Becoming executive chef of IBIS restaurant is the peak of Jake Behnke’s career.
It’s sort of like reaching the peak of Mt. Kilimanjaro.
Behnke did that, too.
His culinary climb began when he was 16. “Basically, I was fucking up real bad in high school,” says Behnke, 30. “My dad told me, ‘You’re going to learn to study, or you’re going to go to work.’”
Behnke chose work. He walked to the old The Grove Grill, where he met then-sous chef Ryan Trimm. “I told him I’d work for free and I’d learn the job.”
He dressed for success that day. “I was wearing khakis and a sweater. Loafers.”
Behnke got the job. The next week, he showed up to work wearing “ripped up shorts” and purple Converse high-tops. Trimm asked him, “What happened to the kid I hired?”
He began as a dishwasher, but he loved everything about the kitchen. “It was art and it was math and it was chemistry. It was all my favorite subjects rolled into one career.”
So, Behnke enrolled in the cooking course under Betty Hall at Kingsbury Career & Technology Center. The two-year course was part of the Future Business Leaders of America program. “I graduated at the top of my class.”
As a result of taking the course, Behnke got on the line at The Grove Grill and began his cooking career.
Behnke later worked at other restaurants, including Interim and the old Sweet Grass and Southward Fare & Libations, before leaving Memphis to study at Chef Academy in Terni, Italy. He discovered it “was cheaper to move to Italy and go to school” than to attend a culinary school in Memphis.
The course was in Italian, so Behnke took notes phonetically. He’d then “go home and type it into Google Translate.”
Italy was heaven. “I fell in love 10 times a day. With women, art, food. With the culture. Really and truly, Italy is a chef’s paradise. They source most things from the region they live in.”
Also, he learned, “In order to cook good food, don’t complicate it. You want to taste each ingredient in a dish. It just proved that good food is simple and it’s local.”
Returning to Memphis, Behnke worked at Acre, Restaurant Iris, and was the catering chef for Iris owner Kelly English. Behnke also was one of the chefs at an assisted living center. “We took the menu from frozen and canned to fresh.”
Behnke, who learned about IBIS from the restaurant’s operations manger Patrick Gilbert, describes the restaurant as “eclectic.” Which he likes. “It kind of gives me free rein to do whatever I want in the kitchen. And it definitely suits my personality type. I’m an eclectic person.”
His current menu includes Greek lamb meatballs and spicy chorizo stew. Future items could be “anything from a crawfish tartlet to ugali chicha — an African spinach, basically — and curry.”
Ugali chicha comes from his travels in Africa. “The church I go to does mission trips to Africa every other year.”
He was 22 when he first climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro. “When I reached the top of ‘Kily’ I was so emotionally destroyed already from just mustering up all I could to get to the top.”
Behnke continues to march to his own drum as far as kitchen attire. “I wear Dickies 874 pants. I wear New Balance black tube socks. And then I wear SAS Guardians, an orthopedic shoe.” But no chef jacket. “I prefer a black button-down prep shirt.”
And he sports a perfectly-curled handlebar mustache. “All my life I’ve been a baby face. Clean cut. Shaven. I kind of went mountain man. Part of it was when I was going to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro in Africa last year. It’s really fucking cold on that mountain. So, I thought, ‘I’ll put a little extra hair on my body.’”
IBIS is at 314 South Main St.
