Chef Michael Brennan – getting ready to soar in A.C.

culinary world.

By Scott Cronick

If you ever worked in the food and beverage industry, you know that divine intervention is sometimes needed to get through a shift.

In some cases, a chef’s or cook’s story could be as simple as starting off working in a diner during high school, deciding to go to culinary school and then working in kitchens until you feel comfortable enough to settle in at one.

In many more cases, that journey is far more complex, a zigzag of paths and misdirection of passions that hopefully end up being the amazing and satisfying career you thought it would be when watching chefs battle on the Food Network or seeing someone you admire make working in a kitchen look glamorous.

For Michael Brennan, the latter is certainly true.

And when you hear him tell his story, it sounds like it could be adapted into a movie, but you realize his road to opening Cardinal – a contemporary American restaurant on the Orange Loop in Atlantic City this spring - is likely a common one among those who choose, or fall into, this crazy

Like many of us, Brennan was influenced by his father. Although I never wanted to be a TastyKake man because it was way too much work, a young Michael Brennan saw Thomas Brennan working as a food and beverage executive in the casino biz, dining on a grand scale in upscale places like the former Portofino at Trump Marina, where he was taken back into the kitchen to meet the chefs among all of the shiny stainless steel amidst nonstop action.

That interest in cooking evolved when he would watch the Food Network with his sisters. he was particularly impressed watching Bobby Flay throw conventions out the window when he would jump on his cutting board after winning an episode of “Iron Chef.”

“I wanted to be T h AT!” Brennan recalled. “That was when this show was transitioning from this revered Japanese cooking show to the American market, and he was so disrespectful and now bowing to his opponent. It was one of the most malleable moments for me.”

This scared his father greatly.

“It was huge red flag for him because when you are in the industry, you know the turmoil this profession can cause, so he would bring me in the kitchen and say, ‘ h ey chef, tell my son when was the last day you got a day off,’ or ‘Tell Michael when was the last time you spent a holiday with your family.’ The chef would turn and say, ‘I don’t have time for this. I am busy.’”

And that – along with the hot pans, flame-throwing broilers and chefs cursing like sailors - hooked Michael Brennan even more.

Finding his path

After high school, Brennan’s only real-life experience was working at a ski resort and waterpark near Scranton, Pa., and after moving to Philadelphia, he realized his “savings” weren’t going to last as long as he predicted.

h e needed a job. Badly.

So, with a badly tied tie, wrinkled slacks and shirt, he walked into Le Bec Fin, one of the greatest Philadelphia restaurants of all time.

Luck would have it he would walk in as the very intolerant and often irritable Owner and Chef Georges Perrier – a celebrity chef before there were celebrity chefs – was berating a hostess with a cigar hanging out of his mouth.

“What the f—k do you want?” Perrier grumbled to Brennan.

“Chef, I heard you are the best, and I want to work for the best,” Brennan said.

“Come back tomorrow,” Perrier said.

And Brennan did just that, starting as a busser and learning the ropes during restaurant Week, where 400 to 600 people were dining a night. One night, the youngster got a taste of what it was like to work for a world-class chef.

“I was learning about amuses and canapes, and one night I was serving the amuse and Chef grabbed me and said, ‘What are you serving?’ And I couldn’t remember. And he took them and threw them across the kitchen and said to the chef, ‘ h e doesn’t know what the f---ing amuse bouche is!’ And I told him, ‘Chef, it’s a chestnut crème with persimmon gelee.’ And he told me to grab more and serve them. At that moment it hit me that there was something cool and theatrical about this world. That it’s not just about eating food for nourishment.”

Brennan eventually left the intense Le Bec Fin and applied at the famed Lacroix restaurant at The rittenhouse, where he was hired to be a coat check person, but not before experiencing the kinder side of the business.

“The hr woman named Barbara was this very nice, Jewish kind of grandmother figure, and she noticed that I didn’t wear a coat that day, even though it was like 45 degrees with a wind chill,” Brennan remembered. “She gave me a card that said Boyd’s on it and told me to stop there before I went home.”

When Brennan arrived, it was like a scene out of “Pretty Woman,” where he was met at the door by a salesman asking if he was Michael, who then outfitted him with a Moscow-style, black wool trenchcoat, leather cashmere gloves and hat that fit perfectly.

