Take a chef de cuisine from a fine dining restaurant, add a former personal chef/catering company executive chef, and what do you get?
Good Groceries Mobile Diner.
“My husband is the chef de cuisine at River Oaks Restaurant. Chad Getchel,” says Leah Roberts Getchel. “In 1999, I became a certified personal chef.”
She worked a corporate job at AutoZone for almost nine years before becoming an executive chef for Cotton Bowl Catering. She returned to the corporate world, where her jobs included working for FedEx, Hilton, and St. Jude.
But, she says, “When COVID hit, I lost my corporate job.” Wondering what she was going to do next, Leah thought, “Go back to the food world.”
She and Chad, who was laid off for three months from the restaurant, originally thought about starting a food truck to service corporate offices that lease space and don’t have company cafeterias.
They bought a food truck, which they equipped with a 36-inch stove, flattop, and burners before the lockdown. “People were still going to the offices for the most part. We thought this would be over. Shortly after that, nobody went to work. The offices were empty.”
They noticed more people were patronizing food trucks, so they began serving the general public at farmers markets and neighborhoods. But, she says, “It took a little time for people to adapt to our menu because it’s a little bit more of a high-end restaurant-style menu, not your typical food truck fare.”
Instead of pork, they serve duck because the pork industry is “just riddled with problems,” including inhumane treatment of pigs, Leah says. “We started playing with ducks and made duck breakfast sausage. You can’t tell the difference between it and a pork sausage.”
They serve the Barbecue Duck Sammy — pulled duck with tangy barbecue sauce, cole slaw, and sliced pickles on brioche bread. Their Duck Confit sandwich is slow-cooked duck with mango chutney and a medium-fried egg on toasted brioche. “Egg yolk is my favorite sauce,” she says.
Here Chicky Chicky is marinated chicken on a toasted ciabatta bun with mayonnaise, lettuce, and tomato. “We also have the fresh (vegan and nut-free) pesto, lemon juice, olive oil, and melted Provolone.”
Realizing they went “a little too crazy on the duck,” they added a house-made salmon burger with mango chutney and jerk seasoning. They only serve pork if it’s “local and certified humane.”
They call themselves a “mobile diner” because they take traditional diner foods “and elevate them.”
Chad, who works part-time at Good Groceries Mobile Diner when he’s not at River Oaks, is leaving the restaurant in May to work full-time at the food truck. “I really love it,” Chad says. “It’s a lot of freedom. You get to do whatever you want as long as somebody is going to buy it.”
Born in Lansing, Michigan, Chad began cooking early. “I remember asking my mom if I could make an experiment. I’d go into the kitchen and put a whole bunch of random stuff in a frying pan. I ruined a whole bunch of pans when I was five or six.”
Since he played guitar in bands, Chad worked in kitchens because the hours were flexible. Realizing he wasn’t going to make a living playing music, he went the cooking route and went to cooking school at Sullivan University in Lexington, Kentucky.
A Downtown brick-and-mortar restaurant is in the planning stages for Good Groceries Mobile Diner, Leah says. “We’re not making a move on that until September. But, later down the road, we’d love to have a restaurant and keep up with the food truck. It’s a lot of fun.”
To find out where Good Groceries Mobile Diner will be during the week, go to eatgoodgroceries.com or their Facebook page.
