By Amber Tolley

In an ideal world where cholesterol and high blood pressure didn’t exist, Executive Chef Cathie Reichman would use butter in everything.

“Butter makes everything taste better. It’s my favorite ingredient, but one that I probably use the least,” she says.

Cathie has been in the business for over 15 years, but she didn’t start out as a chef. She graduated from Syracuse University with a degree in special education, and was a teacher in Trenton, New Jersey, for eight years before she took her love of cooking to a new level.

“I’ve always, always loved to cook. Ever since I was a little girl in Queens, I’ve had a passion for cooking. But when I was growing up, there were very few women chefs, except in family restaurants.”

In 1988, Cathie gave up teaching and received a degree from the esteemed New York Restaurant School. From there she went on to work under well-known chef David Burke at The River Café in Brooklyn, a New York Times four-star restaurant.

“I learned a lot at The River Café. It was a good training ground for a new chef,” she says.

Since her days at The River Café, Cathie has enjoyed learning many aspects of the business. For three years, she worked as a pastry chef for the Westbury Hotel in New York, where she catered off-site functions at the Whitney Museum and The Museum of Modern Art. This born-and-bred Yankee also worked as the executive chef for Lake Lure Golf Resort in North Carolina, and most recently served as the executive chef at the Westin Hotel in Morristown, New Jersey.