Richard Reale's first job was cooking for guests at Little Palm Island, a resort on a private island in the Florida Straits.
He now satisfies over 3,000 hungry Penn students every day.
Reale got his start at Penn as a chef for Perelman Quad Catering. But after six short months, he took over as the executive chef at Houston Market, where he comes up with new dishes for sale in the food court.
He has been working there for the past eight months.
He graduated from the Culinary Institute of America and moved to the private Floridian island soon after. He then headed to Orlando and opened up his own restaurant, called the Plantation Room, in a small boutique hotel where he offered contemporary American food.
After a year there, he moved to the Gaylord Palms Resort & Convention Center, also in Orlando.
But when the University offered him a job, the New Jersey native saw working at Penn as a way to move closer to home.
The University's prestige, he said, didn't hurt his enthusiasm for the job.
Most of his time is spent managing about 35 Houston Market employees, whether it's keeping track of their scheduling or training them to cook for the thousands of customers who come during the lunch rush alone.
"When school's in session, it's pretty much crazy," Reale said.
During slower times, he spends his time coming up with new menu items or finding vendors to come in and do tastings for the guests.
But for Reale, in the end it's all about the food.
"I love food. Just being able to work with that is a joy to me," he said.
Reale also considers watching his staff members mature as cooks to be one of the greatest rewards of his job.
"I get a lot of satisfaction in seeing some of my staff grow," Reale said. "Pretty much every day I get surprised by one of them."
"The only thing I don't like about working here is the Philadelphia city tax that they take out of my check," he joked.
The path to executive chef was not at all what Reale expected.
Learning to cook at the Culinary Institute didn't prepare Reale for tasks such as financial paperwork and managing his staff on a day to day basis.
"I cook much less than most people would probably think, not by my choice, but just [because of] the demands of the job," Reale added.
In the future, he hopes to learn more about campus dining and someday to oversee all dining on campus.
As for Penn, Reale feels that students' demand for originality keeps his job from becoming mundane.
"I love Penn's atmosphere, simply because the students at Penn keep you on your toes," he said. "They always want to see something new and different, which allows us to break away from the traditional mold of student dining and really lets us go out and seek new things."
