By Roslyn Ryan
Editor

A few years after graduating from Powhatan High School, John Maher found himself on a plane, unemployed, trying to figure out how to say “help” in German. 
   
As stories go, you might not expect one that starts like this to end happily.

Of course, if you knew the real beginning of the story – if you went back to the days when Maher was just a Powhatan kid who loved to cook, who also had a habit of setting big goals for himself and going after them relentlessly – you wouldn’t be surprised that it does.

As of this moment, Maher is 28, and serving as the Executive Chef at Cav Wine Bar and Kitchen in San Francisco, California.

He has a resume as burnished as someone three times his age and a freshly printed – and glowing – assessment of his skills from a San Francisco Chronicle restaurant reviewer.
For Maher, who graduated from PHS in 2000, achieving success in the restaurant world has been no happy accident. Instead it’s been the result of both perseverance and pluck, with plenty of resilience thrown in for good measure.

“I set my sights on something,” he recalls of those early days in school, when he had just made the decision to pursue cooking rather than fine arts, “and I told myself nothing was going to stand in my way.”

* * *

If John Maher’s success wasn’t exactly instantaneous, it also didn’t take him long to find himself working alongside the cream of the food world’s crop.

Even before leaving Johnson and Wales University in Providence, Rhode Island, where he majored in culinary arts, Maher managed to secure an internship in the kitchen of the prestigious French Laundry, the famed Napa Valley restaurant founded by Thomas Keller.

For a budding professional chef right out of school, the experience was nothing short of “surreal” remembers Maher.

“I’d only heard stories about [the restaurant],” Maher said.

The first time he met Keller, who he and his classmates considered an almost mythical figure, “I was speechless.”

Gradually, he says, he became more comfortable and was able to immerse himself in Keller’s style of cooking, which focused on every solitary detail of every dish.

“Everything has to be perfect,” says Maher, who carried that lesson with him after he left The French Laundry for a succession of jobs that carried him through some of the most famous kitchens in the American restaurant world –including the El Dorado Kitchen in Sonoma California and the recently closed Aqua in San Francisco – and beyond.

At one point, unsure of what direction he wanted to head next, Maher took a job his sister helped arrange at an acclaimed restaurant in Germany.

“I happened to be at a point in my life where I could do that,” he says, so he went for it – despite having to pick up as much German as he could on the plane ride over.

* * *

With five years of restaurant experience and so many scenery changes behind him, you might think that John Maher would be ready to settle down and stay put for a while, enjoying the success all his hard work has brought.

But you’d be wrong.

One of the goals Maher set way back when, he explains, was to have his own restaurant by the time he hits 30.

With plans already underway – financing still needs to be hammered out but he’s already working with a realty company to find the perfect place – it looks like he might realize his dream with time to spare.

Maher says he’d like his place to offer a more progressive style of food than is typically found in the San Francisco area, a French-based cuisine that offers an alternative to what he describes as the same old thing.

“Every new restaurant that opens seems to have the same stuff,” he says. “My goal is to shake things up a bit.”

Asked for his advice to the Powhatan High school student standing where he was exactly 10 years ago, Maher stresses the importance of pushing themselves past the boundaries of the community they live in now.

“[It’s important] to take the risks and experience different places and different people,” he says. “Branch out and explore what’s out there.”

Maher said the insight he’s gained from his challenges over the years have built in him the confidence to push himself further and not to be afraid of what might happen.

“It’s a big scary world,” Maher said, “but you have to take the first step.”