 It's like that feeling, you know, you put your heart out to prepare a meal and you get the reward of it right then and there It's like a instant gratification Hearing some of the guys say, you know, that's the best meal I've had, you know It just made standing duty on the holiday that much better. It was it was better than my mom Don't tell her that kind of stuff, you know So those kind of things it kind of you know make you feel really appreciated and you know that you're doing good things. I Am senior chief culinary specialist Derek Davenport and I'm the senior enlisted aide to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Typical day as an enlisted aide special program culinary specialists We do household management Maintain Our primary or principals uniforms and just make sure you know things go smoothly because you know traveling can be a little Intense especially when you're on foreign soil and we do all the cooking for entertaining My boss as as we say he hosts his counterparts other heads of militaries and sometimes heads of defenses and we cook for them when they come into the country And it's a snapshot of who we are. So we put our best foot forward and Try to you know, give them that wow factor when they come Around the table because a lot of times around the table is a nice place to conduct business and you can eat and enjoy your meal and have Conversation so you get the show, you know showcase your your talents and skills and abilities on some plates of food that Hopefully they enjoy and hopefully it builds a bridge between our two countries and just helps that international dialogue It's a challenge every day. You have to be flexible and you just never know What's gonna happen? It's never a dull moment days go by fast because there's so much to do. I was denied several times As a junior sailor for positions like these and then I kept screening after that So it took me eight years to get to the place where you know, I wanted to do something a little special a little bit different And this type of environment so I'm very fortunate You can't give up on it if it's something you want to do I mean you're you're in charge of your own career for for the most part just do the right things work hard Learn as much as you can Keep plodding away and it'll come sooner later Unbeknownst to me before I even took this assignment the army had a team that competes at the culinary Olympics I was the first Navy to make the team and I got to compete at the Olympics culinary Olympics last year in Erfurt, Germany and So it's pretty cool Walk away with the gold and the silver medal at the culinary Olympics, and I just was appointed this past year as the team captain for the next Olympic team Armed forces chef of the year and I won that this past year and I competed against 18 other chefs from every branch in the military and they put some phenomenal Food out anywhere from ice carvings to chocolate sculptures and sugar sculptures to live cooking events Where you have to cook your favorite dish and present it before the DUD judges to mystery basket competition That particular competition has been around for 38 years the second time the Navy's won in the history of the competition so that was very a very proud moment and I kind of rub it in at at work because I work with all army folks I said Navy does it again. You know not just football, you know I'd like to work at the White House that's always Been a career goal And I want to get back into a fleet concentration area I can give give back someplace where I can have a little bit more scope of impact among sailors I do that now training the other special programs Enlicit aids culinary specialists in the area DC area and we train twice a month and That kind of it really brightens my day to get put back and give back Stuff that's been passed on to me for all these years that I've been working. I've experienced a lot of different avenues of cooking Both civilian submarine Boots on ground in Afghanistan and now here at the Pentagon and and I cook really good, too So that's an added bonus