“I told him I couldn’t afford this, and then when I looked at the tag I told him I absolutely couldn’t afford it, and he said, ‘The rittenhouse took care of this. It’s yours.’ And I was just amazed. I still have the coat.”

After making nice money at coat check, the 19-year-old eventually served as host at Lacroix, realizing the standards needed for a great restaurant as soon as people walked in the door, before becoming the youngest server to not have to work the floor in other capacities.

But the kitchen kept calling him.

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Looking for Professional Coaching That’s Results

So, Brennan asked to work in the kitchen doing whatever they needed – for free! – during the day, and then returning to serve at night. After some guidance from his sous chef to get serious about cooking, Brennan applied to the Culinary Institute of America at hyde Park, where he was surprised to be accepted.

For his “externship,” Brennan, like his peers, all wanted to work in a Michelin Star restaurant. h e knew a server at the 11 Madison in New York City, and called in a favor to meet the chef for an opportunity.

h is call consisted of vegetable prep, particularly finding 10 pounds of perfect carrots out of 100 pounds that he then had to peel and make sure they were prepped exquisitely for the carrot tartare

“At one point, a peel flew to the ground, and it was like a slow-motion movie shot where everyone stares at it falling, and then a hand slams down next to my cutting board by the sous chef,” Brennan said.

“Why is your station a s—t show?” the chef asked Brennan.

“I am sorry chef,” Brennan replied. Then after putting a hotel pan on top of his cutting board, the same chef returned angrily, but instructed Brennan to rub his finger across the cutting board and then on his tongue, and Brennan tasted a metallic flavor.

“It was one of those learning moments when you realize you are in the right profession,” Brennan said. “ he was angry, but he taught me why you don’t do that.” h e returned to school to share the great news but then realized he was making a mistake.

During another initiation of cooking a French omelet for the sous chef – the others used lavish ingredients like caviar and white truffles – Brennan chose cultured goat butter and simply served a fluffy omelet with sea salt and chives. The chef was impressed and asked Brennan to not only have the externship but to work there on weekends.

“All of my friends were going to be in New York at Michelin restaurants, so what was going to set me apart?” Brennan said. “So, I decided to take an offer from the Sea Island resort in Georgia. That experience at 11 Madison changed my perspective. It’s incredible and amazing what goes into that kind of restaurant, but it wasn’t what I thought about when I thought about cooking.”

Brennan’s experience in Georgia cemented his passion to be a chef, working crazy hours in various outlets for four months straight without a day off and partying every night. It was there he met Shane Whiddon, an amazing chef who called Brennan after he returned to school to ask him to join his team opening a new restaurant in Charleston. S.C.

“I lived with Shane at his mom’s house and we tested recipes, hired staff, and eventually opened Union Provisions, a Southern tapas place, and we fumbled right out of the gate,” Brennan said. “Scathing reviews, you name it. The concept didn’t work.”

Lesson learned.

Emotional battles, and a Cardinal is born

Brennan eventually returned to Lacroix as a server, but he found himself disappointed in himself, feeling defeated, depressed and void of the passion that propelled him.

“I felt like a failure,” he said.

The depression was heavy to the point that Brennan’s sisters intervened, telling him “to snap out of this or it will end up very bad, and you will hurt a lot of people.”

After seeing Brennan’s arms were marked from him causing self harm, Lacroix’s chef stepped in to help, eventually offering Brennan a chance to show his stuff for one night at a supper club at Audra Claire that Brennan called the Cardinal Supper Club, named after his late grandmother’s obsession with cardinals combined with Brennan’s modern take on her classic recipes.

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“She loved cardinals and had birdbaths and feeders, you name it,” Brennan remembered. “When she died, I remember sitting in the garden and these cardinals landing next to me, and it’s a memory that has always stuck with me. So, the Cardinal Supper Club wasn’t just to replicate her recipes, but to interpret them.”

Its overwhelming success that night led Thomas Brennan to ask his son to open a restaurant together. After finding the courage to work in Lacroix’s kitchen again, the Brennans eventually found a spot in Ventnor, signed a lease and opened Cardinal Bistro, a great restaurant that impressed customers for three years.

But the Brennans wanted more. They wanted to expand.

“Cardinal Bistro was a proof of concept for this different style of food at the shore and plating and service and atmosphere,” Brennan said. “But we knew we would need a bigger space, a liquor license and more to be a real business.”

