Chef Olivia Giesler: The Kitchen Made More Sense

Walk-In Talk Podcast

Chef Olivia Giesler shares her unexpected journey from pre-med student in Ohio to Executive Chef of The Pearl in Tampa, highlighting pivotal

Key takeaways

• Success is measured not by awards or titles but by the journey, relationships, and impact on others.
• A pivotal experience at age 17 in Costa Rica exposed Olivia to new cultures, ingredients, and hospitality, reshaping her career path.

Main topics

• Career transformation from medicine to culinary arts
• The influence of early travel experiences on personal growth

Notable quotes

"Cooking is actually your life. There is no other path."

"I had fun every day I was going at work. And I enjoyed being around people and working with my hands."

Conclusion

Olivia Giesler's story is a testament to following passion despite uncertainty. Her

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Some chefs know exactly what they want to be from the beginning. Chef Olivia Giesler didn't. She grew up in Ohio and a family filled with nurses, big gatherings, potlucks, and the kind of hospitality where doors stayed unlocked, coffee was always brewing, and there was something in the refrigerator for whoever happened to walk through the door. Cooking was around her. She just didn't know it would become a career. At 17, that started to change. During high school, Olivia traveled to Costa Rica with her twin sister. Speaker 1 (0:29) lived and worked at a small hotel and suddenly found herself being introduced to ingredients, cultures, and techniques she'd never experienced before. She was learning about citrus, sofrito, and croquetas from a Spanish family while experiencing Costa Rican food and hospitality firsthand. When she came home, another opportunity changed that trajectory again. Olivia began working at Mitchell's Ocean Club while still thinking the responsible path was medicine. Speaker 1 (0:56) She studied biology and chemistry. Her mother was a nurse. A medical career just made sense. But to Olivia, the kitchen made more sense. She fell in love with the pace, the team, the ingredients, and the constant opportunity to learn. Eventually, she made the decision to leave the pre-med path and go to culinary school. And then she went all in. Culinary school, full-time restaurant work, competition teams, early morning practices, 12-hour volunteer events. Speaker 1 (1:23) just for the opportunity to work beside better chefs. By 24, Olivia was already a sous chef. Then came restaurant openings, Arizona, Tampa, motherhood, and eventually one of the biggest challenges of her career, becoming executive chef of The Pearl while opening a new restaurant, learning a new concept, and raising her daughter. Today, The Pearl has been recognized by the Michelin Guide three years in a row. But when Olivia talks about what matters most, she doesn't spend time talking about awards. Speaker 1 (1:50) She talks about people, the chefs who believed in her, the young cooks she now gets to believe in, the guests walking through the door, and the responsibility to give someone else the same opportunity that helped change her own life. Because for Olivia, hospitality was never about something she learned from a manual. It was something she grew up watching. Olivia, when you look back at the kid from Ohio who thought medicine was the only real career path, when did you finally realize the kitchen wasn't just a job anymore? Speaker 1 (2:19) It was when I was in the kitchen and surrounded by great people and having fun, and I just loved the environment, the energy. Everything was the best there could ever be. Cooking is actually your life. There is no other path. Yeah, cooking is everything. It has to do with everything we do. We live it, and it affects us and introduces us to whole new worlds and cultures and people. Chef, I mean, the fact is we spent the last, like, five hours together while you were cooking, and... Speaker 1 (2:48) We got to see you in action. And yeah, you know how to cut veg and you know how to use a knife and you know what you're doing in the kitchen, but you had fun. Yeah, always have fun. It's exciting to see. It's exciting working with my hands and you just, you get to see food transformed and you get to show a team and see how they can transform stuff and you get to see them believe themselves and grow and have a future. I don't want to say something cliche. it's out there do something you love and it's like you'll never work a day in your life which is hogwash because you know work is work and hours are hours and sweat of course is fun Speaker 1 (3:27) But you enjoy this. And this is something that you aim to do. When did this become less of a job and more just of like your life? This is something you embraced. I just let myself listen and just, you know, realize I have to be brave enough to be like, hey, this is what I really like to do. I had to, you know, disappoint my parents, disappoint my mom, you know, choose a whole different career path and go on in something that, you know, I didn't know the money, understand the hours. Speaker 1 (3:56) But I had fun every day I was going at work. And I enjoyed being around people and working with my hands. And I just, I couldn't get enough of it. I'm like, this is the way. Well, I too have disappointed my friends and family. We share that. But you know, you're a different kind of personality. And I'm saying that because when we had our pre-call, you were kind of giving me the bird's eye view, 30,000 foot view of your life. When somebody tells me at the age of 17, oh yeah, you know what? I went off to Costa Rica to live for two months. That's a different person. Okay. Like that's just different. That's a different DNA type, I think. Speaker 1 (4:38) Yeah, I'm just, I'm a bit of an animal because I love the intensity of competition. I love being challenged and being a little bit of danger, a little bit of unknown. The kitchen kind of leads to that, but I didn't realize it. I grew up competing in gymnastics, so just that thrill and that pressure and wanted to travel, get out of Ohio. I was like, oh, there's got to be more out there. I got to have some sunshine and some wonder. So the second opportunity I had to travel and go either across the country or in a different world, I was all in for it. I