Olga Watkins in Print

Personal chef, menu-developer, caterer, culinary teacher and singer Olga Watkins started cooking for crowds when she was very young. "My parents were ministers," she says. "We lived on a farm in West Virginia, so it wasn't unusual to feed 22 people staying in the parsonage." She says it was typical to have everyone from locals to Vietnamese families gathered in the kitchen. It was during that time that her love of singing bubbled to the surface as well.

Watkins says by age 3 she was serving up both stew and Sunday hymns to admiring crowds. She went on to study music at Chatham College and to work for a time with the Lyric Opera of Chicago.

Today, at 35, she is a rare breed: a free spirit earning a living indulging two passions. She is the lead singer of Soul Kitchen, a popu­lar band performing jazz, blues and funk in venues such as Crawford Grill on the Square and the Monterey Pub. While her primary cooking gig is overseeing her com­pany, Elite Catering-a successful corporate-catering business-she has her fingers in lots of other pies.

"My influences are so diverse," says Watkins, referring to the many styles of cooking she's picked up over the years. "I can cook anything-my thing is to just throw a great party." She teaches others how to do so at Whole Foods and CCAC Community Outreach. Lending her planning tal­ents to local food distributor Paragon Monteverde Food Service, Watkins oversees menus and food shows. Ever looking for a challenge, she will accept personal catering-if it's interesting. She's currently plan­ning a 1920s menu for a fall wed-ding-so far, the meal includes her signature baked brie in puffed pastry with bourbon, brown sugar, butter and figs.

But when she can both cook and sing, well than that's just deli­cious. This month, she'll not only cater the VIP tent for the Airport Area Chamber of Commerce Annual Wine and Dine in Robin Hill Park, she'll also shed her apron for diva duds to sing with her band, the featured entertainment. Now that's mixing it up. For information, visit olgawatkins.com.

- Jennifer Papale Rignani

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Cleavers & Cleavage: A Chef Uncovered

Olga Watkins stands in the tiny kitchen at the Monterey Pub effortlessly slicing strawberries as if she's hosting a casual soiree for five friends. The casual observer would have no inkling that she's about feed upward of 250 customers.

"Last night we got slammed," Watkins smiles. "But I guess I'm used to it."

Considering she's cooked on a Navy base, yeah, she's accustomed to pressure. And considering she's performed musically almost all of her life, yeah, she can prepare 50 New York strips, 30 servings of salmon and 40 orders of crab legs. Most of us would break out in flop sweat arranging a cheese & crackers platter.

Many ingredients go into Watkins personal pot. She stirs in a lifetime of musical talent and kitchen know-how. She tosses in a longtime love affair with cooking. Add many dashes of humor and you've got all that is Olga, the self-described "Diva, Bombshell, Kitchen Goddess & Vocalist Extraordinaire." She's also not shy about proclaiming that the stove isn't the only rack she enjoys flaunting (see photo).

Nothing in Watkin's life simmers on the back burner. Naps are required after hearing her frantic schedule. A typical day might have Watkins doing a live (singing!) chef demo in the morning at Hillmon Appliance in Cranberry Township then changing out of an apron into a sultry frock and performing with Olga's Soul Kitchen, her blues jazz and soul ensemble, at the Crawford Grill in Station Square. She's also fits in time for her gig as interim chef at the Monterey Pub. Oh yes, and she a mom to daughter Ella. Oh and a caterer. And right, a party planner.

Phew.

Classically trained in music and vocals (we're talking opera and violin, honey), Watkins learned to cook before she could read. While most American kids ate burgers and fries, Watkins family were creating multicultural feasts. Her parents, both ministers, lived in a large parsonage and sponsored families and was exposed to international cooking before she was tall enough to reach the cookie jar. "We hosted families from all over--Malaysia, Thailand, and Uganda--and we all cooked together." She's taken that self-taught skills into many area restaurants.

Now she shares her own kitchen with Ella, who seems to have inherited her mom's singing skills (view "Diva Jr.'s" rendition of the Alphabet Song on Watkins website www.olgawatkins.com). The next Kitchen Goddesses is already in training.

--Colleen Van Tassell

Check out Watkins' online calendar for her upcoming projects which include cooking classes at Whole Foods Market in Pittsburgh and In the Kitchen in Wexford as well as a demonstration series for health fairs in the greater Pittsburgh area. On June 10 catch Watkins band on the KDKA Morning Show from 8 to 9 a.m.

