Interview with Author Jeffrey Kropp

 

            

 

1. What inspired you to write this book?

I am originally from the Chicago land area. I grew up with plans to play baseball for the Chicago Cubs or White Sox during the season and be an auto mechanic during the winter months in Florida. Fate had other plans for me as I started cooking professionally in 1976. After culinary school which finished in 1979, I was trained by a Swiss-German pastry chef in the art of pastry making. Throughout my 25 year career in the kitchen being the pastry chef in 400-room hotels and cooking for movie stars on sets, I competed in culinary competitions. Competing in these competitions took a lot of time and energy besides working 10 to 12 hours a day, six-days a week in the kitchen. So I set out to discover who, what, when, where and why these culinary competitions started in the first place.

 

2. What exactly is it about and who is it written for?

This book is about how this culinary competition event began in 1900, Frankfurt, Germany. I mixed in the restart of the Olympic Games in 1896 as I take the reader through the Nazi regime in the 1930s and 40s and how the Culinary Olympics were restarted post World War II. The book is written for chefs, about chefs, and for the future of the culinary arts. It is also written for the audience that likes to watch cooking competitions on TV.

 

3. What do you hope readers will get out of reading your book?

I hope that readers will have a new understanding of what chefs go through in order to come up with new menu ideas to present to their patrons. It isn't easy to make a menu today for a restaurant. There are many issues with food now and many allergies that patrons suffer with physically. So chefs have to consider all of these alternatives when organizing a menu. Competing gives the chefs a chance to get out of the kitchen, come up with new menu ideas, and see what other countries are cooking, along with  food trends that are coming up in the culinary arts, as well.

 

4. How did you decide on your book’s title and cover design?

I was inspired by a photo I discovered from a 1950s chef's magazine that had a chef pouring sauce on the world. I translated that photo to reflect my pastry background and I wanted to keep the title simple and easy to remember. I know from my marketing research that the public didn't know about this event. So it's a secret, until now. I am exposing the secret in the book. 

 

5. What advice or words of wisdom do you have for fellow writers – other than run!?

Very funny and true. Just run! I would say always write from the heart. But consider this, they have to start marketing before the book is published because marketing is very complicated now. The Internet has thrown an axe into the entertainment industry. This includes everything from podcasts to books, TV and movies. All of the different platforms that have developed, due to the Internet, have created their own satellite orbits, as I call them. It is the job of the marketeer to figure out where and what satellite markets they want to get into and then proceed to make those connections to start the marketing process. Or go and climb Mount Everest, then the marketing may not seem so difficult to conquer. I also highly recommend producing a book promo video so their readers get a taste of who they are in person. Here's the link to my video; https://youtu.be/Rhx5F7TFp2M

  

6. What trends in the book world do you see -- and where do you think the book publishing industry is heading? 

This answer is anybody's guess. From what I have seen so far, the book world will become a bit more complicated because there are people out there who say they can publish your book and/or promote your book for a lot of money, but they don't have the experience to accomplish that part of the deal, or they don't have the connections either. These people are only eager to get their hands on your money. Be careful who you pick to work with today for tomorrow. Business has become complicated because the writer rarely gets to meet the publisher or editor in the book market of today, which adds to the anxiety of writing a book. 

 

7. Were there experiences in your personal life or career that came in handy when writing this book? 

I had to live the life of a pastry chef and compete in American Culinary Federation sanctioned cooking competitions as well as compete at the Culinary Olympics in Germany. So if I hadn't lived that life, there is no way I could have come up with the book. The American Culinary Federation was formed in 1929 in New York City. They have about 14,000 chef members today.

 

8. How would you describe your writing style? Which writers or books is your writing similar to?

I don't compare my writing style to anybody else because I am breaking new ground with this book. If I had to give an answer for this question, I would say it's similar to the book, Olympics in Athens 1896—The Invention of the Modern Olympic Games. I only say this because that book is historically documenting the restart of the Olympic Games which is what I did with my book, documenting the start of the Culinary Olympics in 1900. By no means am I a scholar or accomplished professor. I am the Dean of Chefs. I know a lot about the culinary arts and I am sharing my knowledge with the world. 

