Chef Reginald Watkins, Charlie Trotter’s first hire, New Orleans saucier, dead at 65

Chef Reginald Watkins was the first employee at a restaurant that dazzled diners, trained generations of chefs and helped make Chicago a global gastronomic destination.

He was a Triton College student with little kitchen experience — at a catfish place and a Chili Mac’s diner — when he applied for a job at a new restaurant that was going to open on Armitage Avenue.

In a 2007 interview with the Chicago Sun-Times, Mr. Watkins remembered how he had to weave around construction in the building to find the chef, who greeted him, saying, “I’m Charlie.”

“I can’t cook,” Mr. Watkins told Charlie Trotter. “I just want to get in.”

“Reggie, I like your honesty,” Trotter replied that day in 1987. “Come back here, I’ll find something for you to do.”

Mr. Watkins started out sweeping floors and doing dishes at Charlie Trotter’s.

Trotter’s first hire became a trusted chef who helped anchor the kitchen, arriving early to start the evening’s sauces for the acclaimed restaurant, which operated until 2012.

And he was the only one who called Trotter “Charlie.”

“He was his right-hand man,” said his daughter Lerita Watkins. “He knew every station.”

Mr. Watkins, who most recently was working in New Orleans as a saucier at one of Emeril Lagasse’s restaurants, died Monday at 65. The cause is still unknown, according to his daughter, who said he was visiting his family in Chicago when he was stricken suddenly and died at a hospital.

She said her father was a valued part of Trotter’s empire because of his philosophy.

“I make Charlie look good,” he’d say.

And, his daughter said, “He had perfect attendance. He never missed a day.”

Al Podgorski / Sun-Times file

The many people Mr. Watkins mentored at Charlie Trotter’s have been contributing to a GoFundMe memorial fund. They were posting memories online of how he’d look out for coworkers, greeting them warmly each day and telling them to be careful not to slip on a wet floor.

Acclaimed chef Marcus Samuelsson once recalled that seeing Watkins and other people of color in Trotter’s kitchen was a welcome taste of diversity in the food business.

“Rigid yet diverse, professional and creative, Charlie’s first employee was chef Reginald Watkins, an African American cook,” Samuelsson wrote for Huffington Post after Trotter’s death in 2013.

Mr. Watkins, who was from Bronzeville and went to Dunbar High School, moved to New Orleans about a decade ago and quickly became part of the food culture there, according to his daughter, who said she has been fielding condolence calls from prominent Louisiana chefs.

“My dad had a lot of connections, and he wanted different scenery,” she said. “He really wanted to know what that New Orleans cuisine was about.”

About three years ago, Louisiana flooding cost him his home and car.

“He had to swim out of his apartment,” his daughter said. “He was in the Navy, and he knew how to swim.”

Still, he loved the warm weather and Big Easy atmosphere, she said: “He told me he was never coming back.”

Friends valued his wisdom and astute observations. If people were griping, she said, he’d advise: “Oatmeal beat no meal.”

At his 20-year-mark at Charlie Trotter’s, he told the Sun-Times, “I don’t think of it as work anymore. It stopped being a career and just became a lifestyle. I just get up and do it. If I’m not doing this, I get lost because the world I used to live in is gone.”

Mr. Watkins is also survived by his sister Gerri and brothers Paris and Christopher Watkins.

Visitation is planned from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday at Leak & Sons Funeral Home in Country Club Hills. His chef friends are working with his family to plan a celebration of his life.

“My dad was a historian. He loved African American culture. He made sure I knew I was an African American girl and I could do anything in the world,” said his daughter, who got a doctorate in education in June from National Louis University.

“I graduated June 20. And, luckily, Dad was able to see that.”