(photos: slasher, masher, billboard, cover girl)

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Singing Chef Turned 2 Loves into Full-job

By Gladys Edmunds USA Today Wednesday October 12/04

It's always a pleasure for me to bring to light innovative and creative entrepreneurs. They provide great ideas many of us can use for business development and they serve to spark our own creativity.

Olga Watkins is one creative and innovative woman. Olga has two money-making talents to choose from: music or cooking.

From an early age her parents, both ministers, made certain that she had formal training in piano, violin and singing. Stage shyness was no problem for her because she started singing solos in church at age 2. Olga loved singing and made extra money throughout her life singing everything and in every place from solos in religious ceremonies, to singing telegrams as a part-time job, to grabbing parts in stage plays.

Her other great love is cooking. Through their church's missionary work her parents sponsored refugee families from all over the world. This exposure gave Olga a peek into the culinary delights of many cultures. And she learned to love cooking and eating various ethnic meals.

Job searches for Olga often led her to apply for work in restaurants. This gave her a double-edge opportunity. If there was nothing available in the kitchen, she would often sell the restaurant on hiring her to entertain customers with her singing.

She managed to get into kitchens of a number of top restaurants and became an apprentice to several great chefs. This experience, along with a trip through a culinary institute, gave Olga just the thing that she needed to call herself a first class chef.

Several years ago she started a catering service that kept her busy, but she wanted to be something more than just another catering company. Olga told me she noticed that when she sang while cooking and preparing for her clients she would find herself in what athletes call "the zone."

With a little bit of thinking and a whole lot of creative energy Olga launched the business of her dreams that pulled together both vocations she loved — singing and cooking. Thus was born the idea of a Singing Chef.

Olga found that to be successful she had to find the market that would appreciate and benefit from her culinary skills as well as her professionally trained voice.

Her answer to her marketing needs came one Saturday as she was strolling through a commercial district with specialty food stores and noticed that a specialty cookware store had a chef doing a cooking demonstration in the window. Olga stopped into the store and discovered that it often invited guest chefs to come on Saturdays to do cooking demos to help generate traffic. Olga quickly offered her services to be a guest chef for the next Saturday. Olga took the opportunity to suggest that she believed that their business would increase if they allowed her to bring a keyboardist to play while she sang and cooked. On the day of Olga's Singing Chef presentation the specialty show not only sold plenty of cookware but the adjoining food store's sales went up.

That event launched the Singing Chef in a big way. Olga started to get bookings from other specialty food stores as a guest chef and attention getter to increase their business. She has been asked also to do a television commercial for a specialty food store starring as their Singing Chef and doing a singing/cooking demonstration to increase their sales.

I met Olga at a women's conference that I addressed and I can tell you that she sings extremely well and her cooking is outstanding. Look out, Barbara Streisand and move over Chef Emeril, the Singing Chef has arrived.

Don't take my word for this creative woman's talents; see for yourself at her Web site: www.olgawatkins.com. You will be able to see Olga in action doing a cooking demo and singing her heart out.

How many times do you have an idea for your business but hedge because it is too far out of sync with the rest of the society's idea of business? Or, you haven't seen anyone else doing it, and think that you will be laughed at or ridiculed? So you throw the idea out fearing that it won't be taken seriously. It takes courage and confidence to follow through on internal directives or hunches especially when they are different.

Olga has that necessary courage and confidence. And she is a reminder to all of us to leap with confidence and courage — You can safely land on your feet.

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Caterer Slices, Dices and Sings

By Suzanne Martinson, Pittsburgh Post Gazette, Thursday September 2, 2004

The singer's name entices -- Olga. Her venue isn't commonplace, either -- a cooking-store window in the Strip. And while some might spurn the title, she dotes on diva.

But, baby, oh, baby, this bluesy singer can cook.

In one more example that food is sexy and that sex sells, 34-year-old Olga Watkins stokes up the kitchen heat and her powerful voice from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on alternate Saturdays in the window of Wholey Balcony Cookware. In a more traditional venue, she appears next Thursday with pianist Craig Davis and drummer Subha Das at the New Crawford Grill, Station Square.

This Saturday at Balcony Cookware, in honor of the Labor Day weekend, Watkins will demonstrate how to prepare chicken wings and some vegetarian dishes that would be good for the holiday weekend, singing along all the while with songs made famous by the likes of Aretha Franklin, Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald. She loves Etta James songs.

Even if cooking makes you happy, how often have you burst into song?

