The road to the top in the culinary industry usually begins in the humble confines of a greasy spoon located in some crude, country backwater under the tutelage of some tank-top wearing, cigar-smoking, overweight fry cook.
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Gordon Ramsay’s first steps in the business came as a pot washer at an obscure Indian restaurant while Bobby Flay cut his teeth at a neighborhood pizzeria. Even the great 19th Century French restaurateur Antoine Beauvilliers started as a mere ‘kitchen boy’ in Paris.
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So, one may be surprised to know that Chef Randal White, among Ocala’s culinary “stars” for the past 25 years, traces his modest beginnings not to some obscure gastropub or dilapidated diner, but at an elite establishment in Dade City where discerning patrons would travel from Orlando and Tampa to dine.
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“We had silver trays, brass table bases, velvet curtains, crystal chandeliers, the whole nine yards — this place was unbelievable,” White recalls Edwinola Restaurant, an old train station transformed into a high-end restaurant by a group of wealthy local attorneys and that attracted its fair share of celebrities.
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White was just a high school kid looking to earn enough money to buy a car, so he waited tables at Edwinola. As exciting as it was to work the front of the house, the kitchen beckoned and White answered the call.
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“One day they needed help in the salad area, and I went back there and helped out,” White said. “I thought, ‘damn, I like this better than the front’ and I went to the back and took a huge cut in pay. I made salads and about four months later they ended up making me the night chef.”
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A senior in high school, White was a chef producing chateaubriand and trout almondine. The fast track was laid that would take him to barbecue restaurants in Crystal River and stops at resorts in the Florida Keys before winding up at Saddlebrook Resort near Tampa.
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“That’s where I kind of got my training. There was a chef there named David Trout; he hired me and he was really good.”
Trout had helped start Alessi Bakery and Deli in downtown Tampa which now enjoys an immense reputation. At Saddlebrook, he worked alongside Chef Andre Kraft who had previously worked at the Beverly Wilshire in Hollywood, Calif., and who shared line cook duties with the famed Wolfgang Puck in their early days.
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“He kind of took me under his wing,” White said of Kraft. “He made me his sous chef and I worked with him for almost five years. We had five sous chefs and every one of us had to cook something from where we were from; I would cook southern stuff or Cajun – that was hot in the ‘90s.”
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The team broke up when Kraft headed to Ireland, but by this time White was a valued commodity being courted by establishments such as Augusta National in Georgia and the Opryland Hotel in Nashville. In the end, Opryland would win the Chef Randal sweepstakes, luring him to open the new restaurant at its new Spring House Golf Course.
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In Nashville, White enjoyed a spot on a morning television show and “made a pretty good name for myself.”
The operation at Opryland was so huge, he worked with and gained invaluable knowledge from chefs of all different backgrounds — the team consisted of several hundred chefs. That diversity and versatility would serve him well in the years to come.
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In 1992, White left Opryland to return closer to home, this time in Brooksville where he would open Oscar’s Fine Casual Dining. That would turn into a second restaurant in Homosassa and eventually a crab processing plant where he would churn out his famous crab cakes. His reputation enhanced when Florida Trend magazine recognized two of his restaurants in the top 10 for the state.
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Ocala would be the next stop when he went to work at the Hilton Hotel in 1998. His tenure there earned him some celebrity chef status among Ocalans and he stayed until 2006 before two years of renovating 21 restaurants in and around Cypress Gardens — then it was back to the Hilton for an encore run there. In 2016, Cynthia Nicholson at Mark’s Prime brought him to the downtown Ocala square.
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“It was a hell of a restaurant before I got there, but we increased revenue.” And increased White’s reputation as well.
Now, he and Nicholson are back together with the new upscale Remington’s Prime Steakhouse on West U.S. Highway 27. The menu consists of Montana, Iowa and Wagyu beef as well as venison from New Zealand.
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White’s dedication is to fresh ingredients and offering local classics such as the Palm salad made famous in nearby Cedar Key. “I did a twist on it — with arugula instead (of bib lettuce) with raspberries, then put fresh pickled hearts of palm with granola and pistachio crust on top.”
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It’s all part of his lifetime dedication to the craft of cooking.
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“(Cooking) is an art and I see it getting lost every day in our culture,” White laments. “You’ve got Hello Fresh delivering to your house now — it’s crazy how the world is changing. Hopefully, a few people are trying to keep it alive.”
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When he’s not creating culinary masterpieces, White retreats to his Florida roots, deep in the central Florida soil and the waterways where he grew up — he and his wife, Sally, recently bought his family’s home in Crystal River.
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“We’re right on the water and we’re boat people,” White said. “We’ll go out boating or fishing — a day on the water is like a two-week vacation for me.”
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And his landscaping? Well, “everything I plant in the yard is edible.” What else would one expect from a master chef who insists on fresh ingredients all the time?
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He started big and is finishing even bigger, but no one can say that Chef Randal White hasn’t paid his dues along the way.