Atlantic City or bust

So, the Brennans sold the Cardinal Bistro space to prepare for the future and worked with developers Evan Sanchez and Zenith Shah to originally renovate the legendary Mama Mott’s space on New York Avenue in Atlantic

City in 2019. After slow movement, the realization of costs associated with that makeover and eventually COVID, Brennan worked at jobs including as a server at Il Mulino and eventually executive chef at Josie Kelly’s in Somers Point for more than two years.

“It was at Josie Kelly’s where I graduated from being a cook to learning to be a chef,” Brennan said. “As a cook, you are living the life and partying and getting drunk and then repeating every day. As a chef, you are a leader, an inspiration, so you have to conduct yourself the way you want those around you to conduct themselves. When I left, I felt like I took their food program to another level, and they were grateful for the time we had together. But Atlantic City was calling me.”

Brennan continued to talk to Sanchez and Shah about his passion to be in Atlantic City, particularly the Orange Loop.

“I live on the Orange Loop, my dad’s grandmother used to live in the apartments on St. James near the Boardwalk, my mom’s dad had a barbershop on Pacific and Tennessee. There is a reason this area has developed the way it has, and I want to be part of it.”

Eventually, it was announced Bourre on New York Avenue was closing, and when they held their last show in December, Brennan, Sanchez and Shah were moving tables and chairs around to prepare for Brennan’s second restaurant: Cardinal, which will vastly differ from Cardinal Bistro in so many ways.

For starters, Cardinal will be about 120 seats, 90 more than the bistro; the menu will be different; and there will be two bars as well as outside space.

“Ventnor was an arts project and proof of concept and a way to establish the brand and name and inspire people to want this type of dining,” Brennan saids. “Now, this will be a viable business. This is what we have been practicing for. Ventnor was the farm league where we were developing and doing cool things, but this is the major leagues being on New York Avenue right across from the Beer hall and rhythm & Spirits, near Anchor rock Club and the historic boardwalk. This is where I always wanted to be. This is where the stories start now. Everything we have done before has prepared us for this.”

A new Cardinal flies renovations are happening in a big way at the former Bourre with new furniture, the elimination of the stage and banquettes, more natural lighting, a brighter paint palette, plus lots of vegetation and foliage to present the notion of nature taking over an industrial space.

Some of the greatest hits will be back like Brennan’s fried Brussels sprouts and roasted beet salad, but the chef is looking forward to showing his approachable, creative cuisine that will be paired by a beverage program overseen by industry veteran Carl Fleck.

“ h e has an incredible mindset to take what we did at Bistro and apply it to another segment,” Brennan said. “Instead of working with avocados and tomatoes, he’s dealing with distilled spirits, beer, wine, cordials and mocktails. From a cooking standpoint, I don’t want people to get into a habit of trying this or that because they are told to, or they are my signature items. I want them to experience everything and figure out what they want to eat. Everything will be more approachable than Bistro. It will be upscale casual, and no one will be intimidated by fancy words that they don’t know.”

Brennan also wants Cardinal to be more than a place where people go to eat.

“I don’t want to be known as a restaurant but as an incubator for hospitality professionals,” he said. “We are looking for people who want to grow with us an in this industry, and we want to support them however we can whether it’s career advancement or education or maybe there’s a photographer who is a server who wants to do a menu shoot. I want them to have some ownership in what we do here. It has to be more than a place to get a paycheck.”

With Thomas Brennan as general manager and Shah and Sanchez working on financials as well as community interaction, Cardinal sounds like it will be a special place.

But, like every restaurant on the planet, it may need that divine intervention I mentioned earlier.

“ right before we opened Bistro, my mother told me that a cardinal symbolizes something watching down on you,” Brennan said. “It’s a guardian angel, a spirit animal. I told her I think we chose the right name because anyone crazy enough to open a restaurant is going to need some help from above.”

Amen to that.

Scott Cronick is an awardwinning journalist who has written about entertainment, food, news and more in South Jersey for nearly three decades. He hosts a daily radio show – "Off The Press with Scott Cronick" - 4 to 6 p.m. weekdays on Newstalk WOND 1400-AM, 92.3-FM, and WONDRadio.com, and he also coowns Tennessee Avenue Beer Hall in Atlantic City, while working on various projects, including charitable efforts, throughout the area. He can be reached at scronick@comcast.net.

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