Profile: Kerry Hieber - Executive Chef

I live in Chicago, IL with my husband of 6 years Brandon and our 2 year old son MJ. I grew up in New Jersey and had many great culinary influences. My mother, who used to cook gourmet meals before she had me and my brother and sister, loved to eat out with us and our father, so we ate at many of the prestigious eateries on the eastern seaboard before I was 10. Ribeye Steaks poeleed with butter and creamed spinach at Peter Lugers Steakhouse, Lobster Bisque and Dover Sole at Doris and Ed’s and Escargot in garlic butter and mushroom caps at La Frommagerie were some of my more notable memories of food.

Meals like those made me realize that there was more to food than burgers and fries. While growing up and attending local community college I worked as a server and wasn’t all that happy with the cooks that I worked with. I found that many of them lacked motivation and didn’t always love what they were doing. But then so many of them did love it and passed their love of food on to the customers. I decided that maybe it was my turn to pass on my love of food to customers. I applied for many jobs and found that they were hard to come by when you had no cooking experience. One person was willing to take a chance on me. He hired me to cook breakfast and lunch in his little 40 seat restaurant. After being trained I stayed there for about a year and moved on to an Italian Restaurant. I was there for approximately 9 months before the Chef told me that he thought I could benefit from some proper training. I applied to the Culinary Institute of America and was accepted. I graduated from there with an AOS in August of 1999.

I loved every minute I spent at that school. I benefitted from the fantastic and talented Chefs that instructed me and took a job in Chicago at the Hyatt Regency Chicago where I stayed for 2 ½ years as the Sous Chef in the 3 meal restaurant. I then moved to Philadelphia with the Hyatt Regency Philadelphia at Penn’s landing and worked there for 2 ½ years as the Chef de Cuisine in the hotel restaurant Keating’s River Grill. I moved back to Chicago and worked at the Westin O’Hare hotel for 4 years as the Executive Sous Chef before being laid off like so many others around me. Then as luck would have it I happened upon the Millennium Knickerbocker Hotel and I've been here since May 2009 and loved every minute.


Kerry Hieber
Executive Chef
Millennium Knickbocker Hotel