Dr. Gregory Jicha dishes on his past life as a chef

Introducing Making the Rounds, a new Q&A series where you’ll get to know the providers at UK HealthCare and what they’re like outside the lab and clinic. For our first entry, we spoke with Dr. Gregory Jicha, a clinician and researcher at the UK Sanders-Brown Center on Aging.

What was the last movie/book you saw/read?

I never read books because I read medical journals, and that requires all of my time. I have not read a book for fun since I was an undergraduate. Now, what’s the last movie that I watched? I watched “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” with my children.

Do you have an ideal vacation destination?

Yes, any tropical island with palm trees that have coconuts. You have to pick up the fallen coconuts to knock the ones that are ripe – that’s how the locals do it!

Do you have a favorite type of exercise or fitness?

Nope. I see patients from 8 in the morning until 5 every night, whether it’s in clinic or in the research enterprise. So all of my papers and my grants have to be written after hours and on the weekends. With that being said, it’s a passion. Although, by God, I need one of those tropical vacations.

Do you have a favorite type of food that you like to eat?

I like all types of food. As a matter of fact, in a past life, I was a chef. I worked in a quaint restaurant – one of those historic landmarks – the Blacksmith’s Tavern up in Connecticut, built in 1771. It was French continental cuisine.

I also worked with a Greek family opening up a whole series of restaurants throughout Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, which I really enjoyed. You got to write the menus and not just come up with daily specials.

Do you like to cook at home?

Every now and then I have a break, and I say, “I just cannot do anymore work.” Then I ask my wife, “May I cook today?” And she says, “Oh, god.” Because I still have this habit, you know, when you work in restaurants, and especially when you’re the chef, you don’t clean up anything. You cut on the cutting board and all the scrap you just sweep with your towel! All over to the side, all on the floor, and then people sweep up after you.

So, I still cook at home that way, and my wife knows if I’m cooking for the day it’s going to be wonderful food, but she’s going to be spending two or three days cleaning up.

Check out this video to see Dr. Jicha discuss how he helps patients as both a clinician and a researcher.