Watkins, the owner of Elite Catering, recalls the first time she combined cooking with singing. She was doing a contract dinner for a country club's Valentine's Day party, which had a sit-down seven-course dinner with a choice of three entrees. There were three other people in the kitchen, including the dish washer.

"We cooked 180 covers [restaurant talk for number of guests]," she recalls. "I was delirious by the time I came out of the kitchen. I had booked the band I worked with, and I sang the last two sets with the band."

Still, as a caterer who does corporate and private events, she's used to juggling tasks and having it all come out without burning the brulee or straining her sultry singing voice.

One of Watkins' most memorable two-fers was catering the VIP Tent for the Pittsburgh Airport Area Chamber of Commerce's "Wine and Dine in the Park" at Robin Hill Park. The menu included elaborate chocolate desserts, cheeses and fruits, and puff pastry.

"There's always a catch in a catered event," she says. "Someone was late, the time got set back, and the hour I had allotted to run home" to Coraopolis evaporated.

"I changed [for the performance] in 10 minutes in my car. I was sticky. I had chocolate and powdered sugar all over me."

In an increasingly competitive market, with the opening of the Waterfront in Homestead and the eventual completion of the SouthSide Works, longtime business people are inspired to try new ventures such as food-as-entertainment. Balcony Cookware moved from the second floor of Wholey & Co. to the street level in 2001 and doubled in size last year, according to manager Carol Moorhead.

Seeing people such as Olga Watkins entertain "brings excitement to the Strip on Saturdays," says Robert Wholey of Robert Wholey & Co.

Watkins, who has been entertaining there since June, grew up in West Virginia and moved to the Pittsburgh area 10 years ago. After culinary school at West Virginia Northern Community College in Wheeling, she says, jobs were scarce and she took a position managing a McDonald's. People may pooh-pooh that experience, she says, but "I was in my early 20s, and I learned a lot about training and labor costs. I also found out how food cost works and about inventory controls."

Strict standards of cleanliness are something she puts into place in her own home as well. "We wear gloves at home, too. I tell my staff if we haven't used a whole box of gloves during an eight-hour shift, we're not changing them often enough. To prevent transfer of bacteria, we use tons and tons of gloves and lots of bleach."

One event that has not required cooking is her gig singing the national anthem before the games of the Pittsburgh Passion, the women's football team that plays in Ambridge. "As a woman, it's just fun to participate in that," she says.

This Saturday Watkins will cook on Cuisinart nonstick cookware. On the day we visited, Watkins was backed up by jazz pianist Craig Davis, and we saw her lose her concentration only momentarily -- when her mother brought daughter Ella, 2 1/2, to see her mother cook and sing.

"I call her Diva-in-Training," Watkins jokes.

SAUTEED SHRIMP IN BACON

• 1 pound medium shrimp, raw, peeled and deveined 1 lemon
• 6 to 8 thick-cut slices bacon
• 1 tablespoon Old Bay sea- soning
• Tabasco or other cayenne pepper sauce
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• Cook bacon in saute pan until crispy on medium to medium low heat. Remove cooked bacon from heat, save bacon drippings in pan.

Mix Old Bay seasoning with flour. Pat and dredge raw shrimp in flour mixture and add to hot bacon grease. Cook about 3 to 4 minutes. Remove shrimp from grease, set aside to drain before plating. Add the juice of one lemon and a few dashes of Tabasco to the bacon grease. Stir with a whisk. Should reduce and thicken slightly. If not, add a little flour through a small strainer, 1 teaspoon or less at a time.

Plate with seasoned rice and spoon sauce on top of shrimp.

Serves 4 to 6.

Olga Watkins

Coraopolis Chef and Jazz Vocalist Combines her Passions

By Bob Karlovits Tribune-Review Wednesday August 11, 2004

Coraopolis chef and jazz vocalist combines her passions

By Bob Karlovits
TRIBUNE-REVIEW MUSIC WRITER
Wednesday, August 11, 2004

Olga Watkins is getting ready for what she calls "the best workday I can imagine."

That's because Saturday's daytime gig at Balcony Cookware in the Strip District is a look at her two professional sides, both of which are vitally important to her. Besides cooking and demonstrating items at the cookware shop -- her culinary side -- Watkins also will perform vocally, backed up by pianist Craig Davis.

So, Olga Watkins, what are you really? A jazz singer or a chef?

"Depends on what day of the week it is," says Watkins, 34, of Coraopolis, who performs at local jazz clubs, is the kitchen boss at a local airbase and combines both sides with her Elite Catering business, where she provides food and entertainment.

