Meet the 'Trummer's on Main' Chef

In less than two years as the executive chef of Clifton’s upscale Trummer’s On Main restaurant, Clayton Miller has crafted an adventurous menu that’s won him accolades as one of America’s top up-and-coming chefs.

But to hear him tell it, he was lucky to even find himself pursuing a culinary career, one he fell into with a little bit of luck.

When the Pittsburgh native graduated high school, he didn’t have any career plans, and was even lukewarm about attending college and maybe majoring in business. He ended up going to college in Philadelphia to study hospitality management.

“I kind of had a desire to go into restaurants and hotel, but nothing overriding. It was just something I kind of thought I might like. That was it. I had nothing else to go on.”

At college, he said he put in a bare minimum of work. He was a self-described unmotivated, immature student, and graduated with a 2.1 grade point average. His parents had promised to pay for his college education, but anything after four years was up to him.

With many of his friends moving on to graduate school, Miller knew he didn’t have the grades to follow suit. Cooking, however, was something that interested him. He thought about getting into the restaurant business.

He enrolled in culinary school, not with the intention of really ever being a chef, but to gain a background in food so he could run a restaurant.

“Essentially, once I got into it, I never looked back,” Miller said. “It was that simple. I got in there and I went, ‘I like this. This is fun.’ I enjoyed going to work. I was stimulated by it. It was at the exact same time of waking up and realizing I was on my own, I grew up real fast, in a hurry.”

Miller took over at Trummer’s in July 2009. A year ago, Food & Wine magazine named him one of their "10 Best New Chefs," a list the magazine’s editors and writers take a year to compile.

“I had no idea they were here, or when,” Miller said. “I found out, basically, with a simple phone call one day in the kitchen. Completely unexpected.”

When that call came, Miller said it took a moment for him to realize who he was talking to, and that the woman on the other end wasn’t pulling a prank. “I thought for sure it was one of my buddies I used to cook with,” he said.

The magazine picked him for having a menu that was unique and original while still approachable to the average diner.

He called the first six months after getting the accolade “a real whirlwind,” mostly for all the travel. First they flew him to New York, put him in a fancy hotel and treated him like a rock star. Then they sent him on a Food & Wine event in Aspen, Colo., followed by another trip to California’s Napa Valley.

“I said to my girlfriend, 'You realize next year’s going to be a let-down for us?'” he joked. “You couldn’t ask for any better treatment. They were really generous.”

Washingtonian Magazine in January 2010 also voted Trummer’s On Main as No. 54 out of 100 on its list of Best Restaurants. Miller said what amazes him is how that list likely was being compiled in the first few weeks after the restaurant’s mid-2009 opening.

“It’s great when someone says something nice about you, but if it doesn’t help your business, ultimately that’s the most important thing. So it helped with that – at least, we feel that it did. There’s no way to directly track it,” he said.

At Trummer’s, the weekends are busier than weekdays, “but the food can’t really change. You have to be just as good on a 200-cover night as you are on a 50-cover night. When you design the food you have to always keep that in mind here.”

Miller, 39, said what’s most important to him about his menu is that he offers delicious, interesting dishes grounded in classic meals.

“It’s got to be something somebody will remember, not only because it was good, but because it was something they can’t find elsewhere. But in the same breath, that they weren’t confused by, they didn’t get up scratching their head."

Restaurant proprietor Stefan Trummer opened the eatery in the former Hermitage Inn with wife Victoria, a Clifton native. He said he’s happy to have found Miller.

“He is, I think, a perfect fit for the restaurant and for the area. The food is just outstanding. I really believe in what he’s cooking, what he’s doing in the kitchen,” Trummer said.

Miller’s career has taken him to fine dining establishments in California, New York City, Atlanta and most recently in Orlando, where he was the executive chef at a Ritz-Carlton under celebrity chef Norman Van Aken.

“I was given freedom to do what I wanted, but at the end of the day, it was his restaurant,” Miller said of Van Aken. “When you’re working for a celebrity chef, people come there expecting his food. That you can’t argue with but it ultimately led me to looking for something else.”

Miller painted a somber picture of what celebrity chef culture is doing to the nation’s culinary schools, and the not-so-reputable cooking schools that have popped up in the last decade, opening their doors to naïve chef wannabes at exorbitant cost to the students.

“It’s a vast problem, in my opinion,” Miller said. “Everyone thinks you’re going to be the next Mario Batali, and it’s about a one in a billion chance. But the school is painting this glorious image that that’s what you’re gonna be, it’s all fun and games. They’re just cranking kids in and out.”

Miller said when his generation of 30- and 40-something peers came up in the business, they went out and worked for the icons of the industry like Batali, Thomas Keller, Daniel Beaulieu and Wolfgang Puck. Today, some among that crop of chefs are getting their shot at the limelight.

“It’s something that I think, not only myself, but a lot of us struggle with – the guys we worked for, we thought that was our vision,” Miller said. “That we were going to be the next icons. But that’s not the norm anymore.”

“You have to be satisfied with going in and cooking every day, running a business -- and occasionally doing an article,” he added. “That has to satisfy you, because if you’re looking for the other things, you’re going to burn out and waste your career chasing the wrong thing. Because, I’m serious, it’s a hard business. A real hard business.”