now more independent restaurants are opening up and going back to the way their grandmothers did things, cooking with local ingredients,” he said. “It’s fun to be in the middle of it.”

Trent and Bolton have continued Primeaux’s mission to use local produce and meat as much as possible to pair with wines and cheeses imported from France. This summer they canned heirloom tomatoes, pickled okra, pickled watermelon rind and pepper jelly — all of which they can sell alongside their wine and cheese since they have a retail license. Their house Pepper Strawberry Pinot Noir Jam has even inspired their bar manager to make a special sangria featuring it.

To find out what Trent’s experimentation in the kitchen tastes like, you can order off of a new Primeaux menu that was adopted in September. Signature sandwiches and light entrees from their European café-style menu have remained, but they added more cold sandwiches for lunch. For dinner, you’ll find fewer sandwiches and more hearty dishes such as rack of lamb, steak, grouper and salmon, selected in consultation with restaurant owners Paul and Deborah Primeaux, who encourage the chefs to go after the best ingredients. 

Primeaux is located at 300 Summit Blvd. For more, visit primeauxcheeseandvino.com or call 623-5593.