I am Chef Brandon Weiler and I was born and raised in chilly St. Paul MN. I’m a 15 year veteran of fine dining, and ran my first restaurant at age 26. I have been working on charter yachts for the past nine years and have been on nearly ninety weeks of charter.
I entered the industry with some prodding from Australian roommates I had in Palm Beach. I thought I might give it a shot for a year or two to see if I liked it; well here I am almost nine years later!
In my many travels I have dealt with all types of situations and galleys that have made working almost impossible. Heavy seas are typically saved for just the crew by the way, when we deliver the yacht to where you will be joining it. I have served 13 year old vegans, and 88 year old men who think I don’t cook my vegetables long enough. The one constant in all of this? I will take as much information from guests as I possibly can, in order to apply it to my work and try to provide those guests with the best food experience possible.
Guests’ diets are a great way for us as chefs to show what we can do, and to create something that even our dieter or guests with allergies never thought they would get. My biggest challenge with a guest was a woman who was gluten, sugar, soy, dairy, and berry-free and I had her for 23 days straight. I got through it and from that last day felt like I could handle any diet I was handed, and have.
I have been asked at times where my favorite cruising grounds are. This is a complicated question as the cruising grounds I have traveled are so diverse. If I had to choose a place to fish and dive I would say Bahamas with no hesitation. However, I spent a summer on a charter yacht M/Y Shogun in Alaska and it was one of the most incredible experiences of my life! I hand-caught salmon in a stream, mushroom hunted, pulled hundreds of Dungeness crabs from pots (with guests of course), watched as a helicopter picked our guests up on an unnamed beach and flew them to the top of a glacier for dog sledding, then back to the yacht. I mean wow!
I would say that dealing with all of that fish and crab was one of my biggest challenges in my years in the galley. We sent one charter guest home with 384 Lbs. of cleaned fish, just for some perspective.
In the end, what I would tell perspective yacht charterers is that we are all very fortunate to serve you. We are in the business of making dreams come true, and business is good. So come see me in the galley if you like, after all, you can do anything you want!
