Given Rob Varner’s job as a personal chef, the odds are high that a cheerful greeting at the front door will be accompanied by the smell of something delicious being prepared in the kitchen. In his house, cooking and sharing meals is a way of life.
“I’ve always loved food, but I really started cooking back in college,” Rob says as he places two skillets on the stove. An entire bookshelf dedicated to cookbooks peeks in from the pantry. Born in Atlanta, Rob grew up in Mobile and graduated from Mary B. Austin Elementary School and then St. Paul’s Episcopal School before attending the University of South Alabama for a short stint.
“I wasn’t really focusing on the school part,” he admits with a laugh. “So, I took a little bit of a break, and during that time, my dad and I started cooking together. I found out it was something I really enjoyed.” Cooking captured his attention and piqued his curiosity in a way that his regular college courses hadn’t.
Inspired by his newfound interest, Rob took his education in a different direction, applying for culinary school in Boston. After several years of learning the craft, he graduated from Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts in 2011. From there, he went on to work in Restaurant August, a James Beard award-winning restaurant in New Orleans.
“I was always into traditional Southern food, like collard greens and tomato pie, but when I moved to New Orleans, it got me into the more Cajun and Creole side of things.” A Cajun influence of spices and flavor is still evident in some of his menus and go-to dishes.
After his time in New Orleans, Rob moved back to Mobile, getting various jobs in the kitchens of local eateries, including O’Daly’s Hole in the Wall, the Riverview Hotel and Dumbwaiter. But, like so many things, his career was disrupted in 2020. Rob found himself out of a job when the establishment he was working for decided to close in the wake of the COVID shutdowns. Though temporarily unemployed during a time that hit the restaurant and food industry particularly hard, Rob knew he wanted to get back in the kitchen. “My now-wife, Raven, told me, ‘People are getting tired of cooking for themselves and they don’t want to eat out like they used to. This might be a really good time for you to start a private chef business and do your own thing,’” he recalls.
With her support, Rob dove in. He started his business, called Sheepshead Eats, and Raven launched the website and social media accounts. “We started in the summer of 2020, and we’ve been going ever since,” says Rob. Today, he enjoys making home-cooked meals for his clients and catering events that range from dinner parties to date nights to weddings.
In Sheepshead Eats’ early days, Raven handled the business’s online presence. But Rob eventually got to a point where he developed his own photography aesthetic and added his own voice to social media posts.
While Raven is still hands-on with the business, she leaves the digital to Rob. “My posts tend to be a little more corporate,” she says. Given her career, it’s not surprising. Raven currently works for IHG Hotels and Resorts headquarters. Despite being in a remote position, she’s often on camera, donning a full face of makeup and business attire every day in front of her computer. “I work in the government space, so I manage federal government contracts and clients,” she says. “Any major top 25 defense contractor in the world, someone on our team manages them in terms of travel and things like that.”
While at first glance, Rob is the obvious kitchen expert in the relationship, Raven has more experience in the culinary world than meets the eye. “I used to work for Robert St. John, a chef in Mississippi,” she says. “I worked in his restaurants at first and then he hired me as his marketing director, so I was working for him for a long time. That’s probably why I fell in love with chef-y things,” she says with a smile. “I always joke that I worked for a chef named Robert and I’m married to a chef named Robert.” St. John owned his own publishing company and Raven handled the book tours for each of his self-published cookbooks, with some being more memorable than others. “I will say that the worst experience in my career was when he released ‘An Italian Palate,’ and the marinara sauce recipe was messed up in print. There was something like two cups of garlic listed instead of two teaspoons. So, the books all came in and I had to put together a team of people that went through every single book and corrected it by hand.” She cringes at the memory. “It was awful because marinara was in a lot of the recipes in that book.”
