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columbuschefs.com Wildflower Cafe... Patrick McCarthy, Owner/Executive Chef Beth Lynch, Chef Wildflower Cafe Wildflower Cafe is a neighborhood diner with a difference. The place has two people in the kitchen with a serious love of good, scratch food. It is a small 65-seater that rose four years ago from the ashes of an ill-fated attempt to start another restaurant. Owner Patrick McCarthy and his brother, K. C. McCarthy, had waited years for the right opportunity to open their own restaurant. Today, Wildflower flourishes with Patrick as the working on-premises partner with K. C. keeping the books and paying bills. Patrick McCarthy’s route to ownership is a family one. His first job was as dishwasher in the long departed CoCo’s, a very formal steak house. Within two years he had graduated from the scullery detail to chef. The menu was a demanding one with five preps of tenderloin steak, two New York strips, even table side flambés. His real career training came with various chef levels in such notable kitchens as the Hyatt on Capitol Square, Peasant On the Lane, Great Southern Hotel, Urbana Country Club and Ohio University Inn. McCarthy’s good ownership start came opening day at Wildflower Cafe. His second hire was a stay-at-home mom who decided after raising her two children that she should keep busy by finding a job in the culinary field. Beth Lynch, who resides within walking distance of the Wildflower, took her kitchen talents to a dozen places. First she applied for catering jobs. “No one would hire me,” she says of applications placed with Upper Arlington schools, Ohio State fraternity houses, and many restaurants. “I was beginning to think I couldn’t take one more rejection,” Lynch says. She spotted a pre-opening classified placed by the McCarthys. After an hour interview she was hired as a prep cook. Today she is kitchen manager and has converted a life long love of home cooking to the hustle of a busy commercial kitchen. Lynch is self-taught, but with a solid background of culinary basics - Italian for one. Both her parents cooked. Her father, Joe Byrne, was a graduate of the U. S. Army’s Cooks & Bakers School in World War II. Her mother-in-law, Luci Sellan, a native of Trieste, Italy. taught her to make gnocchi, egg noodles, and iota, a bean with ham hocks soup. Lynch’s baking talents that show up at Wildflower came from years of making cookies for her children’s school lunches. The Lynch diner specialties of meat loaf, soups and chicken and noodles are daily Wildflower offerings, the menu items that make a diner a diner. . Wildflower Cafe 3420 Indianola Ave. Columbus, Ohio USA www.wildflowercafe.biz Breakfast and lunch daily except Monday; Dinner 4 to 9 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday. 614-262-2233 next chef back to galaxy