was like, how can I be challenged in a different way? What does the 17-year-old Olivia see in Costa Rica? Speaker 1 (5:22) That actually pushes you further into culinary. So in high school, I had the opportunity, our second half of our senior year, we do a walkabout. And that's where we get into real life world careers. Many of our friends and family got to go outside of the country. So I had an opportunity to go to Costa Rica and work at a small hotel that had 12 rooms. But I'm in a different speaking country and the family that's running it is from Spain. They happen to be old chefs and work as flight attendants too. So I'm in a different country, two different types of Latin cultures. And then I'm cooking for guests breakfast every day, surrounded by new food from Costa Rica, because different types of lemons and limes and bananas and, you know, watermelon or sandia and just learning all the new ingredients. I'm like, what is all this? I have a hard time still wrapping my brain around a 17-year-old. Speaker 1 (6:20) going from middle America, Ohio to Costa Rica, and then landing in this tropical oasis around the equator. Like that's culture shock. Yeah. And this is back before iPhones. So back before we had a cell phone. So flew out from Texas to Costa Rica to not have a cell phone to know where we're going or where we're on a map. Just going with a book. And looking at it, I'm like, okay, we need to make it to this hotel. We're using traveler's checks to pay for everything. So that's sketchy too, not having actual cash. And then have to take a bus, take a cab to get a bus to get to the mountain and the little hotel that we're staying. You had me at book. Yeah. Wow. I mean, seriously. I don't know that I would allow my daughter. Speaker 1 (7:19) To do that. I don't know that I would let her do it. I would physically bar her into a room. She would be not allowed to leave. Yeah, my parents' only access to us was if we called them collect, which was like $1,000 for a 10-minute phone call. You're a mom now. Yeah. Would you let your daughter do that? It scares the bejesus out of me. You know, my daughter's, she's 14 right now, wanted to do everything. I'm like, you know, I have to be brave for her to let her do everything and get challenged in those ways. I'm like, oh man, I know this is going to be tough for her, but I got to let her get through it. And I got to know, be like, hey, I'm a rock for her so that she can be strong and always come back to me. I'm like, hey, you're going to have some tough hurdles and challenges, but I'm going to. Speaker 1 (8:10) push you to, you know, learn and go through those steps and go through those failures and setbacks. Is it a stretch to say that your actual experience as a teenager doing this? has given you an unlock code, cheat code, to be able to deal with this with your own daughter? Yeah, absolutely. I'm like, I had friends and family believe in me, and because I can always call my mom or reach back to her and ask her for help, and she always believed in us, and she never told us that we couldn't do anything. It was always, hey, let's figure it out, whether it's financially or it's a challenge here. Speaker 1 (8:50) I have a twin sister, so that's why I keep saying we. Oh, I just do that. Is she here with us right now? No. Where was I now? So there's always, you know, pushing to be, there's always a way to do something. There's always a will to say yes to make it happen. When I was in fifth grade, my mom went back to school as a midwife. So she was a labor and delivery nurse. In fifth grade, she asked us, she's like, hey. Are you kids okay with me going back to school? It's going to be less money for us. I'm going to be working more and studying. I'm going to be doing homework all this time. And we supported her through that and just be brave enough to go back to school and push herself for a career that she wanted and dreamed about to be a midwife. And I'm like, my mom can do it. She had her goal sheets and scores on all her tests up for her. So seeing her like... Speaker 1 (9:43) you know, rise to those challenges and push herself no matter how hard it was. We were always there for her because she was always there for us. So I can identify with some of this stuff. You know, my wife is a nurse. Her family is full of nurses, doctors, stuff like that. With that said, there really is, in families like that, there really is an idea that the children are going to follow suit. Like, you are going to go in that direction. I don't know why that is. But it's very prevalent in a medical household. You took that piece of paper, crumble it up and threw it in the wastebasket. You're like, no, I have a different direction. You were pre-med. Here's what I want you to do. I want you to go back, open up your brain and explain really what was the emotion that literally said no. Speaker 1 (10:39) Walk & Talk Media is proudly supported by Rack Porcelain USA, creating durable, beautifully designed tableware for chefs and hospitality professionals. Learn more at rackporcelain.com. I don't want to go to medical school. I'm going to be in a kitchen. What was that? So I worked while I was going in college. So I was always busy. So mine, you're taking however many credit hours, you're in lecture halls and all this stuff. And I had always had fun. The environment, the thrill, the energy was always great in the kitchens. When I was learning organic chemistry or in the lecture hall, it was mind numbing for me. I couldn't handle just sitting in a lecture hall. Speaker 1 (11:23) being spit out all this information, it was like painful and it wasn't sticking for me. I couldn't pronounce everything. I couldn't figure it out. But once I was in labs, I could do that really well. And that was easy, whether it's chemistry or biology. So working with my hands and using the tactical part of it, I figured out. And I just, that was easy when that was hard for other students. But I was like, why, why am I doing something that's not fun? I'm putting all this work and I'm stressing about all my scores. I'm not, it's not. Speaker 1 (11:51) clicking for me. But when I go to work, it's fun and it's clicking and I'm having an environment and people are laughing and entertaining. Like I don't want to go to a spot where I'm going to be miserable every day. So I