The culinary career of a former area resident, once a dishwasher at a Damariscotta restaurant, recently brought him to the South Pacific island of Guam.
Christopher House, once of Damariscotta and South Bristol, was recently in Damariscotta after two years overseas as executive chef of the Hilton Guam Resort & Spa.
The U.S. territory of Guam lies in the Pacific Ocean about 3800 miles southwest of Hawaii and 1500 miles east of Manila and southeast of Tokyo. The island is about 12 miles at its widest point and about 30 miles long. Almost 160,000 people live there as of the 2010 census.
The luxurious, 800-room hotel and resort where House lives and works welcomes approximately 200,000 visitors every year, most from China, Japan and Korea with smaller numbers from America, Australia and Russia.
The executive chef oversees all food service inside the resort and supervises about 110-120 employees.
The variety of cultures who visit the hotel requires an equal variety of cuisine. A typical banquet might include 80-100 dishes, including local fare as well as foods native to China, Japan, Korea and Russia.
“You better be able to do it all,” House said.
Local fare on Guam consists of seafood like basa, lapu-lapu, mahi-mahi, known on the island by its Spanish name, dorado; and parrotfish. The locals usually fry or steam a fish whole – head, tail and all – and serve it family-style, in the middle of the table.
The locals, known as Chamorros, also love to barbecue and roast whole pigs. They eat rice with every meal, often colored and seasoned with annatto, a powder made from the seeds of the achiote tree.
The Chamorros enjoy native tropical fruits like bananas and coconuts. It’s difficult to grow other produce on the island, however, and the health of their diet suffers as a result, House said.
House, a native of Bangor, briefly lived in South Bristol and attended South Bristol School as a boy. His family moved frequently, living in Florida, Hawaii and New York, before returning to Maine in 1975.
He graduated from Lincoln Academy in 1978 and went to then Husson College, where he would earn a bachelor’s degree in business.
The summers of his college years, however, would prove to have a bigger influence on his future career path.
Every summer, he would return to Damariscotta and work at The Cheechako, a restaurant on Lewis Point, as a dishwasher and cook.
“Back then, cooking wasn’t really a profession,” House said. “I loved it but it wasn’t a profession.”
House joined the U.S. Marine Corps after college. He specialized in electronic countermeasures and spent his military career flying around the world in the EA-6B Prowler.
He was in Japan during this time, walking through his barracks, when he stumbled across an issue of Time magazine open to an article about the California Culinary Academy.
He entered the San Francisco school in 1987, at the age of 27. “The first day of cooking school, I knew I was made to be a chef,” he said.
He would spend the years after graduation working at five-diamond and five-star restaurants in California, from San Francisco south to Los Angeles and San Diego.
He eventually moved to Las Vegas during a casino boom in the late 1990s and early 2000s. He worked in the city for seven years and opened restaurants at some of the city’s famous mega-resorts, like the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino.
He worked as a chef at resorts in Scottsdale, Ariz., for the next few years before deciding he wanted to move overseas.
In Guam, he rebuilt the resort’s food service, creating 19 new menus for everything from the lobby sandwich shop and poolside bar to the fine dining restaurants and room service.
Away from the kitchen, he enjoyed the lifestyle in Guam. As a contract employee, he lived in a hotel suite free of charge with a view of Tumon Bay like the cover of a travel agency brochure.
He took advantage of the ample opportunities for water recreation, like deep-sea fishing and spearfishing, snorkeling and swimming. Inland, he enjoyed the architecture and museums, as well as hiking. He was also able to travel to China, Hong Kong, The Philippines and Singapore.
Now, his contract in Guam at an end, he is visiting his mother, Damariscotta resident Natalie House, while he considers his next career move.
He said he likes being a free agent and his international track record will give him the ability to go almost anywhere in the world. East Asia is a possible destination, as are Abu Dhabi and Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.
He plans to stay for a month or two while he spends time with family and enjoys the local restaurants that have sprouted up in his years away, like the Damariscotta River Grill and the Newcastle Publick House.
He has also dusted off his chef’s knives to cook for gatherings of family and friends or, on one occasion, prepare a meal for a meeting of Damariscotta-Newcastle Lions Club.
He considers California cuisine a specialty, although he is well-versed in two dozen styles of cuisine from around the world, he said.
“I love to cook for the seasons,” he said, with fresh, flavorful, local ingredients. Although popular culture sometimes presents fine dining cuisine as complex and exotic, House likes the basics. “The simpler the food is, the better I like it,” he said.