Cookbook crisis aside, the couple has a strong love of food, first honed individually and then built together. It might seem like the role of home cook in the Varner household would naturally go to Rob, but the couple divvies up mealtime prep equally. “We kind of do a split,” says Raven. “We usually just touch base in the morning about who’s doing what.” With their own cooking styles and palates, the couple enjoys testing out recipes together.
They also love to entertain for their friends at their home on South Catherine Street. “We have grill outs here all the time,” says Rob. “We also always invite neighbors to stop by and have fun. That’s what I enjoy about Midtown, all the neighborhood camaraderie.” He turns on the burner to heat the skillet, then goes to the refrigerator to gather ingredients. “My family isn’t in Mobile,” Raven adds, “but his is and they all love to cook. I feel like all our family affairs are surrounded by food.”
As much as food is a focus in the family, something else takes center stage these days: the couple’s 1-year-old daughter Aayla. The toddler has quickly taken her rightful place at the head of the table. “She is our one and only. We were in the kitchen one day and caught ourselves just staring at her,” says Raven. “I’m like, ‘She’s cute. We should probably stop staring.’”
The Varners have made an effort to introduce Aayla to a wide variety of foods. “When we got pregnant, we thought that it was super important to start her early with her palate,” says Raven. “We were reading a lot of books about other cultures and how kids eat spices and things like that. So Rob bought this book about what kids could and couldn’t have at different stages and we talked to our pediatrician about it too.”
Raven made all her baby food at home and fed her age-appropriate versions of what she and Rob ate at mealtimes. “She loves fish, and she likes shrimp,” she says. “We have a couple of restaurants that we take her to, and we don’t order off the kids’ menu because it’s always stuff like chicken tenders. We’re friends with the people who own Debris, and they have ‘The Aayla Special,’ which is a little piece of fish and two of their sides, but just a smaller portion.”
Cooking for family shapes Rob’s private chef business, too. In the last few years, he and Raven embarked on a health journey, and his emphasis on clean eating has bled into his work as well. “We partnered with this organization called Chews Wisely Alabama,” says Rob. “It’s part of Blue Cross Blue Shield and their goal is to get Alabamians to eat healthier. Part of my contract is to develop healthy recipes for them.” His repertoire includes mouthwatering meals like vegetable dumplings, grilled citrus-chili shrimp and Cajun chicken quesadillas with chipotle-mango aioli. He finds joy in experimenting with ingredients and combinations to create the perfect dish, both for Chews Wisely Alabama and Sheepshead Eats. His Delta dumplings, composed of a mix of shrimp, crawfish and alligator, are a point of pride for him. “A lot of times, when I’m cooking for my clients, I try to do new things. So sometimes, they’ll be tasting something that I’ve cooked for the first time,” he says as he pours oil into a skillet. It shimmers once it hits the pan, telling him it’s hot and ready. He takes a crab cake and lays it in the skillet. Into another pan, he adds a medley of corn, diced peaches, red onion and jalapenos.
Rob treats every creation with care and intention, from development to final product. “I talk to a client, ask them what they like, what they don’t like, allergies, budget…and then I make a menu off of that. It keeps me from getting bored.” And he knows there’s a unique pressure when handling someone else’s ingredients. “I cooked for a family on Dauphin Island not too long ago. They had gone fishing and caught a bunch of snapper and red fish. And they were like, ‘Hey, we’re going to clean the fish, but can you cook them for us when you come over?’ And I had cooked fish lots of times but it’s different when it’s their catch. And you find yourself thinking, ‘I hope whatever I make will be good enough for them.’”
Rob turns the crab cakes in one skillet and stirs the salsa ingredients in the other. “Casual food is so hard for us because we cook like this all the time,” says Raven. “I mean, we have those random nights when we say, ‘Let’s just go get Taco Bell.’ But we love food, so the other night, we had Dungeness crab for dinner,” she laughs. “We also love doing stove-top shrimp boils,” Rob chimes in. “We’ll go down to the Springhill Seafood Shop and get some shrimp, potatoes and corn and just have a seafood boil. It’s one of our favorite things.” He looks down at the skillet. “And we also love crab cakes.” Rob takes the cakes from the stove and plates them. He removes the warm summer salsa from the burner, seasoning it with salt, pepper and green onions. He’s placing a heap of salsa on top of the crab cakes as Raven comes back into the room, a beaming Aayla in her arms. “Hey!” says Rob with a wide smile, turning from the crab cakes to see his daughter.
