Fete au Fete

It all started with an inherited cast iron kettle...

Chef Micah Martello's deep appreciation for Southern cuisine was developed at a young age growing up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where he was exposed to a variety of foods that would fuel his lifelong passion for cooking. He began his culinary career at the age of 18 working as a prep cook at the Lafayette Hilton and Towers in Lafayette, Louisiana, learning classical French cuisine and completing his apprenticeship through the American Culinary Federation, all the while continuing his full-time pursuit of a bachelor’s in Hotel and Restaurant Administration at the University of Louisiana Lafayette. After only four months at the Hilton, he was quickly promoted to line cook, then banquet chef and eventually executive sous chef. After three years of learning the trade at the Hilton, he was offered his first executive chef position at Tavern on the Park in New Orleans at the young age of 21, the youngest executive chef in the city.

Micah’s early career as an executive chef afforded him the opportunity to run the kitchens of several top New Orleans restaurants: Café Giovanni, Charley G’s Seafood Grill and Nautical, which was named Bon Appetit Magazine’s Best New Restaurant of the Year in 1999. Throughout his career he has won dozens of medals in ACF sanctioned cooking competitions as well as many other accolades. From 1999 to 2003 he was ranked number 7 in the top 100 chefs in the US on Chef2Chef.net.

In 2000, he was lured to Texas by Renaissance Hotels to renovate the historic Casa de Palmas Hotel, opening a Latin-Fusion concept. From there he became a corporate concept chef for Carlson Restaurants Worldwide, designing new menus and helping to shape the future of their new restaurants. In 2004, he moved to North Carolina where he was director of operations for A Southern Season, a 50,000 square foot gourmet retail specialty store with a 450-seat fine dining restaurant, full service prepared foods deli, a bakery, a coffee shop and a bar.

In 2012, Micah saw that his success in the corporate world had taken him far away from his love affair with the kitchen. He loved being a chef but had developed a disdain for the restaurant business, so he quit his job, sold his house and bought an old bread truck which he converted to a full mobile kitchen. This was the birth of King Creole.

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