GREAT CHEFS ARE fascinating because they are complex and multi-talented by nature. This is easy to understand when you realize that serious success in the profession demands knowledge of and appreciation for art, science, history, food and spirits. Brendon Cox, the Chef-in-Residence at Middleburg's new Market Salamander, epitomizes these critical characteristics and brings to the table one more: a brilliant sense of command and control which would be the envy of a Norman Schwarzkopf.

His skills and talents are truly diverse. In addition to cooking, are diverse, he is accomplished at business, management, public relations, marketing, purchasing, strategic planning, interior design, media relations, staff development, artistic design, architecture, math, chemistry, botany, and physics.

After a conversation with Brendon, it's clear that he is delighted to bring his talents to Middleburg.

Your focus in college was history and philosophy. How have your studies of history and philosophy contributed to your career path?

Everything in cooking is history, everything. Technique, style, ingredients, the way flavors work, everything has historical grounding. It doesn't mean you can't improve, change, modify, or update things. We are not running around in ruffled shirts and horse drawn carriages these days, but a lot of the same flavor ideas that were codified mostly by the French masters, Escoffier in general (Auguste Escoffier), his flavors and flavor profiles, his ideas and techniques continue to work to this day. Food is science in a lot of ways, add this many egg yolks and you going to get this result if you add too many you'll get a mess on your hands. Things like that gives one historical grounding in what food is about.

It is really rare to find someone doing something new. People who try to do something new for the sake of something new, create food that, for me, just does not resonate that well, it doesn't have a real soul string, again grounding, as it were. Your cutting edge chefs in America, France, Italy, anywhere in the world, all have their grounding in classical technique and learning what's indigenous to a region. Learning what grows in a region and cooking in that region is something you look at with an historical eye. For instance in the region of Emilia-Romagna, in the province of Parma they make Prosciutto di Parma which is a cured ham. Also, they make the cheese Parmigiano-Reggiano (the king of all foods that comes from that region), as the whey separates out from that milk, they take that whey and skim it, then feed it to the hogs.

These hogs become the ham known as Prosciutto di Parma, and that's why Prosciutto di Parma, and Parmigiano-Reggiano are such a great flavor combination. They come from the same origin… the same milk. One becomes cheese, one becomes ham, and together they make a delicious combination.

If you understand this philosophically, why things work together, it is a great help as we strive to understand and appreciate the traditions of the Piedmont.

Nietzsche would have appreciated your answer, but I can't imagine him enjoying good food.

He hated everything! If you want great food philosophers you should read Brillat-Savarin of France, he wrote the physiology of taste (La Physiologie du Goût), there is a delicious French cheese named for him that we carry in the market.

Brillat-Savarin was one of the first 'thinkers' who tried to codify taste. He wanted to understand taste, how things work together to create a taste. He was the first, not necessarily the best... there have been many writers since, but chefs owe him a lot. Once again, it is the importance of having a historical perspective.

Brillat-Savarin enjoyed the good life; there is no doubt about it.

Most university history students would have been studying Napoleon.

Well I didn't read Brillat-Savarin until I became a chef.

Did your education lay the foundation your career.?

Oh yes. Many people join this industry as second career. Accountants, who have heads for numbers, but did not want to be accountants, study cooking. When they do ratios, write recipes, watch the bottom line; you can be confident they are much more successful in these areas than most chefs. They may not, however, have the sense of color and design that a chef enjoys who was a theater or art major. This is the chef who has the advantage in design and presentation.

When did you discover your passion for cooking?

I always enjoyed cooking. I did not grow up in a house where you had a grandmother cooking at the stove everyday as is the romantic French countryside notion. My Mom and Dad are good cooks and we always had a good meal on the table. Actually, I was the pickiest eater you ever met until I was about 17. It's a shame because I missed enjoying a lot of good food, so I'm trying to make up for it now. I eat lots of wacky stuff. The only thing I don't like is eggs, something happened there, my parents used to feed me scrambled eggs everyday, and one day, when I was about four, I just didn't want them anymore. I haven't eaten them since. I was a vegetarian for a long time, about five years, so I had to learn to cook for myself. This preference led me to a health food coop at my college where I became a cook. With this responsibility came the necessity that I had to learn to cook.

Everyone in the kitchen was my age. They already knew what they were doing, not as professionals, obviously, but we were pretty diverse. We learned to make Indian curries and Thai food. We did a lot of that type of cooking.