It’s a favorite time in the Varner household. Aayla eats small (and sometimes not-so-small) bites of food while watched over by Rob and Raven. “Being a personal chef means I get to make my own schedule,” says Rob. “And this year, I’ve taken a little more time off and haven’t scheduled as much because I have my first child and I want to be there for all those moments with her. It’s a lot more freedom.” In this moment, cooking and sharing meals is at its sweetest.
Chef Rob Varner’s Cajun-style Recipes
Cajun Crab Cakes
SERVES 4
1 cup medium-diced yellow onion
1 cup medium-diced bell pepper
1 celery stick, medium-diced
2 tablespoons minced garlic
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon Cajun seasoning
1 tablespoon Creole mustard
1 egg
1 cup panko breadcrumbs
2-4 dashes Tabasco sauce
Small pinch of salt and pepper
1 pound crab meat, picked through for shells
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1. Combine all ingredients except crabmeat and vegetable oil in a bowl, mixing well. Gently fold in crabmeat to avoid breaking it apart too much. Place mixture in the fridge for 30 minutes to an hour.
2. Place a large skillet over medium heat. Remove crabmeat mixture from fridge and form into 8 small patties of equal size. Add vegetable oil to the hot pan and cook crab cakes 3-4 minutes per side, cooking in batches to avoid overcrowding the pan. Remove crab cakes from pan and serve with Warm Corn Peach Salsa.
Warm Corn Peach Summer Salsa
MAKES 3 CUPS
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 ears of corn, kernels removed
3 medium-diced peaches, skin removed
1 small, medium-diced red onion
1 small-diced jalapeno, seeds removed
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
Zest and juice of 1 lime
1 teaspoon cumin
Salt and pepper, to taste
2 green onion stalks, thinly sliced
1. Heat a medium skillet over medium-high heat. Add oil and all ingredients except for the salt and pepper and green onions. Saute for 10 minutes, then remove from heat. Season with a pinch of salt and pepper and add green onions.
Note: Chef Rob serves this warm corn peach salsa on any pork, beef, chicken or seafood dish.
Honey-Chili Lime Vinaigrette
MAKES 3 1/2 CUPS
1 cup lime juice
1/3 cup honey
3 tablespoons minced jalapeno, seeds removed
1 tablespoon Creole mustard
2 teaspoons brown sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons garlic powder
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
2 cups olive oil
1. In a blender, combine all ingredients until smooth. Taste and season with more salt, if needed.
Barbecue Shrimp
SERVES 2 – 4
1 cup Worcestershire sauce
1 cup seafood or chicken stock
1 cup heavy cream
1/3 cup ground black pepper
1 5-inch sprig of lemongrass, crushed
1 tablespoon Cajun seasoning
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1 teaspoon dried thyme
Juice of 1 lemon
2 pounds head-on, shell-on Gulf shrimp
1 cup cold butter, cut into small cubes
French bread, for serving
1. Place all ingredients except shrimp and butter in a large saute pan set over medium-high heat. Bring to a rapid simmer. Add shrimp and saute for 3-4 minutes. Reduce heat to medium, cover pan and let shrimp steam for 3-5 minutes or until cooked through. Remove shrimp to a plate and set aside.
2. Add cold butter a couple of cubes at a time to the simmering sauce, stirring until they are melted and incorporated. Continue until all butter is melted. Return shrimp to the pan and stir for about 1-2 minutes to coat with sauce. Serve immediately with bread on the side to sop up the delicious sauce.
