Alex Drumm
Executive Chef
“Entering the culinary arts was the best decision of my life,” says Bon Appétit Executive Chef Alex Drumm. “I found a new direction for myself 24 years ago at Newberry College, where I was in a learning environment in which everyone around me had a similar direction.”
After graduating, Alex spent many years in the hotel restaurant industry and at Harvard University Dining before joining Bon Appétit in 2019 at Emerson College in Boston.
During the pandemic, Alex and a small Bon Appétit team at Emerson College continued to feed students, faculty, and staff (including the President’s Office) who had to stay on campus, every day. They also served breakfast, lunch and dinner to 20 young adults in a homeless youth program, Bridge Over Troubled Waters.
“Several parents have reached out to us and expressed how much they appreciate how Alex works with their students. He provides them not just with healthy, delicious, and safe food on a daily basis, but he also takes the time to get to know them,” said General Manager Dawn Sajdyk. “That intentionality especially comes through with how he interacts with our own team members. Alex is something special.”
Favorite pandemic-era go-to meal: “There’s a Dominican restaurant near my house that makes these Cuban sandwiches — they’re delicious. And they serve them with a side of French fries and maduros (sweet plantains) and usually I’d get the plantains and the rice and beans, but that has been like my go-to. And that’s something I think we could make here, we made it last year, but I think we can definitely still make that for students.”
Someday he hopes to once again eat at … “my favorite restaurant, the Island Creek Oyster Bar. Obviously, I love the oysters and their clam chowder is great, but I usually ordered whatever fish special they were serving. Best of all, they have this signature dish, a banoffee pie. It’s like a banana-enclosed pie, oh it’s so delicious, and it never comes off the menu! Honestly that pie is one of the reasons why I always go there.”