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If you think about it, seemingly unrelated professions like chefs and musicians do have characteristics in common, and creativity, dedication and self-discipline are among the many qualities that define Executive Chef Laura Owen, “In the Kitchen” this week.

“My parents were dabblers in a gourmet cooking group when I was 13 and attending high school in York, Pa. This was in the late 1970s and, as I recall, pretty much avant-garde stuff like roast suckling pig that smelled up the house.” Executive Chef Laura Owen explained.

“I remember I’d sit at the top of the stairs and listen to the four couples discussing the night’s menu and what they would be cooking next. They rotated and met at a different house every month. I guess it made an indelible impression on me, because I was only a tween-ager when we were living in Pennsylvania.

“We moved three times when I was in high school, I was a sophomore in Cleveland, and when my dad’s job took us to Atlanta I was a senior on the verge of graduating high school and undecided. I remember being in the kitchen with my mom when she asked ‘Well, do you want to go to cooking school in France?’ — because I had three years of high school French — so I shrugged her off and ended up going to the University of Georgia with a music scholarship for violin.” Chef Owen said, adding that by the first year she realized that violin music wasn’t the career path she wanted to follow.

We ingeniously inquired if that was when standing in hot kitchens moved to the front burner. Equally deadpan, she replied, “Well, we’re all a little crazy in our own way. Anyway, I started working part-time in upscale fast food, family places like Bennigan’s and Morrison’s Cafeteria in Athens, Ga. I quit school but stayed in the area, hanging out with my music friends. They graduated and went their separate ways, while I made up my mind to go to New York and enroll in the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park. The school had a beautiful campus, actually the only C.I.A. anywhere at the time. Hyde Park is located near Poughkeepsie, not far from New York City. I went there twice. I’m not a city person.

“I knew it was a two-year course and I would be going back afterwards to Atlanta where my folks lived. It was great. I remember the day I arrived. I knew this is where I belonged, and this is what I wanted to do. It just felt right that August 1990,” Chef Owen declared, noting that classes were designed as a block system with each class three weeks long: The first class explored culinary history from the late 1890s to the 1920s and focused on chefs like Antoine Careme and George Auguste Escoffier, guys who started the idea of being a fine chef.

“We learned that culinary math is supremely important in this business — not teaspoons of baking soda — more like cost analysis for the recipes as well as the individual products and portion control. All the things relevant to a restaurant kitchen including the knife skills essential to work the line. Once we got through basic classes the first five or six months we moved on to culinary foundations such as stocks, mother sauces and the basic cooking techniques: sauté, braise, poach and roast. It doesn’t just happen, you know.” Chef Owen stated.

Then, midway through the course the culinary students begin their hand-on training by going out to approved sites for hands-on experience called “externship.” Chef Owen explained.

“We weren’t left to our own devices; we had a program we had to follow. I had to critique the restaurant and write a weekly essay about the prior week as I progressed through the different stations. I was learning the salad, fry, grill and sauté stations. That particular restaurant had a pizza station manned by a gentleman named Glenn English, who was Todd English’s father. He taught me to throw a pizza crust — a very lovely man.”

Chef Owen related she was around 21 then, and had opted to do her four or five month externship at the Buckhead Diner because she wanted to get back to Atlanta. The Buckhead wasn’t really a diner, it had an open kitchen that gave it a diner feel, but very upscale, she said.

“That was when I got my first taste of being the only woman in a restaurant kitchen and my trial by fire literally when the expediter of the line, in the open kitchen, set my toque on fire with his chef’s torch.

“I was on dessert station, totally absorbed in caramelizing the sugar on several crème brulees with a chef’s torch, when the line expediter began fooling around and torched my toque. Still intent on achieving the optimum caramel brown on the crème bruleès, I didn’t respond to his warnings so he reached out and knocked the now flaming toque off my head to the floor. When I asked him why would you do that he replied that he wanted to see how I’d react! That was my big test and after that things were just fine with the guys on the line.” said Chef Owen.

Then it was back to school, refining the techniques learned off campus and into baking and pastry making. “You know, making rolls and bread, along with folding and re-folding dough to make Napoleons, Danish and croissants — all from scratch. Then I graduated, and went back to Atlanta to the Ritz Carlton, which was the flagship property in 1992.

“I was a rounds man, which is just what it sounds like, making the rounds, working in the banquet kitchen then the grill room, filling in for the sous chef when she took a month off in the summer, and also the lunch café of the hotel.” Chef Owen said, relating she worked there only one-and-a-half years because the executive chef was an old-school European who wasn’t keen about a woman in the kitchen because he really wasn’t interested in promoting any women. Then in September 1993, through a Ritz co-worker she heard about a position — food and beverage coordinator — at the Naples National Golf Club. It was very exclusive, the kind that required a quarter million to join, and that was 15 years ago.

“At the time, I felt it was a terrific opportunity for me career-wise and I worked there two-and-a-half years. I came in at the inception of the club and set up the food and beverage program — hired the staff, fired the staff and created the menus and wine list. That’s where all that culinary history came into play and I was applying that knowledge to what I was doing there as the dining room manager and executive chef. It was a great job; I was pretty much on my own and reported only to the president of the Naples National Golf Club. There were no houses, tennis courts or swimming pools; the property was modeled after the Augusta Golf Club in Georgia and also Pine Valley Golf Club in New Jersey.

“Then an opportunity surfaced to work for the award-winning Chef Peter Marek, who was just opening the now-famous Collier House Restaurant with Penny, his wife and partner. It was just the two of us in the kitchen — I suppose you could say I was Peter Marek’s sous chef. I worked for Chef Marek eight seasons, and when they were closed I helped in restoring the venerable Collier House. One summer we sanded the original floorboards, all by hand. When you come down to it, the floorboards were actually antiques like fine furniture, so we had to treat them gently.

“In 2004, I decided to try the mainland and started as line cook at the multi-award-winning Café Lurcat on Fifth Avenue South in Naples. That position came about through an earlier interview I had with their Corporate Chef and Campiello’s chef at the time when they were looking for a sous chef. I didn’t get the job and continued working for Peter. Then I learned that now, Lurcat was looking for a sous chef, so I applied. Both chefs remembered me, but the position had already been filled.” Chef Owen said, explaining that the corporate chef called her back and said he really wanted her there and offered her line cook at a very generous hourly rate with the promise she would receive the first sous chef position available.

“It took three months — that’s when the California chef took off and I was promoted to sous chef at Café Lurcat, and I was there for almost all of four seasons when I began to miss the less hectic lifestyle I enjoyed on Marco Island. I had been keeping in touch with Chef Marek, and he mentioned that the Bayview Restaurant was seeking a new executive chef. I applied and I started working there in June 2007. It was an exciting opportunity for me. As my first executive chef job I had my work cut out for me because the restaurant, at the time, was not living up to its potential.

“So, Gligor (Tuparov), the restaurant’s general manager, the kitchen people and the rest of the staff worked very closely with me to define the new direction of the restaurant. Then when Jacquie and Curt Koon came aboard as our new owners things really started happening. We formed a new team to include Jacquie and Curt and we’re planning our new menu and will be making some cosmetic changes in the dining and bar areas when the restaurant will be closed the week of Sept. 15.

Chef Owen noted she will be operating an al fresco arrangement to keep The Bar open that week: “We’re borrowing a gas-fired grill from the Marco Island fire department to cook on, and I will be offering our loyal patrons a limited menu — you know, light grill stuff — and the bar will be serving the usual beverages. Then, of course, when we re-open on Sept. 22, we will be opening with a new name. I’m really excited about our new future and looking forward to a great season!”