Let Paula cook: Top-level chef has focus on kids and the kitchen

Paula Baker is an admitted food nerd.

“I’ve been cooking ever since I can remember,” she said.

Now, as the culinary director at Children’s Beach House, Baker has her fingers in many pies. She cooks for kids in the preschool and summer camp programs, and runs the nonprofit’s full-service catering business, Greater Good Events, all from the CBH building on Lewes Beach.

Baker is still technically part time, but is often at CBH daily to bring her culinary vision to life. Some days, her job is a piece of cake, like the morning she was preparing lunch for a Kiwanis Club meeting.

“It’s going to be steak with a polenta cake, roasted vegetables and a tomato-based sauce. Then we’re going to do a blueberry apple crumble with pineapple green tea-infused glaze,” she said, while briskly working around the commercial-level kitchen.

But she was also brainstorming for a wedding of about 70 people and a St. Patrick’s Day bash in March.

Baker grew up in South Jersey. She said she was fortunate to have parents who liked to cook.

“I remember pulling my chair up to the stove,” she said. “I used to bake apple pies with my dad.”

She played basketball and performed in musical theater in high school, but, she said, cooking was her first love.

Baker joined a program that allowed her to leave school a couple of days a week to work in the kitchen of a hotel in Cherry Hill, where they catered meals for as many as 2,000 people. She also worked at a high-end grocery store after school. That experience helped her get into the Culinary Institute of America in New York.

It’s the CIA that only handles secret ingredients. Anthony Bourdain, Anne Burrell and Geoffrey Zakarian are among the school’s celebrity chef alums.

Baker took classes in food safety, nutrition and menu writing, to name a few.

“My favorites were fish kitchen and breakfast. I liked breakfast because you had to be up at 3 a.m. to have everything prepared and ready. It was high-volume because you were cooking for the whole school,” she said.

She said she did not do so well in the wine course.

“It was extremely difficult, memorizing all the terroirs,” she said.

Like a golfer who goes to the range every day to perfect their swing, culinary students also practice, practice, practice.

“Every day, we would chop a couple of onions and parsley and make tomato concassé, honing those knife skills,” she said. “We would take pastry class homework back to the dorm and practice intricate piping. Every day, it was piping, piping, piping.”

Baker said all of the produce they sacrificed for practice would go to higher-level kitchens to be used in sauces and soups, so as not to waste anything.

She said there was a course in classic table service, where students were the guinea pigs for a three-course meal.

“I don’t have any starving college student stories,” Baker said.

After graduation in 2000, she became a sous chef at a Philadelphia restaurant. She then went back to the hospitality world, working in the kitchen of a hotel in Plymouth Meeting, Pa., handling weddings, bar mitzvahs and Easter buffets. That is also where she met her husband, who was the banquet manager there.

The couple then transferred to a hotel in Boston, Mass., where Baker perfected her own version of “chowdah.”

“It was called two-city chowder. The New England would hold the Manhattan in the middle. They said, ‘You can’t do that; it’s blasphemy.’ But people loved it, and it turned out good,” she said.

A desire to be closer to family brought the Bakers to Sussex County in 2004. She worked part time at Isabella’s in Bethany Beach while she raised her daughters.

In 2004, Baker went to work for a man who would change her life, legendary restaurateur Matt Haley. She started at Betty’s on Coastal Highway, then Fish On’s catering business at Five Points, both owned by Haley’s SoDel Concepts.

“Matt was a great person. He was all about seasonality. You use what’s available. He was all about creativity and always encouraging us to do new things,” she said.

Baker said Haley was friends with the camp director at Children’s Beach House and brought her over to help reimagine their food program. She was working part time at CBH and Fish On when she found out Haley had been killed in a motorcycle accident while traveling in 2014. 

“It was a shock, just awful,” she said.

“[CBH] was a tiny operation,” she said. “From a food perspective, it was two weekends a month. The food was awful, frozen and canned.”

Baker rewrote the menu, introducing fresh foods with an emphasis on nutrition.

As CBH started to grow, so did the need for more meals. Baker started preparing two snacks a day and lunch for kids in the preschool program five days a week.

CBH launched Greater Good Events in 2014. It is a full-service, commercial business that operates at the CBH facility on Bay Avenue in Lewes. All of the proceeds from the events they cater go back into CBH programs. Baker was tapped to lead the business in 2024.

“We do weddings [and other events] at our venue right on the bay,” she said. “Everything is made here – high-end hors d'oeuvres, plated meals or buffets, desserts. We have a liquor license, so we can do bars.”

Greater Good will also cater events at off-site venues.

Baker said their biggest event at CBH is the Beachapalooza fundraiser, a weekend-long party that brings more than 300 people to CBH’s beachfront building.

When Baker is not in the kitchen, she’s feeding rescue dogs and cats. She has three of each. She and her husband enjoy going out and letting somebody else cook for a change.

“We nerd out when we go out to eat,” she said. “A menu is well written when there are three things and you can’t pick from them. If there’s more than one, I’ll be back.”

Yes, Baker has her favorite, and not-so-favorite, local places to eat. She said they go to some restaurants just for the apps. 

She also has her favorites to make at home and at work.

“I like to dry-age steaks, so flank streak. I marinate it. Grilled or seared. And potato gratin,” Baker said. “I’ve been doing more baking [at CBH]. We have a chef who owned a bakery, and we’ve been working with choux dough, the type of dough that you would make cream puffs or eclairs from. We’ve been messing around with different fillings.”

For Baker and CBH, it’s all about learning. She brings kids into the kitchen to teach them about healthy eating. Sometimes, that means students have to learn from their mistakes.

“I had a small group of campers baking with me. We were making apple crostatas. One of the kids decided not to wait their turn for the sugar and used salt, that they thought was sugar. You can imagine the surprise and laughs. They gave it to camp counselors just to see their reaction,” she said.

Just like when she was learning how to be a chef, teaching about healthy foods involves repetition.

“Hopefully I can influence them to have good eating habits. We talk about nutrition again and again. There is no amount of watermelon I could serve that would be too much,” she said.

Baker’s emphasis on nutrition earned her a certificate of appreciation from the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 2019 for her dedication in preparing healthy meals.

She said many of the chefs at local restaurants have come up through the ranks, rather than attending culinary school.

“I want [children] to learn that they can get a good job in the culinary field without having to go to college,” Baker said. “It’s amazing to think that when kids grow up they might remember chef Paula teaching them how to cook.”