Best Chefs in Pittsburgh: Sarah Baugher's Cyclical Cuisine Philosophy Shines at The Speckled Egg
By Olivia Miller
Famed horror author Stephen King once wrote “Sooner or later, everything old is new again.” While this is seen in the reemergence of retro items like typewriters and bell bottom jeans, to The Speckled Egg’s chef de cuisine, Sarah Baugher, this is especially true for recipes and culinary techniques.
Though she had been surrounded by cheffing all her life through her father, Chef Baugher got her start in the kitchen in college where she studied hotel management while working at a restaurant in a “front of house” position. She started cooking, immediately “fell in love” and thought “I want to be in the back.”
From there, the rest was history until the pandemic hit when she was “in a weird place having just lost [her] job.” After connecting with The Speckled Egg’s owners Jacqueline and Nathan Schoedel, she was smitten with the opportunity to expand her career at the establishment and “loved the atmosphere and loved [Jacqueline and Nathan].”
Chef Baugher’s favorite part of being a chef is simply passing down knowledge to “fresh, out-of-school 18-year olds” and “getting to show them something you learned at that age.” To her, cheffing is a “full generational cycle” composed of “[recipes that are] stolen or borrowed or tweaked.” The ability to perpetuate the cycle of sharing culinary secrets and techniques is something that has bonded her and her crew in the kitchen. She says it “feels really good to be with them” and the collaboration is “the stuff that makes you come back the next day.”
This philosophy is apparent in her own cooking. With her father hailing from Italy and her mother originally from the Southern United States, she has learned a style of cooking that is full of “soul and not a diet in it.”
Another aspect of cheffing that has retained Chef Baugher’s interest is the creative collaboration needed in the daily hustle and bustle of the kitchen. She believes the biggest myth behind being a chef is that “it's all about cooking” and says “cooking is the easy part.” Instead, it largely involves “managing people’s emotions” and “putting out fires” both literally and figuratively when tensions run high.
When patrons try items at The Speckled Egg like her tasso ham which is cured and smoked in house, she wants them to be able to “feel in the present” in “a moment of pure love and bliss.” She jokes that her ultimate goal is for them to “take a bite and say ‘damn that’s good.’”
When crafting her dishes, Chef Baugher draws her biggest inspiration from “people [she] has worked with” because they “have inspired me and helped me grow.” Along with her father who she still calls with culinary problems, she credits the Schoedels who “become two of my best friends” as inspirations.
