During his career Lawyers Club chef Ted Wakar has drawn compliments for his cooking from the Ford Motor Co. president, and won awards for individual and team ice carving creations at international competitions.
“I really started out doing ice to have a skill to help my culinary employment and from there I found it was really something I had a passion for,” he says. Wakar likes creating art on the spot, and working with the medium. “I like the clarity and the crystals, and the fluidity of ice. I like to try and take something that’s static or nonmoving and put movement into it.”
Photo by Scott Soderberg, U-M Photo Services.
Today, the former Ford penthouse executive chef says what he likes about his U-M position is the campus atmosphere and the diversity of dishes presented.
“The most interesting thing for me is the interaction with the students and the other employees,” Wakar says. “Many of them aren’t going to be professional chefs, but some of the things I’ve been exposed to in my 30-some years in the kitchen they can use, like how to handle a knife, how to dice vegetables.”
On a recent weekday morning at the Lawyers Club, Wakar prepped lunch. The menu included vegetable wild rice soup, chicken noodle soup, beef and broccoli stir fry with a variety of seasonings to provide a regional or ethnic flavor, turkey and vegetable grinder sandwiches, spring rolls, Asian rice, sugar snap peas and tofu.
“We’re always looking at the way people eat throughout the world, and the number of healthy ways of presenting foods,” Wakar says. “Now we’re more calorie conscious and health conscious about fats, oils and salts, and concerns for allergies.” He says the recent push for more locally grown foods promotes freshness, while the interest in ethnic or international foods also reveals more healthy ways to prepare food.
Outside of work, ice carving has taken him to competitions in Japan and around the United States, and most recently to the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics. “It’s always pleasant to be able to show something you’re passionate about to the people,” says Wakar, who competed as part of a two-person team in a stadium. “It ends up being a performance kind of art. You do get to interact with spectators and peers from Japan, Italy and Canada. We’ve competed against each other before. It’s like a family atmosphere.”
A Westland native, Wakar got into ice carving at the same time he was earning a culinary arts degree from Schoolcraft College in Livonia. At the same time, the owners of the Mayflower Hotel in adjacent Plymouth, where Wakar worked part time, got interested in promoting an ice festival.
Wakar, who estimates he has been in around 100 competitions, says his favorite subjects to carve are birds, animals and the female human form. He says he likes to emphasize the fragility of ice, working with open or negative spaces. His website frozenimages.net also shows carvings including an ice piano, reindeer and fish.
His favorite creation was a team effort piece carved from 4,000 pounds of ice at the Plymouth Ice Festival. “It was an art deco piece of a woman holding a sphere,” he says. A 14-foot high ice arch was assembled over the center.
In reviewing his cooking career, Wakar says he takes pride in positive comments and respect he’s received. “It can be little simple things like when (Ford president) Alan Mulally came in the kitchen and said, ‘Man, that was the best meal I ever had.’ And you know he’s been all over the world.”
Wakar and wife Theresa have four children; they live in Canton.
The weekly Spotlight features staff members at the university. To nominate a candidate, please contact the Record staff at [email protected].