That's why Carolyn Moorhead, manager of Balcony Cookware store, invited Watkins to the shop.

"I think she will really add to the excitement here on a Saturday," Moorhead says of one of the Strip's most jumping days. "Olga has a lot of personality and showmanship. And she's a good chef. That is why we want her here."

The date will display talents Watkins has been honing for a long time. She has been performing and cooking since she was in her early years in Wheeling, W.Va.

"I could cook before I could read," she says, crediting her mother with helping her develop the skills. Her mother, Liz, now a psychotherapist, grew up as a Mennonite and was deeply in touch with domestic necessities.

At the same time, Watkins was singing at the church of her father, the retired Rev. Curtis Watkins, and getting in touch with musical interests.

She studied music at Chatham College in Shadyside, but Watkins was unhappy with the direction of her studies. In 1988, after one year at school, she took off for Chicago, where she began singing at the Fairmont Hotel.

She was singing mostly show tunes at that time, she says, focusing on classical-operatic vocal skills. "And I found out there are an awful lot of opera singers out there, but not a lot of jobs," she says.

Watkins decided to come back to Pittsburgh and see what would develop -- but not in music. From 1990 until 2002, she says, her voice was still while she worked as a waitress and a bartender, but she tried to spend a great deal of time with chefs to learn about food preparation and event planning.

About five years ago, she began working for Service Care of America Inc., a Georgia-based company that provides kitchen help mostly for military bases and schools. She handles kitchen management at the 911th Air Reserve Station in Coraopolis and a la carte service and special events for the nearby 171st Air National Guard and 99th Regional Support Command Army Reserve Base.

Two years ago, Watkins founded Elite Catering to arrange parties for individual clients, corporations and civic clubs.

Sally Haas, president of the Pittsburgh Airport Area Chamber of Commerce, says Watkins has done excellent jobs catering some chamber events by "creating foods that were the taste behind the temptation."

"People 'ooh' and 'ahh' when they see what she has made, and then it tastes just as good," Haas says.

It was about the same time that Watkins had started singing again, and her musical work became part of her profession.

"If I can get accolades for both sides at the end of the day, it's great," she says. "We just combine music, food for the whole event."

That strong combination seems to exist in her life, too. She has a hard time dealing with the question of whether she likes singing or cooking better. Eventually, she leans toward music, saying performing is "important on a different level because it is built by the soul."

Besides club jobs and the catering performances, Watkins also sings the national anthem at the games of the Pittsburgh Passion women's football team.

There are some powerful musical genes in Watkins' family. Her brother, Reggie, is a trombonist with Maynard Ferguson's Big Bop Nouveau Band. He will be releasing a solo album in September.

Her musical tastes seem to lean toward her brother's. She says she likes Etta James "not for technique so much as her spirituality," but is even more enthusiastic about Aretha Franklin and -- no surprise -- Ella Fitzgerald.

In the gastronomic world, Watkins says, she is less specialized. Her airbase food tends to be breakfasts and lunches, but she enjoys putting together all sorts of dinners for her catering clients.

The two sides of her professional personality come into play in her private business.

"My specialty is throwing parties," she says. "People ask what my specialty is, and that is it:

"I put together great food and a great party."

From the Ohio based, "Get a Life Magazine"

http://www.getalifemagazine.com

"Singers Keeping Day Jobs"

...The duality catches many fans off guard says local singer Olga Watkins. After hearing her silken vocals as she fronts local jazz combos, many fans are surprised to learn that the 33-year-old is also an accomplished chef.

Watkins performs most weekends with the Micah Burgess Trio and the Glenn Quarrie Quartet, but during the days she's wearing the white uniform of a gourmet chef in her job as food and beverage director for the Beaver Valley Golf Club.

A former opera singer who is equally comfortable belting out Aretha Franklin as an aria, Watkins finds both aspects of her career equally satisfying. The hours, however, can take their toll. "Most weeks I'm putting in 60 or more hours. And, I'd have to be happy in my work or I would find myself singing in the kitchen. I'm fortunate to find myself doing something I love for a living", said the West Hills resident who performed recently, for the first time, in her chef's uniform.

Lewinger and Watkins both say flexibility in the work place is key to following their artistic endeavors...

July and August of 2004, Olga was featured on the Welcome Page of http://www.zbands.com 

The USA Today story was recently featured on Dane Carlson's business opportunities web site.

(October 2004) http://www.business-opportunities.biz/archives/2004/10/20/6302.php