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Jim Alexander, owner-chef of Zebra Restaurant and Wine Bar, is a veteran in the art of fine dining and grand cuisine.
Alexander's 25 years of experience in the culinary world have culminated in a multiple award-winning restaurant. For three years in a row, Zebra has won the AAA Four Diamond Award and the Wine Spectator Best of Excellence Award for its 800-plus bottle wine list and approximately 10,000 bottle inventory. Zebra's success is representative of Alexander's dedication to serving only the best of the best in regard to both food and wine.
Emulating the world-famous Thomas Keller of the French Laundry, Alexander offers a nightly chef's tasting menu of six to 12 courses paired with wines.
"Thomas takes classic technique and methodology and applies contemporary ingredients and presentation," explains Alexander. "That's also what we do here. We start with maybe a consommé or something raw like a salmon tartare, then maybe a poached item -- another light cooking technique. The main event is almost always a roast of some form of hoofed animal. It is a two to three-hour event."
Upon graduating from high school, Alexander dabbled in a few careers from carpentry to machine tool technology, but his heart wasn't in any of them. Then in 1979, he read an article about the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) and found his calling. With no experience in the field of culinary arts, Alexander took a job that landed him in Hilton Head, SC, at Sea Pines Plantation; in just a year, he went from bus boy to manager of the entire restaurant. This gave him the experience he needed to be accepted into the CIA.
"The CIA was and still is probably the best culinary environment in the world. It's all about the food there."
Alexander went on to complete his externship in San Diego. "I was the low man on the totem pole and I got yelled at by the chef a lot," he relates. "But I liked it, I really liked it."
Alexander recalls that some of the best advice given to him in his career was from an instructor at the CIA. "He told me everyone was looking at cook positions and such and said, 'You know all the fundamentals; you need a sous chef position or an executive chef position at a small club.'"
While in school, Alexander got married and had a child — "When I graduated, I had a lot of bills." He took his talent and his instructor's advice and, at the age of 23, found himself back in the South again as executive chef at Highland Country Club in Le Grange, GA.
Jim spent the next 10 years working for country clubs in Georgia until he heard of a job in Charlotte's Myers Park Country Club, where he would end up spending the next 10 years of his culinary career. While at Myers Park Country Club, Alexander met Bill Simms, President of Transamerica's Risk Management Product and Services Group out of Los Angeles as well as the first black member of the club. "He had exquisite taste. He used to have wonderful dinners at the club, and I really loved to cook for him. He was giving away money to organizations and charities and so I came up with the idea for Zebra — black and white — to use his money and my skills. But before I could present my idea to him, he left town."
The name, however, stuck, and about a year later, Zebra opened.
Alexander has many great memories from his career, from spending time on The American Culinary Olympic Team to cooking for members of the Mondavi family. But he realized long ago that to make it in the restaurant industry, one must love it. "There are a couple of things about cooking. You can make people happy, and when you do something right, there is instant gratification. I just had that desire to constantly get that feeling of satisfaction and making people happy over and over again."
Zebra is located at 4521 Sharon Road and is open for breakfast and lunch Monday through Friday, and Monday through Saturday for dinner. Phone: 704-442-9525.
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