 

9. What challenges did you overcome in the writing of this book?

My career ended abruptly in 2000 after suffering critical injuries from a car accident. Then a second car accident in 2004 finished me off. So my running joke is, "The first car accident knocked me out and the second car accident finished me off." I endured years of physical rehabilitation to pull myself back together. I rejoined the Big Apple Chapter in 2010 in order to get some kind of feeling that my life was back to normal. I produced the newsletter for six years for the organization. If I never went back to the chefs' association, I would have never been told about four books that were donated by Chef Arno, a chef member of the association. He donated these four books—that floated over the Atlantic from Frankfurt to New York City in the 1960s— to the Culinary Institute of America. These books are from 1899, 1900, 1901 and 1902, that Herr Banzer published back in Germany. They were the original books from the German Chefs' Association in Frankfurt. They documented how the Culinary Olympics started and what teams came to compete at the event in 1900. I wouldn't have the history of the event if I had just given up back then. Besides, I beat colon cancer in 2010 too. So I had to carry on with my life and make it count.

 

10. If people can buy or read one book this week or month, why should it be yours?

TV producers want their viewers to think that cooking competitions on TV are new. Maybe they are new to the viewing public, but they are not new to the arena of the competing chef. I am inspired by what people go through in order to get something started that might work or not work. Read my book to get inspired to accomplish something with one's life, no matter how big or how small it is, everything matters. There are many people in the cemeteries with unfinished dreams. Conquer your dreams and you might make the world a better place.

 

About The Author:

 

A Grand Marnier soufflé for Bill Cosby, stuffed cabbage rolls for Hulk Hogan, a velvety chocolate mousse for John Belushi, latticed apple flan for Demi Moore, glazed salmon ala parisienne for James Earl Jones, veal casserole for Hockey great Wayne Gretzky, and steak tartare for Dave Thomas of Wendy’s. European trained pastry/catering chef Dean Kropp has catered to the stars. After graduating from the JJC Culinary Arts Program in Joliet, where they shot Prison Break, Dean has held a wide range of posts, both domestic and abroad. For example, he was Executive Pastry Chef at both the Wyndham Rose Hall in Montego Bay (Jamaica) and the Peabody Hotel in Memphis, former stamping ground of Elvis. Kropp competed in culinary competitions from garde manger—cold food to pastry—where he won bronze to gold medals. Now he has used his culinary training to write about the history of the Culinary Olympics. The name of the book is—The Cooking Olympics-World’s Best Kept Secret. Kropp went to the extent of recreating recipes for his book, then linking a QR code for each recipe, so the reader can watch the Dean of Chefs in action cooking each one on YouTube. For more info, please see: https://readersfavorite.com/book-review/the-cooking-olympics. I started my book promo tour in Germany at the Culinary Olympics in Stuttgart. I continued my tour in Virginia at the US Military competition at Fort Gregg-Adams Army Base near Richmond Virginia. I produced a documentary on the two events and here's the link; https://youtu.be/040lX6q-sgI

 

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About Brian Feinblum

Brian Feinblum should be followed on www.linkedin.com/in/brianfeinblum. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog ©2024. Born and raised in Brooklyn, he now resides in Westchester with his wife, two kids, and Ferris, a black lab rescue dog, and El Chapo, a pug rescue dog. His writings are often featured in The Writer and IBPA’s The Independent.  This award-winning blog has generated over 3.9 million pageviews. With 5,000+ posts over the past dozen years, it was named one of the best book marketing blogs by BookBaby  http://blog.bookbaby.com/2013/09/the-best-book-marketing-blogs  and recognized by Feedspot in 2021 and 2018 as one of the top book marketing blogs. It was also named by www.WinningWriters.com as a "best resource.” For the past three decades, including 21 years as the head of marketing for the nation’s largest book publicity firm, and director of publicity positions at two independent presses, Brian has worked with many first-time, self-published, authors of all genres, right along with best-selling authors and celebrities such as: Dr. Ruth, Mark Victor Hansen, Joseph Finder, Katherine Spurway, Neil Rackham, Harvey Mackay, Ken Blanchard, Stephen Covey, Warren Adler, Cindy Adams, Todd Duncan, Susan RoAne, John C. Maxwell, Jeff Foxworthy, Seth Godin, and Henry Winkler. He hosted a panel on book publicity for Book Expo America several years ago, and has spoken at ASJA, BookCAMP, Independent Book Publishers Association Sarah Lawrence College, Nonfiction Writers Association, Cape Cod Writers Association, Willamette (Portland) Writers Association, APEX, Morgan James Publishing, and Connecticut Authors and Publishers Association. His letters-to-the-editor have been published in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, New York Post, NY Daily News, Newsday, The Journal News (Westchester) and The Washington Post. His first published book was The Florida Homeowner, Condo, & Co-Op Association Handbook.  It was featured in The Sun Sentinel and Miami Herald.