Meghan grew up in a working class community in St. Petersburg, Florida, and Jonathan grew up in “the sticks” of Lakeland, Florida, but the couple found each other while cooking in Lake Placid.

Meghan moved to the area with her mom and stepdad when she was 16, and Jonathan made his way up a few years later on a roadtrip that turned into a permanent relocation. Despite the initial shock of the bitter winters to their southern roots, they both fell in love with the area and started to thrive here.

“I wasn’t looking to go anywhere else,” Meghan said.

Jonathan said he moved here to cook at the Lake Placid Lodge, and he eventually started a private chef company. Once, when he needed an assistant for a private chef job, it was Meghan who came to help out. They’ve been cooking together ever since.

Jonathan said he grew up watching the show “The Frugal Gourmet.” He admired the chefs on the show, who displayed an almost evangelical zeal for the dishes they were creating. He wanted to replicate that enthusiasm. Jonathan said he went to college for a bit, but he “always came back to food.” It was in his blood, he said — the focus of every celebration and family function.

“So I just dug into anything food, and that’s all I did,” he said.

Jonathan said that creating a life around food isn’t complex or romantic — he studied cookbooks and worked hard to hone his skills. However, his love of food did help him to romance Meghan. Jonathan said she was impressed by his cookbook collection and well-stocked kitchen.

“She loved my kitchen before she loved me,” he said.

Jonathan’s love of food rubbed off on Meghan, who said she’s always had a love of learning things hands-on. They worked together as private chefs, then as caterers, and now they’re on to their next adventure as barbecue smokers. Now, they want to bring a piece of the south to the North Country; the Gravatts expect to open their new restaurant, West Shore BBQ, in Lake Placid this summer.

Meghan said that she and Jonathan’s dreams morphed together after they met. They’re a different couple, Jonathan said — attached at the hip.

“Some say codependent,” he said. “I say I like her.”

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The Adirondack food mecca

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Cooking in the Adirondacks is different from cooking in the south, the Gravatts said.

“Everything in the south was brown, or canned, or overcooked,” Jonathan said.

Here, he said, there’s a bounty of people who have immigrated to the area, bringing their different food cultures with them. Nearby cities like Montreal, New York City and Boston attract various cooking styles, he added. The Gravatts have learned to cook from local Serbian and Montenegro natives, and they’ve cooked for Chinese New Year and Serbian New Year.

Jonathan said he knows skills like properly blanching, or achieving the proper sodium content in water to set chlorophyll in green vegetables, because of people from those big-city populations who taught him everything from throwing a pizza, building a burger and smoking ribs to rolling sushi.

The Gravatts said they also reserve plenty of respect for the local grandmothers and mothers who are domestic chefs, too. Jonathan said they’ve shown him a lot. One of his neighbors, who used to bake treats to hand out every Halloween, recently gave him the original 30-year-old recipe for the treats so he could carry on the legacy.

“I would say this area made me the chef that I am,” he said.

Meghan said it’s exciting to cook in the Adirondacks because there’s a gathering process — she and Jonathan seek out different farms around the area to source their ingredients, and she said they have more knowledge of and respect for the Adirondacks because of that.

When asked about their favorite locally-sourced ingredients to work with, the Gravatts listed everything from baby eggplants, watermelon radishes and frosty kale to grass-fed beef and local hardwood. Jonathan said that one of the best things people grow up here is the wood, because it smokes meats perfectly.

“I think this could become a mecca for smoked meats,” Jonathan said of Lake Placid.

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Lake Placid love

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Lake Placid became home for the Gravatts when they realized they’d lived here longer than they had in Florida. They got married here, they’re raising two daughters here and they’re building a business here — this is their community now, Meghan said.

The Gravatts said they’re glad their daughters can go out on their bikes from morning until evening and feel safe; the couple doesn’t have to worry about their kids seeing the same “horror stories” they did growing up in Florida.

Jonathan said there’s an almost southern charm to Lake Placid that doesn’t exist in his hometown anymore. People here drive their pickup trucks and live a simple life, and people say please and thank you; they look out for the neighborhood kids and each other.

The Gravatts have spent the pandemic traveling to nearly every town in the Adirondacks, exploring the park they live in. Jonathan said that the massive “awesomeness” of the park hadn’t really sunk in before that.

It’s a tough area to live and work in, they said. The winters are brutal, and sometimes work is slow. The Gravatts are lean on finances at some points and prosperous at others, but they said living here seems to only get better.

Jonathan said it’s good having Meghan as a best friend, work friend, life partner and ski buddy here through the hard times, especially in the “crazy industry” of food. When Jonathan bolts out of bed at 3 a.m. with new business dreams and ambitions, Meghan’s always there to learn how to make them a reality.

“We’re true partners,” Jonathan said.