Canyon Kitchen’s Executive Chef Ed Selle

A locally sourced talent cultivating this historic destination

By KAY WEST

When Canyon Kitchen executive chef Ed Selle reflects on his childhood on a farm, it is not the typical farm life with cows and corn. His father's trout farming hobby, which he turned into a business when the Brevard papermill ceased production, was a unique and captivating aspect of their farm life. As the middle child, Selle was actively involved in the farm's operations, contributing his efforts in the mornings, on weekends, and during summer breaks.

After school, he and his siblings usually went to their maternal grandmother’s house in town. “We lived about 30 miles outside of town, so we’d go to her house until our parents were done working.” In her kitchen, he was introduced to classic Southern homestyle cooking, a tradition that not only inspired but profoundly shaped his culinary journey.

His high school job at the Connestee Falls Country Club, where he started as a dishwasher but sometimes hurried over to help prep or work on the line, significantly and appreciably shaped his career. “What intrigued me about it the most was the camaraderie of the kitchen and how people worked together. I didn’t see it as a career, though.”

Instead, after high school, he went to North Carolina State, purportedly to study the agriculture business, but it did not work out.

After one year, he was back home, with orders from his parents to go somewhere and study something. Recalling his attraction to the environment of a professional kitchen, he enrolled in A-B Tech’s Culinary Program. “I felt at home there and had an affinity for cooking. I learned a lot about general organizational skills and cost analysis. I really enjoyed the capstone project, a 7-course menu we spent a semester developing.”

His father's influence was pivotal in his journey. His internship between years one and two at AB-Tech first brought him to the plateau, a move he credits turning him into a chef. His father was stocking the pond at Chattooga Club in Cashiers and told the chef his son was studying at a culinary school. The chef suggested he consider Chattooga for his internship; Selle interviewed for the job and was accepted.

Selle fondly recalls that summer and his subsequent employment under executive chef Bryant Withers as the most influential period in his professional development. It was his first exposure to fine dining, and Withers, a classically trained chef with internships in France, became his mentor. Under Withers' guidance, Selle learned the art of professional cooking and gained insights into kitchen management, shaping his aspirations to become a chef.

After graduating, he started at Chattooga Club as a line cook and, according to Selle, “Among the people in the trenches who are really doing it.”

When Chattooga closed for the season from October through April, friends from culinary school hooked him up with a private club in Montana, complete with ski mountain. In addition to honing his skiing, he gained experience in high-volume fine dining and cooking with game.

After a couple of years in the trenches in the Chattooga kitchen, Selle was promoted to sous chef and remained in that position for another couple of years before taking the executive chef post at Cornucopia in Cashiers for a season. He then had his first taste of Canyon Kitchen as Chef de Cuisine for one season.

When the opportunity came to succeed his mentor as executive chef at Chattooga, he took it. “As executive chef, you take on the administrative tasks of costing, ordering, scheduling, and writing menus. You step into the role of leader, teacher, role model, and often counselor,” he adds. “The hardest thing for me was less hands-on cooking and more delegating.”

After five years at Chattooga, he heard the executive chef position at Canyon Kitchen was opening and reached out to the GM. “Working there for that one season, I fell in love with the location and landscape,” he says. “I love that the community's amenities revolve around nature, trails, rock climbing, swimming, and fishing.”

His impressive resume and successful cooking audition resulted in Selle assuming the role of executive chef to start the 2021 season.

He immediately flipped the script. “They had been doing a coursed prix fixe menu that changed weekly, with a couple of choices per course,” he says. “We changed it to a la carte to start the season, and it was very well received.”

Though Canyon Kitchen is open to the public for dinner (with reservations), much of their clientele are Lonesome Valley residents who may come in two or more times a week, and they welcome the variety.

The consistent commitment is seasonal and local, with some items like herbs and greens from the Canyon Kitchen Garden, but mainly sourcing produce from nearby farmers markets and farms, proteins from eastern North Carolina, and seafood from the Carolina coasts. Sunburst Trout is always on the menu in some form. Interestingly, the restaurant is in the refurbished historic Jennings Barn, the founding family of the nearly 80-year-old multi-generational Sunburst Trout Farm. Guests today still enjoy fish from the first commercial trout farm in the southeast United States founded by Dick Jennings some seventy-six years ago.

Selle says there is nothing like coming to work every day to a community nestled in the largest box canyon in the Blue Ridge Mountains and one of the most stunning restaurant settings in the country. But he values the seasonality of his position as it gives him a few months of downtime every winter. “My wife Ashley and I used to go skiing at that time until recently. Since the birth of our son Radford last year, we like to stay close to home. It is a beautiful place.”