Award-winning author of Leadership Lessons From A Chef: Finding Time To Be Great, and Tasting Success: “Your Guide to Becoming a Professional Chef,” Chef Charles Carroll is currently the Executive Chef of River Oaks Country Club in Houston, Texas. River Oaks CC, with 1,500 members and 61 culinary team members, enjoys the reputation of being rated as one of the top five country clubs in the U.S.
Prior to joining River Oaks, Chef Carroll was Executive Chef of Oak Hill Country Club in Rochester, N.Y. from 1996-2000. Oak Hill is rated among the top 20 country clubs in the U..S and has hosted the Ryder Cup as well as U.S. Amateur, U.S. Open, U.S. Senior Open, and PGA Championship tournaments.
Chef Carroll was also Executive Chef and employed at The Balsams Grand Resort Hotel, a four-star, four-diamond resort in Dixville Notch, N.H., for thirteen years. He also served as Apprenticeship Coordinator for one of the country’s leading apprenticeship programs.
Chef Carroll is a 1985 graduate of the Culinary Institute of America and has served as a Coach and Manager for many Culinary Olympic teams, including the U.S Regional Team in 2004 that captured third in the world and the best in the world for Category B, and the Team USA 2000 national team, which received four gold and one silver medal in the world Culinary Olympics held in Germany.
Other award-winning teams coached and managed by Chef Carroll have included the ACF New England Olympic Team in 1988, which won more gold than any other regional team; Team USA Northeast 1992, which placed number two in the world; Team USA National 1993, which placed third in the world competition in Basel, Switzerland; and Manager of the Team USA National Apprentice Team that placed second in the Taste of Canada Competition.
Chef Carroll has received over seventy national and international awards, including chapter Chef of the Year in 1988 and 2005 and the American Culinary Federation President’s Medallion three times over three decades, in 1989, 1999 and 2005. He was the regional and national winner of the Chef’s Professionalism Award in 2008.
Chef Carroll received the Central Regional “Good Taste Award” in 2006 and the Sharing Culinary Traditions Award from the American Academy of Chefs in 2008. He has twice been nominated for ACF Regional Chef of the Year, and The James Beard Foundation selected him as one of the Great Country Inn Chefs of 1993. He was awarded Educator of the Year by the ACFEI in 1993.
In July of 2000, Chef Carroll was inducted into the World Master Chefs Association, and in July of 2001 he was inducted into the American Academy of Chefs. In March of 2002, he was inducted into the Confrerie de la Chaine des Rotisseurs and August of 2005 he was inducted into the Honorable Order of the Golden Toque.
Chef Carroll has been a guest speaker at several ACF meetings, regional and national conventions, as well at culinary classes, colleges and universities. This is his third presentation at the Chef to Chef Conference, having previously delivered keynote addresses at the
Chef Carroll serves as President to the Board of Trustees of the LeNotre Culinary Institute and Secretary Treasurer of the Les Amis d’ Escoffier Society Houston. In 2008, he was appointed chairman of the ACF certification appeals committee and in 2010 he was appointed chairman of the World Association of Chefs Society World Congress, which was held in 2012 in Daejeon, Korea and in Norway in 2014.
Chef Carroll has also had the pleasure of being honored at several colleges and universities. He is the recipient of the Distinguished Visiting Author Award presented to him by Johnson & Wales University, as well as Distinguished Visiting Chef by Sullivan College and honored by Grand Rapids Community College, New England Culinary Institute and Paul Smiths College. Most recently, he was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award by Cordon d’ Or and the Crystal Icon Award by the International Special Events Society.
One of Chef Carroll’s proudest moments was creating “Operation HOT” (Honoring Our Troops). For this project, he led the organizing of a team of 20 celebrities and a support staff, raised $285,00, gathered 30,000 lbs. of show gear and 5,000 portions of Cajun food, and produced a seven-hour, Las Vegas-style show as part of an event that fed 5,000 troops a home-cooked meal in the middle of a war zone in Afghanistan. In September of 2013 Chef Carroll was presented with The Honorable Order of Saint Martin Award, given to him by the U.S. Army for his significant contributions to soldiers based in the Middle East.
This is Chef Carroll’s third time as a Chef to Chef Conference presenter; he also delivered keynote addresses at the 2014 Conference in San Antonio and the 2010 Conference in Palm Beach, Fla. Chef Carroll was featured in a “Chef’s Thoughts” article in Club & Resort Business’ Chef to Chef supplement’s January 2014 issue.
For more information about Chef Carroll, visit www.chefcharlescarroll.com
