The three-square meals of years past have mushroomed into a different entrée altogether. Celebrity chefs ”“ iron and otherwise ”“ rule TV. Both nutrition and fine dining have become the topics du jour. Restaurants and boutique food stores are big business.
More and more people are developing discerning tastes, but they often need advice as to where to buy that elusive truffle oil or artisan cheese. Searching the Internet can seem like shopping through foot-thick glass.
Enter Nancy Dacey; consider her a food concierge.
In the upcoming weeks, Dacey, with more than 22 years in the food service industry, will be offering information and suggestions on an array of topics in her new column, Dishing it out, for the Business Journal.
For the past 12 years she has been plying the world for unique gourmet items for a local
food service company and a leading supplier to restaurants and retail food outlets.
Dacey is the cheese specialist for the company; she calls herself “The Cheese Lady.” Prior to that she had been brand manager for tea, coffee, imported cheeses, American artisan cheeses, specialty desserts, specialty Italian ingredients and bottled waters.
As the self-proclaimed Cheese Lady, Dacey scours the world sourcing great cheese and then writing cheese menus that she offers to chefs. She stresses American-made creations in order to help the nation”™s farmers. Her clients include high-end restaurants, hotels, caterers and country clubs.
The Ridgefield, Conn., resident began her career in the caviar business, in which she spent 10 years, four of which were for White”™s of London. The 1980s were very strong for the caviar business, she said, with Reaganomics fueling the economy, pricey items were no object to consumers. But, as the decade closed and the economy changed for the worse, the caviar market dried up. She reassessed her career and life, growing her family and stretching her mind via wine education classes by The Sommelier Society of America and graduating from Peter Kump’s Cooking School, which is now known as The Institute of Culinary Education.
She attributes the in-class education and her career work with making her well-rounded. She loves to cook with unusual ingredients, which she has no problem attaining through her company, offering some 7,000 ingredients.
She has been a specialty cheese buyer for the past five years. Previous work also included field sales, which led to her receiving numerous awards.
Her passion for food involves her in several leading food guilds and charities, including The American Cheese Society, Women Chefs and Restaurateurs and The Food Patch of Westchester, for which she was a board member for six years.
“I wear many hats and have many pots on the burners.”
