Merrie O’Donnell, a.k.a.“the Merrie Chef,” admits she may not always recall your name upon a first meeting, but she’ll certainly remember what you ate. This comes as no surprise once you learn about the culinary talent’s impressively vast and varied resume—and her infectious passion for food.
We meet in the morning at De Fer Coffee & Tea in the Strip. The “Merrie Chef” admits she woke up craving radish butter. She kindly brings along a box of scrumptious scones, tied up with ribbon like a special gift. (Two of the pastries are a delightful maple-pecan flavor. The others feature roasted leeks, garlic, herbs and brown sugar.)
Across the Table from Merrie O’Donnell, the “Merrie Chef”
O’Donnell, a personal chef who runs a catering business, makes a weekly voyage to the Strip to stock up on goods. As a proud member of the Pennsylvania Film Industry Association (PAFIA), she’s also a food stylist who makes edible creations for on-set shoots—and works with individual TV and film actors, crew members and craft services to provide meals.
After our coffee chat, she plans to visit her go-to purveyors. Regularly in her rotation: Restaurant Depot, Lotus Food Company, Wholey’s, Penn Avenue Fish Company and Pennsylvania Macaroni Company (who she credits for recently introducing her to a triple cream she could gush about all afternoon). When making the rounds O’Donnell likes to play with what’s in season, and she loves asking the staff behind each counter, “What are you eating right now?”
O’Donnell’s winding career path has taken unexpected turns. Yet she lives by the motto: “Every experience, you have to take something from it.” Another one of her mantras? “You have to have fun in life.” This translates to time spent in her basement, state-certified, commercial kitchen, where she regularly pumps tunes from LCD Soundsystem, Slightly Stoopid, and Ben Harper.
How the Merrie Chef Began
She attended college in New Hampshire and grad school in California. She got a master’s degree in psychology and afterward worked with adults with disabilities. Her husband’s work then took them to Northern Nevada (Elko), about seven hours north of Vegas. After the couple attended sushi school in 2004, they opened a restaurant specializing in sushi, Asian fusion and northern Italian fare.
When they sold the restaurant in 2013, she started The Merrie Chef, a catering business that featured beef plus produce from local farms and ranches. Long before it was a buzzing trend, O’Donnell worked with neighboring farmers and food purveyors. “It’s what you should do,” she says. “You have to support each other.” O’Donnell fed everyone from touring musicians, cowboy poets to folks at regional ranches and gold mines. She also prepared food for politicians marching along the campaign trail, including: Hillary Clinton, John McCain and the Obamas.
From Food to Film
O’Donnell, her husband and their two kids moved back to Pittsburgh in 2016. Becoming part of the city’s booming film scene seemed natural. Her husband, son and a very good friend all work in the industry. “Pittsburgh and the surrounding areas have such a diverse landscape. It allows for a multitude of different films and TV shows to be produced here,” she shares, “The Film Tax Credit is important to PAFIA and keeping film and TV production in Pittsburgh.”
She regularly works with folks who have special dietary restrictions, a challenge she happily takes on. And when working in film and TV, the food needs to look and taste good since an actor might have to endure countless takes—and bites. “I may spend a great amount of time creating food for a scene that doesn’t end up in the show,” she says, “You never know how it’s going to turn out until it’s on the big screen.”
For a bakery scene in the most recent Tom Hanks flick, A Man Called Otto, she made sugar-free semlor, Swedish pastries. “It had great screen time, which doesn’t always happen,” she says. And for a banquet sequence in the Netflix series, The Chair, she created a lavish buffet. “The character eating the quiche had strict dietary needs. So, it was a small feat to make 100 gluten-free mini quiches for the scene,” she says.
Savory Sustainability: Use Everything
Whatever O’Donnell creates these days—from breakfast towers to her wildly popular caramel-chocolate apples to appetizers like mini-crab cakes or dishes like chicken, coconut curry—she aims to make a good product, and then elevate it. She grows her own herbs, peppers, tomatoes and, recently, edible flowers (nasturtium leaves and feverfew appear on smoked-beef crostini; violas and pansies on sabayon).
Being environmentally conscious is incredibly important to O’Donnell, too. Almost everything she uses is compostable, and she pushes catering clients to use their own dishware/silverware.
She lives by a use-everything philosophy. Leftover berries from a charcuterie board recently got transformed into tasty preserves.
O’Donnell views her job as the Merrie Chef like continuing education, adding, “I never claim to be a know-it-all.” She makes it a point to constantly read, listing magazines like TABLE, Food & Wine, and Bon Appetit.
After a full day of cooking, O’Donnell often prefers a simple dinner. She enjoys cheese, olives, fruit and perhaps some killer, rosemary-fig crackers. However, one thing in her house is mandatory—the tradition of a family dinner savored together every Sunday evening.
Story by Corinne Whiting / Photography by Laura Petrilla
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