From Port boy to acclaimed Chef

It was a busy night at Texas Steakhouse in Roanoke, Va., and Port Washington native Thomas Hauck, then in his late teens, was the assistant manager.

“I was in charge of the line that night and I was running up and down and helping everyone,” he said.

That’s when he knew he wanted food to be his career.

“That adrenaline rush, that comraderie and that wildness, I mean, it’s addictive,” Hauck said. “And then as you get older, when you get to create things and make memories for people and be a part of a special occasion or something that defines something, that’s fantastic.”

That’s what he has done ever since, being formally trained and then spending time in France, working for several chefs and starting his own restaurant.

Today, Hauck is chef at Taverne on Woodlake in Kohler.

The opportunity came due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Hauck had been the executive chef at Oggie’s at Hotel Metro in Milwaukee. “I took the job two days before Covid hit,” he said, which delayed the restaurant’s opening.

“And then as soon as we got open, I mean, Covid just got to the point it was out of control. Everybody got laid off and they wound up shutting it down.”

He wasn’t without work long.

“The very next day after it was in the paper that everything happened, Kohler reached out,” Hauck said.

Taverne on Woodlake opened last summer without a chef. Hauck joined several weeks afterward and has creative control over the kitchen. He added a weekend brunch a month ago and alters the lunch and dinner menu as he develops more dishes.

“The great thing with Kohler is they give you the freedom to run it. If something doesn’t work, we fix it and you don’t need to sit around. You can move quickly.”

Hauck has moved through the restaurant industry physically and figuratively.

He lived in Port Washington until he was 8, when his family moved to Georgia. Hauck’s family always cooked — one of his duties was shucking corn — and his mother was a good baker, winning some contests by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Hauck’s parents had a chat with him when he was 15. “You seem to want things,” he was told. “You need money.”

Some of Hauck’s friends worked at a restaurant near Stone Mountain, Ga. Hauck landed a job there and was paid $50 to work from 5 p.m. to 2 a.m. on Friday nights to bus tables and wash dishes. His paycheck of $100 made the teenager feel rich, he said.

One day, one of the guys working the line hurt his finger, so Hauck was moved up and started making salads. He loved having more responsibility in the kitchen.

After his family moved to Roanoke, Hauck worked in kitchens until he realized his career aspiration.

One of his bosses told him to attend culinary school, so Hauck enrolled at the Culinary Institute of America in New York. Hauck took an externship with the Ritz-Carlton in Tyson’s Corner, Va., “which is like the Beverly Hills on the East Coast,” he said. He worked his way through the hotel under an Italian chef.

After school, he worked at a Cincinnati restaurant, and then went abroad “because I wanted to keep learning.”

Chambery, France, the gateway to the Alps near Albertville, reminded him of Wisconsin.

“It is a hearty fare. We call it Alpine cooking and it’s similar to what we do here. We love our cheese and we love our dairy and rightfully so, like it’s fantastic stuff we can do,” Hauck said.

A year later, he went to Perpignan near Spain on the Mediterranean Sea.

“There are worse places to be in the world south of France, cooking for a living,” Hauck said.

When his visa ran out 18 months later, the French police “politely asked me to leave” and Hauck found himself on his sister’s couch in Washington, D.C.

“I figured I would go and try to work for the best guy in D.C. That was Michel Richard, and sure enough, I got hired the next day and I spent four years there,” Hauck said.

Hauck rose from line cook to banquet chef, sous chef and finally executive sous chef as Richard helped spark his creativity.

By then, Hauck had met his future wife Sara — his sister’s college roommate — and wanted to run his own restaurant. Washington, D.C., was too expensive but Milwaukee was affordable.

Hauck brought Sara to Wisconsin for a test run. She was amazed at Port and loved the area. The weather was another story.

“We walked out on the rocks on this cold February night. If you’re going to show her Wisconsin, you might as well do it at its absolute peak,” Hauck said.

Two years later, Hauck took a job at the Pfister Hotel in Milwaukee to develop the right connections to open his own restaurant.

Hauck eventually opened C. 1880 in Walkers Point and was nominated for the James Beard Foundation award — the Oscar of food — for four straight years. The restaurant was regularly ranked in the top five eateries in Milwaukee.

It was at C. 1880 that he created his first original dish, a lamb baba ghanoush that evolved into a peanut panzanella. It was once taken off the menu but so many people requested it that it came back.

Hauck then tried to turn around the financially troubled German restaurant, Karl Ratzsch.

Customers were too resistant to change, so Hauck closed the restaurant and took a job in the corporate world as culinary director for Lowlands Group in Milwaukee.

Two years later, the offer from the Hotel Metro came, which eventually led him to Taverne on Woodlake.

Hauck lives in Fox Point with Sara and their two sons, 8 and 5. He tries to make a big meal on nights that he is home, but Sara, who is half Armenian, is a good cook who dabbles in a different flavor set.

Their sons love helping to make macaroni and cheese with a secret ingredient — cream cheese.

Hauck’s favorite foods depend on the season. He loves working with shellfish, particularly crab, and during summer said it’s hard to beat “a tomato from your back yard on a BLT with some thick bacon and good bread.”

His favorite item to cook, however, is the one he hasn’t yet.

“It’s the next thing you’re going to make,” he said.

For those whipping up their own dishes at home, Hauck offers this advice: “Use a little bit of butter, a little bit of acid, a little bit of salt, and you can make anything taste better.”

In his spare time, Hauck enjoys playing Delta blues and rock and roll on guitar. The family has a drum set and a piano and holds singing and dancing parties.

For more information, visit www.destinationkohler.com/dining/dining-locations-list-page/taverne-on-w....