Even while growing up in the North Georgia mountains, Tim Gaddis always suspected the shiny green can of Kraft Parmesan:
That ain’t right. Surely the Italians didn’t make it that way.
Pursuit of the truth led him first to cop work in his backyard, making DUI arrests and getting fat on too many Waffle House patty melts.
Law beckoned him away from the Appalachians and transplanted him as a stay-at-home dad in metro Atlanta. Cable TV rekindled his old suspicions that there was way more to the world of food.
Now 38, Gaddis has aged to fine form himself, judging and serving 110 top cheeses from the chilled cases of Star Provisions.
As a cheese monger, Gaddis now knows the history and taste of the uppermost echelons of curddom and their optimum combinations.
“Most everyone who gets out of law enforcement goes into security consulting or something similar,” said longtime friend Mike Lanier, an investigator with the Coweta County Sheriff’s Office. “Tim isn’t the exact opposite, but it’s close. He’s still serving people and giving people what they ask for.”
“Tim turned his garage into a mancave with sports and cigars,” said his workout partner Jim Ibarra. “It’s a contradiction with the wine and cheese image. He’s real manly with a gentle side to him.”
Geography and necessity create cheese, and shaped Gaddis. Those forces pushed him gradually out of peaceful mountain confines to bustling urban commerce.
Around the world, milk from cows or goats will spoil unless a farmer gets busy making cheese. Likewise in North Georgia, Gaddis watched his grandmother butcher a pig and pack legs, shoulders and back in a salt box.
“I knew where the sausage and ham came from,” he said on a recent afternoon at work. “It was real food, solid stuff, nothing fancy or exotic. You had to do that. You can’t eat all that meat [immediately].”
He wanted work like that, measured in comfort and security. He considered culinary school from bonding with his father, Robert, over the outdoor flame.
“Let’s put this on the grill or smoker and see what we can do,” his dad would say.
Gaddis ended up in jail instead, thanks mostly to his mom, Kathy, the Gilmer County deputy clerk of court. She helped him get a job booking suspects. After police academy, Gaddis spent nearly a decade patrolling the winding, tree-lined mountain roads about 90 minutes north of Atlanta.
That car ain’t right. That person has no business driving that way.
A single traffic stop grated his nerves, but he loved the sheer adrenaline rush. Everything he did could be picked apart in court months later. He knew he better get it right. The rest of his shift might be dead quiet. Someone described law enforcement as “extreme boredom interrupted by moments of chaos,” and Gaddis concurred.
Diet was a casualty.
“I just picked up whatever I could find, especially at 2 am,” he said. “Cheeseburgers at McDonald's -- it’s there, and there’s a discount to the officer. Instead of $5, I’m paying $2, and hey, I can do that twice!”
At 6-1, Gaddis ballooned to 270 pounds. Through observation skills and judgment, he reshaped himself to 200.
This junk food ain’t right. What if I make something healthy to take to work and drop some weight that way?
Gaddis' cooking and depth impressed one local lawyer used to Lean Cuisines and stereotypes. They married in 1999.
“I was smitten by him,” Kim Gaddis said. “I thought a police officer would only like guns and violent movies, and that’s so opposite of him.
“There is a limited view of life when you live in a really small town," she said. "It’s not like you’re thinking of going to New York City and being a chef. But Tim was always reading and nourishing himself.”
When she got hired by an Atlanta firm, they settled into a house near the Marietta square in 2001 with their newborn, Nicole. They wanted stability for her, and because Kim made more money, Gaddis became a stay-at-home dad.
“It was me and Mario [Batali] and Emeril,” a joking Gaddis said. “I saw a Food Network special on Steven Jenkins, the author of ‘The Cheese Primer,’ [and] the godfather of bringing cheese imports like fontina to the U.S. I went out and got the book and got into what’s going on in cheeses.”
Gaddis overcame his wife’s doubts to land scholarships for culinary school, sell their house and move to New York City. He hoped to open his own restaurant.
“I thought his idea would go away,” she said. “Our families thought we were crazy with this pipe dream.
“But he supported me when I was doing the job I loved, and I had to do the same thing for me. When we make a decision, we go for it. We’ll never know unless we try.”
At the French Culinary Institute, Gaddis learned basic cheese plate 101 from Rob Kaufelt, founder of the famous Murray’s Cheese. Kaufelt hired Gaddis at his Grand Central Station location.
“It was fast-paced, and that helped me from getting too scared and nervous,” Gaddis said. “The first month I dropped 20 pounds. I learned all the cheeses by grazing all day on them. It was like the Dr. Atkins protein diet.”
He shaved his focus to cheese when Star Provisions needed help in that department just before the 2003 holiday rush. Owner Anne Quatrano tasked Gaddis with touring creameries near and far to return with the best curds and stories.
In his reinvented life, the threat of bodily harm hasn’t disappeared, only changed.
“He’s had some horrible cuts on his hands from the knives,” Kim Gaddis said. “There’s always an element of danger.
“But he’s never said he really wished he had stayed in police work,” she said.
“Sometimes we’ll see a movie with a lot of cop action, and he misses the camaraderie,” she said. “He loves the competition part of what he does. He loves to watch ‘Top Chef’ and ‘Hell’s Kitchen,’ the crazy guy who yells at people. ... All in all, he’s much happier and more fulfilled.”
If you have an idea for this occasional series on reinvented lives, please e-mail michelle.hiskey@gmail.com.
