About Chef Doug
Chef Doug Gulija started his Culinary Career as many do, by washing dishes. He started at the Old Mill restaurant in Southampton, NY when he was 13 and was taken under the wing of a French Chef from Burgundy. Chef Jean expected a lot out of Doug, but he also taught him a lot, giving him more and more responsibility each year. It wasn’t until a short lived college basketball career that forced him to make a career path change that he entered culinary school at Johnson and Wales in Providence, RI, that he realized just how much Chef Jean had really taught him. ‘I knew how to make hollandaise, pate choux, demi glace….and was so surprised that many of my fellow classmates couldn’t even pronounce some of these techniques much less execute them.”
Upon graduation Doug tried the corporate life and started his career with Marriott Hotels under the tutelage of his mentor Chef Peter Montgomery. It was here that he was provided an environment by Chef Montgomery to really learn and develop his culinary skills. It was also here that he was provided with the business knowledge to successfully operate a kitchen. ‘I got the best of both worlds while at Marriott without even realizing it.’ He eventually left Marriott Hotels to take on his first Head Chef position at The California Grille in Glen Head where he caught the eye of then Vatel Club President Jean Yves Piquet, aka ‘The Godfather’.
Chef Piquet was an extremely influential Chef from the NY Athletic Club in Manhattan who helped countless Chefs in NYC get their start. For whatever reason he saw something in Doug and set up a Stage for him at the venerable Le Grand Vefour in Paris which was the turning point for Doug’s career. Although it was very strenuous and he was there for only there a short while he knew then and there that he had made the right career move. The attention to detail, the quality of the ingredients, the discipline of the brigade system, the respect for both traditional techniques as well as for innovation all inspired Chef Gulija to begin his quest back home.
Back home in the States Doug had his ticket all punched and ready to go as Chef Piquet set him up at the Four Seasons, but Doug’s wife Andi had other plans as they were expecting their second child and she wanted to raise the children in
Doug’s home town of Southampton and not Manhattan. This threw Doug for a loop as the area was so seasonal, but he made the best of it. He started off as Sous Chef at Mirko’s Restaurant in Watermill where he helped them garner their third star from Long Island Newsday. He then took a position as Chef de Cuisine of the original Laundry restaurant in East Hampton and then landed the Head Chef position at a new restaurant in East Hampton called Monterey Seafood Grill where he received two stars from Long Island Newsday, no small accomplishment considering it was not uncommon to serve close to 400 covers on a busy weeknight.
But the opportunity soon came to start his own place in Southampton with his wife Andi, and The Plaza Café was born. It was here after some twenty plus years of experience that Doug finally felt comfortable being called Chef “This title is a right of passage with a strong history that many take very lightly today, but I did not’” The initial intention was to have a casual, low key restaurant that focused on local and sustainable seafood. But the accolades soon turned The Plaza Café into a fine dining destination. Today though Doug has returned to the original plan with what he calls a ‘Return to Cooking’ and not getting caught up in so much of the nonsense of this profession. And as one restaurant critic put it “Chef Gulija feels at ease.”