One fall afternoon in the late ’90s, a young Alex Perry sat at his desk deeply engrossed in a lesson on microbiology and botany as part of an advanced-placement biology class at Ocean Springs High School. Perry’s teacher, Renee Hill, saw his interest in the subject and approached him after the lesson’s end with a book in hand titled “The Hot Zone.”
Flipping through the book’s pages, Perry found detailed descriptions and illustrations surrounding the origins and effects of pandemic diseases, including the ebola epidemic in South Africa in the early 1990s. Equal parts fascinated and disturbed at the idea of pathogens that operate on a microscopic scale causing devastating and far-reaching effects, Perry decided he wanted to pursue a career in epidemiology.
Unfortunately for Perry, after he began studying upper-level biology at the University of South Alabama, he soon came to regard the subject matter as “boring as dirt” but still persisted, receiving a bachelor’s degree in biology in 2004.
“As with any career, you have to put in your dues and work your way up the totem pole,” Perry says. “For me, though, I just couldn’t see myself making it through the more menial aspects of working in a microbiology lab to put those dues in.”
Perry’s fortunes turned around one night a few months later when he happened to catch an episode of the Japanese cooking show “Iron Chef” on television, which put the idea into his mind to change tracks and learn to cook. A friend of Perry’s named Joy Lindon, who grew up in a Filipino household where large family meals were the norm, encouraged Perry to follow his new goal.
Another friend who had recently taken a job in Orlando, Fla., offered to let Perry room with him if he went to culinary school in the city, leading Perry to enroll at the Orlando Culinary Academy, an affiliate of Cordon Bleu. Perry received an associate degree in applied culinary arts from the academy in 2005.
Vestige’s owners Alex Perry and Kumi Omori of Ocean Springs, Miss., previously worked at another restaurant before establishing their
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