Chris Pierce was working in the kitchen of one of the world’s most famous restaurants when he ran off with the circus.

The 34-year-old chef was at Alinea in Chicago last summer completing a stage (restaurant internship) where he learned all about chef Grant Achatz’s progressive and boundary-breaking cooking. He was also contemplating his next move. That’s when he saw a Craigslist ad looking for a chef for the touring production of “Kooza,” the Cirque du Soleil show at Atlantic Station through March 1. It promised travel, creative freedom and an always-interesting work environment. Sold.

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LOUIE FAVORITE/lfavorite@ajc.com

Cirque du Soleil high-wire performer Roberto Quiros gets ready to feast on what chef Chris Pierce has prepared.

Pierce is one of three chefs who oversees the complex operation that feeds the 120 Cirque employees, along with their families and guests, in a dining room fashioned from interlocking tractor trailers fitted together just so.

He always arrives before the whole encampment to get the first meal put together — campfire style — with an electric burner and whatever ingredients he can cram into a soda cooler.

But within a day he has his kitchen, equipped with such top-tier equipment as a Rational Combi Oven, which can steam and roast. “This kitchen is better equipped than some of the higher-end places I’ve worked,” Pierce marvels.

A cafeteria line fronts the kitchen and separates it from the small dining area set with communal round tables over which Japanese paper lanterns hang. A noisy heating pump and its attendant coils and open duct work keep the interior warm and cozy but makes it all seem just a bit like a containment unit from a science-fiction movie.

The performers come from 16 countries and have vastly different dietary needs — some high protein, others high calorie — and nearly all eschew cream and butter.

“There are some language barriers, but we always try and give them what they want,” Pierce says. “The Russians ask for borscht. Two cities ago, one of the tech guys asked for pho, and I made it for him.”

But there are some daily items: a do-it-yourself smoothie bar stocked with chunked fruit, yogurt and blenders; a selection of dried fruits and nuts; a water cooler filled with orange Gatorade; chunked chicken, tuna and beets in the salad bar.

And a kettle of soup, the top of which clangs to the floor when a performer accidentally drops it.

“Sorry about that!” says the clown Lee Thompson (who plays the pickpocket in “Kooza”). “I guess you can tell I’m not a juggler.”

Pierce and his colleagues also try to localize the menu with regional foods. In Atlanta, that has meant Gulf of Mexico scamp grouper for a fish selection and salumi from Star Provisions, which has been popular with the European performers.

Pierce used the shopping expedition to talk the folks at Bacchanalia, Star Provisions’ sister restaurant, into letting him spend an evening in the kitchen to learn and watch. Even on the road and charged with the well-being of a troupe of circus performers, he still considers himself a student of fine cooking.

The experience, he says, “was awesome. [Owner/chef] Annie Quatrano even gave me a ride home.”