By Chuck Darrow
To get from Ocean City to Atlantic City you could go through Somers Point, Longport, Margate and Ventnor. But Deb Pellegrino’s route was a little more circuitous than that: Her journey actually took her through the Galapagos Islands, French Polynesia, China and Russia, among other exotic locales.
Since June 2022, Pellegrino, 54, has served as the executive director chef at Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa. In that position she oversees the 16 outlets that comprise the bayside pleasure dome’s restaurant inventory. She is the first woman to hold such a position in an Atlantic City casino.
Pellegrino came to the Big B in 2021. Prior to that, she spent four-and-a-half years running the company (with her husband Mark) that produced MADE Atlantic City Chocolate Bars. That project followed a 19.5 year stint in various culinary capacities at a local gaming hall she preferred not to identify.
But it was where—and by what means—she spent her time before she got hired by that property that really sets Pellegrino apart from the pack. Like so many contemporary stove jockeys, she trained in college (the Academy of Culinary Arts in Mays Landing). But things got really interesting for her after she graduated.
“I had an instructor who liked how attentive I was in class,” recalled Pellegrino, who even as a child had a bent for cooking. “And he liked the food I prepared.
“He cooked for a family in Margate and [in 1992] he said, ‘I’m not able to do it this summer. Would you be able to cook for that family?’ So I started out cooking for them four nights a week.
“I would go food shopping and make four courses for up to 10 or 12 people. And after I got done cooking for them, I would waitress the ‘graveyard shift’ at the Chatterbox in Ocean City.”
Among the guests for whom Pellegrino cooked was a nephew of her employers who worked for Anheuser-Busch (makers of Budweiser beer) in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. He enjoyed Pellegrino’s fare so much that he suggested she join him and his roommate at their house in South Florida. He even offered to help her find a job as a chef.
“I took them up on it,” said Pellegrino, who is known throughout Borgata as “Chef Deb.”
“I went down to Ft. Lauderdale, I slept on their couch; I cooked dinner and did their laundry. That was my rent. And they said they were gonna hook me up…for a job as a pastry chef or a sous chef.”
However, her friends’ assistance proved to be unnecessary as Pellegrino decided to take matters into her own hands.
“So,” she continued, “I see these massive motor yachts parked at Pier 66 in Ft. Lauderdale. And I thought, ‘I need to get on that.’ I grew up water skiing every day in the back bays of Somers Point and Marmora. I loved the water and wanted it to be a part of my life.”
Armed with what in Yiddish is called chutzpah, she made her way onto a 187-foot-long yacht called the October Rose and asked to speak with the chef, who, much to her surprise. agreed to see her. She expressed her desire to cook on board such a vessel to him, but the chef was hardly encouraging.
“He said to me, ‘Honey, it’s gonna take you a long time to get on a boat this big.’ But he recommended that I go down to a crew- placement agency and give them my resume. So that’s exactly what I did.
“I met with a gentleman who used to be a ship’s captain and he owned his own crew- placement agency. I gave him my resume; he was very impressed that I had a culinary degree. And he said, ‘You know what? I have a captain that’s not happy with his chef, and if you talk to him the same way that you speak to me, I guarantee that you’ll get the job.’”
“After an interview, the captain said, ‘I’m gonna have you come on board the yacht for a week, and have you cook for the crew. And if the crew likes your food, we’ll invite you to do a trip down to Miami. And if the owner’s chef likes your food, then you can get the job.
“So we leave Ft. Lauderdale and head down to Miami. And I’m sick as a dog. It’s the Intracoastal Waterway, it’s really rocky. But I didn’t care. I saw this itinerary hanging [on the wall] that the yacht was gonna be leaving Ft. Lauderdale, go through the Panama Canal, Galapagos Islands, French Polynesia, China, Australia, Jakarta–it’s basically the world in a two-year tour!”
Pellegrino aced her tests and got the job—which included “provisioning” the supplies needed to accommodate passengers and crew—something she had never even heard of before, much less done.
But she “figured out what I needed to do” and off she went—accompanied by more seasickness. But, she offered, “I was gonna figure this out. So off to sea we went.
“My first tour was the South Pacific Rim tour, and I was out of the country for a year-and-a half. I got to fish every day. I had to be certified in diving. I got to dive the Great Barrier Reef. I was catching 80-pound tuna, smoking them and fileting them right on the aft deck. I got to dive for pearls, lobsters; it was just an incredible, incredible experience.”
Ultimately, her stint on board the yacht lasted one-month short of three years. But even cruising the world on a luxurious yacht can get stale. Ultimately, it was time for a change.
“When I kind of had enough of that, I came back to my roots in Ocean City and figured I’m gonna get more experience in the casinos–although I swore I would never work at one.” She ultimately got hired at the property where she would spend almost two decades before heading to Borgata in 2021 to be the executive pastry chef (she still holds that title as well).
While quality control and ensuring that Borgata’s guests have optimal dining experiences are important parts of her job, there is one task she claimed is most crucial of all.
“The most rewarding part is having a team that all works together,” she explained. “I’ve come from a property where the people didn’t communicate, people didn’t support each other and they didn’t work together. And I feel that I have that here and it’s something I’ve really strived for, and it makes a difference.
“And I said to myself when I took this job that I wanted to create an environment that didn’t exist in food and beverage, where you didn’t feel guilty when you weren’t working, where you did a nine-hour shift, not 12- and 16-hour days and become so stressed out [because] that’s all that you think about.
“And I’m hoping that I can help to achieve that with the team that’s here.”
Ya gotta have Hart
Those who attended Sunday evening’s set by Kevin Hart at Hard Rock Hotel & Casino witnessed a comedy titan at the peak of his powers.
Dressed casually but nattily in what appeared to be a light-green silk pullover and blue pants, The North Philly native (he greeted the audience with a heartfelt, “I’m home!”) had a packed Hard Rock Live at Etess Arena in hysterics with extended riffs on such humor-ripe subjects as his family, erectile dysfunction pills and most significantly, a rambling mid-show tale that began with musings on aging (Hart is 45), segued into a hilarious bit about his worst fear (falling in the shower) and climaxed with a belly-laugh-level sequence that blasts off with his telling of a tale about an ill-advised footrace.
Hart’s delivery was perfect from start to finish; his use of voice modulation to punctuate his routines is especially effective. And what he said—or, more to the point, didn’t say—greatly enhanced the program:
While he wasn’t shy about saying both the N-word and everyone’s favorite four-letter Anglo-Saxon obscenity (and its variations), they were used judiciously and only when they enhanced the joke, and not for their own sakes.
In all, it was a masterful turn.
Chuck Darrow has spent more than 40 years writing about Atlantic City casinos.
