Chef Peter Kagi

North America

Peter Kagi joined Gate Gourmet (then Dobbs International) in 1991 as Executive Chef. He was later promoted to Accounts Manager, overseeing seven major international airlines. Peter left the company in 1995 to pursue his lifelong dream of running his own restaurant. He returned to Gate Gourmet in 1999, again as International Accounts Manager and later as Storeroom Manager. Peter is currently working in the Atlanta test kitchen, designing menus for Delta Air Lines. He has held this position since 2003.

Peter successfully completed a two-and-a-half year culinary apprenticeship in his home country of Switzerland, finishing third out of 70 apprentices that year. He was trained in all aspects of French cooking.

Chef Peter arrived at JFK airport on July 4, 1976, to take a job at the Swiss Center in Manhattan. He soon realized the significance of that date when his contact never showed up to pick him up at the airport, due to the overwhelming traffic jams caused by the celebrations. Over the next five years, Peter worked in numerous restaurants and hotels in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, including La Grenouille and the Four Seasons in Manhattan, the Princeton Inn in Princeton, NJ, and the Buck Hill Inn in the Poconos.

In 1980, freshly married, Chef Peter decided to take his wife back to his home country, and get some additional training. From 1980 until 1986, he worked under some highly regarded Swiss Chefs in Basel, Switzerland, improving his knowledge and skills. In 1986, the couple returned to the United States, and Peter took a job with Swissair as a Catering Manager in New York. He was transferred to Atlanta in 1987 to oversee operations in that city, and has lived there since

Peter likes to cook -- and eat -- just about any style of food, from French, Italian and Spanish to every type of Regional American cuisine. His European heritage and training have helped him tremendously in his current job of designing high quality dishes for Delta's international routes. He says he loves desserts, especially those made of chocolate, but declares he is no pastry chef. In his family, that title goes to his wife, who Peter says makes the best cheesecake in the world

In addition to growing a vegetable garden, he continues his boyhood hobbies of stamp collecting and skiing, although the Atlanta region doesn't offer quite the same opportunity for schussing as the Swiss Alps.