Jasper White

A passion for seafood leads chef from consulting to launching Summer Shack casual-seafood chain

Food, family and the sea — they are the intertwining threads in Jasper White’s life.

He grew up near the New Jersey shore, loved his grandmother’s cooking, graduated from The Culinary Institute of America. Then he married Nancy, had three children and opened Jasper’s, an award-winning fine-dining restaurant. He also has consulted for Legal Sea Foods and recently opened two Summer Shack seafood restaurants.

White also has won awards, written cookbooks and become a celebrity chef and renowned seafood expert. But, fundamentally, he says, “I’m a cook. I get up every morning and do my best to make good food every day. That’s what it’s all about.”

After being out of the spotlight for the past five years as a chef and consultant for the Legal Sea Foods chain, White re-emerged with gusto with the opening of Summer Shack, a casual-seafood restaurant in Cambridge, Mass.

“My kids are more grown now,” says White, explaining his return to restaurant ownership. “The entire time I was not with a restaurant, I knew I’d get back into it someday.”

That day came in May 2000 with the first of two Summer Shacks. The second opened last September at the Mohegan Sun Resort & Casino in Uncasville, Conn.

“I wanted to create something fun for children and families with really good food in a casual setting,” he says. “That’s our goal at Summer Shack.”

As always with White, the menu features seafood.

“Seafood has been big with me, growing up near the New Jersey shore and eating a lot of it,” he says.

When he opened Jasper’s Restaurant in Boston in 1983, White didn’t intend it to be strictly seafood. “It was pretty much half-meat, half-fish, but the customers turned it into seafood,” he says. “We were on the waterfront, and the customers were ordering a lot more seafood.”

Each year White rewrote the menu to reflect more seafood and less meat. “Within four years we were a seafood restaurant,” he explains.

In 1988 Jasper’s was inducted into the Nation’s Restaurant News Fine Dining Hall of Fame. Eventually, the long hours took their toll, and White closed Jasper’s in 1995 after 12 years and numerous awards.

“In fine dining you charge a lot of money, and the people who spend that money want to see the chef there,” he continues. “My wife knew I would eventually go back into the restaurant business.”

While White doesn’t work that many fewer hours at Summer Shack, he says the pressure of casual dining is different from that of fine dining. He has chefs in both Summer Shack locations but still develops most of the dishes and spends many hours in the kitchen.

Through the years White has become a passionate advocate of seafood. As a chef and later a consultant for Legal Sea Foods, he developed a special children’s menu with Roger Berkowitz, president and chief executive of the upscale, Boston-based restaurant chain.

At that time White commented, “I believe, and Roger concurs, that a healthy lifelong diet has to include seafood, but the time to introduce it isn’t when young people graduate from college.”

White’s children, now nine, 11 and 13, were exposed early and often to seafood and are now fish lovers. “I think most kids would be if they had it regularly,” he says.

Good health is one reason for the growing popularity of seafood, White contends, citing researchers’ findings that a weekly portion of fish could reduce the chance of heart attack by 50 percent.

With that statistic in mind, he can’t understand why the fish-is-good-for-you message doesn’t get pushed harder. “If a drug company had a pill that could reduce your chance of heart attack by 50 percent, people would take it every day.”

White’s own passion for cooking began in a food-oriented family. “My grandmother was a fabulous cook,” he explains. “She was very fussy and very passionate about ingredients. I always used her as a gold standard.”

What does he like best about the restaurant business? “I think it’s the act of transforming one thing into another,” he says, adding, “It’s also about doing things simply and doing them well.”

He continues, “But probably most important is the act of serving other people, because you know you’re doing your best to improve their lives in a small way.”

“There aren’t too many chefs who have been as popular for as long as he has,” observes publisher Tim Zagat, chief executive of Zagat Survey LLC. “He’s done a lot of different things well, which is the mark of a tremendous chef.”

White has advice for people considering foodservice as a career. “Don’t rush into things,” he cautions. “Take time to learn your craft. Stay humble, go slow and truly learn.”

Having won scores of honors, including a James Beard Award in 1990 as America’s Best Chef in the Northeast, White says the recognition is very gratifying.

“But I don’t have the awards hanging on the wall,” he explains. “I’m just a cook. If the recognition hadn’t happened, I’d still be doing this — making good food every day. That’s what it’s all about for me.”