Community Corner

Local Chef Ula Robertson Cooking Up Success

Pomona chef and caterer Ula Robertson has never been busier.

 

Robertson—currently the President and Executive Chef of At Your Service Catering—also runs the kitchen at the Orangeburg Holiday Inn during lunch hours, volunteers in soup kitchens, teaches cooking classes, and stars in eHow online cooking demonstrations.

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Robertson barely has time to sleep, she says—but her energy never fades, as she has a genuine love of the art of cooking.

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“I love that you’re able to transform things from a raw stage to a cooked stage,” Robertson said. “You can create so many different presentations, and I love playing with colors. I also like it because it’s very soothing. It can be really crazy, like chopping onions, but you always get it done, and you can do something with it.”

 

From her passion for food, one may think Robertson always wanted to pursue the culinary arts—but Robertson’s journey began as a plan B.

 

When Robertson was a teenager growing up in Germany, she worked in a hospital kitchen catering to special diets. After this job, she had been set on becoming a dietician.

 

In Germany though, you have to wait until you are 21 in order to enroll in the required program.

 

“After high school, at 18, I really didn’t want to wait three years. That’s a long time. So, I did something else,” Robertson said.

 

Over the next few years, Robertson cooked on the side, but pursued other endeavors, including acting as an international sales manager, and a vice president of large retail companies.    

 

In 2007, Robertson and a friend, who was a trained chef, decided to open up a catering business.

 

“I said to myself, ‘I’m old enough to do what I want to do, and that’s cooking,’” Robertson said.

 

The challenge of catering was looking for commercial kitchens. Robertson was unable to cook at homes, because by law a caterer has to cook from a certified kitchen.

 

One day, an administrator approached Robertson from the Rockland County Day School, who said she had a commercial kitchen.

 

Within five minutes of speaking with the administrator, Robertson was hired to run the kitchen.

 

“We ran the kitchen for a year, and it was really interesting. We gained a lot of experience with regards with what people like to eat, and getting kids to eat. It’s a real challenge getting kids to eat new foods,” Robertson said.

 

After the year was over, Robertson’s partner decided that she no longer wanted to be a chef. Robertson was forced to run the business alone, and was back in the position of looking for a kitchen.

 

Robertson found a kitchen in a small church in Congers.

 

“It worked for a while, but as things grew, I needed more space,” Robertson said.

 

At this time, Robertson was regularly doing networking events at the Holiday Inn in Orangeburg. The assistant general manager approached the chef, asking if she would be interested in running the lunch shift.

 

Robertson said that if she could rent the kitchen for At Your Service, she’d do the lunches. Robertson had found herself a big commercial kitchen at last.

 

Nowadays, Robertson’s catering business is booming, last week alone she had nine events. Next week, Robertson is covering a five-day event in Manhattan.

 

Over the past five years in business, Robertson has never repeated an event menu, she said, as the chef tailors the food around her client’s requests.

 

Robertson cooks cuisines from around the world including Caribbean, North African, Middle Eastern, most European, Indian, Thai, Chinese and Contemporary American.

 

Robertson learned all of these cuisines through practice, cookbooks and television shows. She learned about Chinese cuisine by watching the show “Yan Can Cook.”

 

“I cook whatever people like me to do,” Robertson said. “People come from all over the world, and the have food preferences, and to prepare it they way they love it, that’s the greatest thing to do.”

 

At Your Service has seen its share of challenging requests. Robertson has had to cater guests on a yacht, regularly provides green, or waste less catering, and recently had to serve organic grass-fed brains, liver and kidney at an event. Yet it’s the miscellany of the job that fuels her fire.

 

“Catering is more interesting to me than running a restaurant because it’s more diverse,” Robertson said. “There’s no party like another, and I like the challenge.”

 

When she’s not busy prepping for an event, Robertson tries to give back to the community whenever she can. She volunteers as head chef at three church’s soup kitchens, regularly provides food at events for non-for-profits, and teaches community-cooking classes to children and adults.

 

Robertson insists that anyone can cook; they just need a little push.

 

“Its as simple as just getting people started with easy things like how to chop, how long to cook things, how to bake correctly,” Robertson said. “I think it’s very important to have instant success. If you burn something you might lose confidence. So if you have a bit of guidance than you can easily do something else.”

 

Robertson also feels that she herself always gains something from teaching.

 

“In America, you have such an abundance of so many different cultures and cuisines, so everybody brings a little something with them, and its interesting to see that,” Robertson said.

 

Aside from teaching, Robertson also has found a new exciting path that she enjoys in starring in cooking shows.

 

Last year, Robertson filmed her first twenty-two minute cooking show entitled, “Ula International, Great Food With an Accent.” On her Youtube channel, she also has a variety of shorter demonstrations. 

 

“My show is by no means a perfect thing, but I thought if I don’t do it now, I may never do it. So I’ll spend the money and do it, so in ten years I don’t wish I

had done it,” Robertson said.

 

Robertson’s show has nearly 50 thousand views on YouTube. The director of her show suggested the chef as a tenant for online cooking demos on Ehow. Currently, Robertson has dozens of demos on the site, and even gets paid to do them.

 

“Its really great for me, I get to practice talking to the camera, and I get an online presence,” Robertson said.

 

Robertson hopes on day to get her own show on the food network, and said that some representatives at the network have show interest.

 

“I don’t think it will happen right now, because the Food Network has people that are in their 20s and 30s, they’re not looking for people my age. But that doesn’t mean I’ll give up. Somehow I’ll find a way,” Robertson said.

 

In addition to starring in her own television show, Robertson hopes that she will one day publish a cookbook, open a restaurant, have more locations to run At Your Service out of, and run another school or college kitchen.

 

Her greatest goal though is more to do with ridding herself of the mundane.

 

“In five years, I will not chop any kinds of onions or garlic. I will have someone do that exclusively for me,” Robertson said. 


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