New Executive Chef Greg Roach’s connection to Landmark College goes back just over a decade.
“My first time on campus was slightly more than a decade ago, when we were exploring options for my kid,” Roach said.
Now, the two immediate members of his family are alums. His wife, Robin Meyer, the associate director of career education at Williams College, completed Landmark College’s postbaccalaureate Certificate in Learning Differences and Neurodiversity (LDN) in 2024.
“She's one of the big advocates for Universal Design and access,” he said.
Their kid, now 27, attended Landmark for two years before transferring to another college, and is currently “living their best life” as a software engineer in Boston.
“I am well aware of Landmark's mission,” Roach said. “It is something that I wholeheartedly endorse and wish there was more of. The concept of Universal Design is something that I think translates not just through academia, but into my world, the kitchen world, very well.”
He added, “It works for my brain, too.”
Roach comes to Landmark College most recently from Buxton School in Williamstown, Mass., where he recalls gladly getting to know many neurodiverse students. (Buxton School is an alma mater of former Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin, who is dyslexic and a founding trustee of the College.)
Roach has worked at Wild Oats Co-op in Williamstown, where he developed a prepared foods program, and worked with National Co+op Grocers to help open the Monadnock Co-op in Keene, N.H. While at Wild Oats, he competed twice as a finalist in the Food Marketing Institute's annual Supermarket Chef Showdown.
His chef credits also include a small café and deli in Williamstown, a historical golf club in Washington state, and World Trade Center Seattle, among other roles over the course of a 40-year career dating back to his teen years. He has worked alongside renowned chefs Charlie Trotter and Wolfgang Puck.
On a recent day before the lunch rush, Roach made time to talk about how he started cooking, the phrase “in loco parentis,” and why he wears hearing aids.
This interview has been edited for clarity and conciseness.
How did you get started cooking?
I got started cooking because I needed a summer job in the summer of 1984. I ended up working the poolside grill and making grilled cheese and hamburgers and french fries for all the kids taking swimming lessons and sailing lessons and things like that at the Detroit Yacht Club. It was always just the side job all through my teen and college years.
After graduating with a degree in music and deciding that making a living in music was, I don't want to say harder than I thought it would be, but it didn't interest me as much as I thought it would, I went back to what felt normal and natural. It was an environment I enjoyed.
I went to the Culinary Institute of America in my mid-20s and graduated from there and have been cooking full-time professionally ever since.
Can you tell me more about your music?
I have a degree in voice from the University of Michigan, primarily in opera and musical theater. I also played in a lot of rock bands and all sorts of goofy stuff. The rock bands are why I'm wearing hearing aids.
Back at my previous employer, they needed some help with the chorus, and so I helped out as an interim choir director and ended up singing with the group after that.
I worked for a little over a year for KeyArena, home of the Seattle SuperSonics, back around the very turn of the millennia. I was the sous chef for clubs and concessions out there. Got to see a lot of crazy concerts and stuff because we also did those.
The fun one was, when Marilyn Manson came through town, his guitarist was a guy by the name of John 5, who I played in a band with in high school when he was known as John Lowery. Needless to say, he made a living in music. I did not. He's now the guitarist from Mötley Crüe.
At Landmark, what are some changes you’ve made, and what are your goals for the kitchen?
All the menus that we're serving right now were set weeks, months in advance. I have had a chance to do a couple little catering events and make some very pretty antipasto boards and cheese platters and things like that. So that's where I've been able to be a little bit creative. Those are the areas where you can color a little outside of the lines, if you will, and I get to show off a bit.
My goals in the kitchen here are: Because we're using corporate recipes, I really can't change the recipes per se, but I can help the cooks with technique. You can give people the exact same ingredients and you'll get two different dishes. We've got some very talented and dedicated people here.
You worked with Charlie Trotter during an internship when you were at the Culinary Institute of America. What did you learn from this experience?
Working for him convinced me that I really did not want to do the high-end stuff. The Michelin stars, I didn't want to chase those because I'd rather feed people and make them happy than try to impress them.
There's a whole documentary that kind of talks about how infamously temperamental he was and was a little sympathetic to him.
I learned the hard way that I didn't like that part of the industry.
What are some highlights of your career since then?
Oh, my goodness. Far too many to think of. The memory that I have of multiple parents over the years at Buxton coming up to me and thanking me for taking care of their kid and saying: ‘How did you ever get them to try carrots?’ ‘They come home and they want me to make your tortilla casserole and we just don't know how to do it. Can you show me?’ Those types of memories are the most rewarding by far.
I've had hundreds and hundreds of events and stuff. People say, ‘Oh, that was the best chicken I've ever eaten,’ and all that. And those are lovely. I do like them.
But the ones that are real specific and tied to someone — you know, when you get to know the students, you actually care about them. I once told a parent at Buxton that basically my job is to take care of your kids in loco parentis. And in the kitchen, that’s where I feel very comfortable doing that.
What is “in loco parentis?”
It’s Latin for “in lieu of parents.” It’s actually a legal term that in a high school, a boarding school setting, it basically means we act as their guardians, similar to the parents.
While it’s not a legal term for me here at Landmark, it very much is the same sentiment of wanting to help take care of these kids — who I have to stop referring to as kids; they are students. (laughs) I’m working on it.
Are there any foods that you especially enjoy preparing?
My first job out of culinary school was as Wolfgang Puck’s saucier. 'Saucier' is a French term for the guy who makes the soups and sauces.
I have always thought of myself as a saucier. That person has more influence on the final dish than just about anybody. If the base sauces and everything were not good, the entire dish would be lousy.
I enjoyed that quite a bit. And I actually got to work with the guy. He was just getting famous.
What about your favorite foods to eat?
Oh, that's a tricky one because one of my favorite things is Taco Bell. (laughs) I do have a weakness for Taco Bell.
But the foods that I enjoy the most are the ones that I feel like I'm discovering for the first time.
I travel a lot now. When you go someplace and you have something you've never had before, and you go, ‘This is amazing. How did I not know about this?’ I remember that happening with things like sea urchin.
The first time I discovered miso 30 years ago, it was crazy — good miso. Not just plain old miso soup.
When I discovered a small-farm pork where the pigs actually got to root for vegetables and things like that — absolutely blew my mind.
A couple of Italy trips ago, I went to a place that had, I think it was 130-year-old balsamic vinegar, and I got to taste a few drops of it. It was more like maple syrup than vinegar. I had old balsamic before, but I'd never had anything like that.
That was one of those transformative things. Tasting Parmesan all the way through the different stages of production, from when it first goes in to age. We tasted four or five things with a month or two in between their ages, right up to when they would sell it.
That's my favorite kind of food: Discovering things.
Is there anything else you look forward to about working at Landmark College?
Landmark goes out of its way to try to make the dining area neuroinclusive, and that is something that I really look forward to exploring while I am here.
There are some people here who have studied it, and the idea of actually chatting with those people and maybe even doing something more formal, a case study or something on this, so that the idea of Universal Design for dining can be spread throughout education from the lower grades all the way up — that's something that, if I have a secret hope to come out of this chapter of my career, that would be to create something that can be scalable and adapted.
