Barbeque Masters | Restaurants

Executive Chef Eric La Vell Smith emerged from a single parent household in Columbus, Ohio. With two brothers and a sister, the young chef at heart was trying to alleviate some of his mother’s daily responsibilities and unknowingly he undertook his culinary calling at the tender age of seven...

...He received many awards and accolades including: 1) Three-time award winner of the Army’s “Best Chefs Award.”  2) In 1993, his former culinary school awarded him the “Outstanding Alumni Award” 3) A five-time recipient of the Grand Pit Master of the Year Award due to the exquisite savor of his barbeque.

Eric became a protégé to a host of prestigious award winning chefs and toiled in five star restaurants both domestically and internationally. Consequently, Chef Smith’s credentials made him the obvious candidate to be selected out of 14,000 culinary greats to serve as an executive chef for the 1996 Centennial Olympic Games in Atlanta, Georgia, feeding more than 20,000 people daily....

Although, Barbeque Masters is the most recent venture for Chef Eric, in1998 he started Great Chefs Worldwide, Inc. (GWF) to provide culinary service at its best, operated by professional chefs. GCW, Inc.’s focus is to provide the highest quality culinary services throughout the world.