At that time I didn't take cooking that seriously, I was easily distracted with sports and playing music, generally having a good time. It was a way to make some extra money. It wasn't until I graduated that I found myself doing things like watching the Food Channel more, little stuff like that. Then a buddy of mine got me a job as a dishwasher and a prep cook, I was 21, and it sort of went on from there.

A good chef, John Spinnichia took me under his wing, in his very good restaurant. John paid close attention to what was good and what was not good seasonally. This was on the Chesapeake Bay so his restaurant had real regional cooking. I progressed quickly in his kitchen and he kept giving me more and more responsibility on until I was basically a sous chef, it was a really good relationship, and I owe a lot to John.

Is there one thing that you love to do more than any other?

I like to braise, I like to braise meat, I love to do sauces too, but it's braising meat, I love more than anything else. I love to eat it, to cook it, I love everything about it. It is a process that most people won't take the time to do.

Braising is real peasant, country cooking. It's great; it is elevating, to take a pork shoulder, braise it, treat the meat with respect, and bring out the flavors. When we do pork barbeque we braise off for 13-14 hours with a stout beer with our seasoning, and it comes out tender, creamy, and moist with the fat going into it, braising is very primal.

Every new opportunity comes with new challenges. What are your challenges at Market Salamander?

Not being a restaurant has challenges. Packaging the food may be the biggest challenge so far. When you are in a fine restaurant your art is to compose the dish, sauce the plate, serve the customer, everybody's happy, and they eat it right there. Here you don't really do much presentation and you have to make sure whatever someone buys to take home from a take-away restaurant gets home nicely, and they can reheat it. It is hard to give up control, we've done as much as we can and at that point all we can do is give them some directions, put in the oven at 350 degrees for six-o-eight minutes for rare and hope it works out.

We recently changed from round containers to rectangular, I liked the round because I could relate to them as plates, but rounds don't fit in shopping bags as well. Also they were not as efficient use of space for storage. We are very tight for space so rectangular containers make much more sense. It's all about fulfillment.

How are the retail goods selected for the market? Do they relate to the food you offer?

We have a diverse group of people who select and stock the products. A staff member finds something, we get together to talk about it and, if it is a food product, obviously a chef will be involved to determine the quality of the taste.

We like to combine things. I do not just want to sell a hunk of cheese. We want to offer the full expanse of products that complement the cheese: the right chutney, or the right honey that goes with it, along with the correct bread. We have to know what's complementary, or I would not fulfill my promise to the customer.

Middleburg has not had a chef who is available to help develop menus and give advice about preparing a special dinner. How have people responded to this new service?

Every one of my chefs are available to do this for our customers. They are all intelligent, motivated, and talented. Their ability to take people through the process has been very well received by the community. Certain customers come in and want something fantastic prepared fresh to take home, others want to buy the seafood, and then want to know what they should do with it, and what they should serve with it. This is where we can be really helpful.

We ask them how they want to cook the fish? If they intend to grill, we cut the right thickness for them, take them through the process, making sure their grill is clean, seasoning it correctly. If they want something like a barbeque oil, perhaps an olive oil that has been spiced for things coming off the grill, we have it here. If that's what they want we find it for them. They may want a cold fennel salad with it; we have it here for them. The other thing we began recently is recipe suggestions. We have a superb salmon recipe we offer for pan seared salmon with Pinot Noir glazed shallots, and a mustard tarragon cream sauce. A really simple recipe that is straightforward with great flavors.

So our customer buys the tarragon mustard, the Pinot Noir, and the salmon here to take it home.

I'm confident our customers will take full advantage of the services we offer. We're simply providing services that have been available historically in Europe and, in some areas in America. You go to your butcher to get a piece of meat and he tells you how to cook it; then you would go down the street to your fish monger, then the vegetable grocer, and the process repeats itself. That's how you got your information about cooking foods, no one person back in those days knew how to do everything.

What international cuisines do you favor? Do you draw upon them to inspire new recipes?

We have a heavy Italian influence but we are not limited by it. Much of my training has been in Italian kitchens. Modern American cooking is grounded in French technique and we will serve many regional American dishes, especially Southern recipes because it makes sense to use what we have available to us throughout the year in this region.

So French and Italian cooking are a focus. We won't offer Chinese, Japanese, Australian or Moroccan.

As the Market develops, what are your plans for the front of the shop?

We are going to take the retail products from the back of the market and place them in the front of the shop, then we'll build refrigerated cases in the Chef's area to provide us with more space for a larger variety of 'grab and go' things like all of our sauces, dressings, different mayonnaises and prepared vegetables.

We will expand the cheese case.

Our customers will be able to come in to purchase a great lunch or everything they need to make a wonderful dinner. That's where we are headed.