As an accomplished chef, Jackie Mazza is used to the pressure of the culinary industry. She even relished competing on reality TV cooking shows, including "Beat Bobby Flay," even though the celebrity chef and restaurateur defeated her.
Now Mazza, who is already overseeing seven concepts as culinary director of DHS Hospitality Group, has a new challenge added to her duties. She is spearheading the creation and opening of the Strand Market food hall and the relaunch of Clydz restaurant at the new Health + Life Science Exchange, or HELIX, technology hub in New Brunswick, New Jersey. DHS will operate Strand Market in the innovation district being created downtown.
The high-profile, three-building HELIX development, set to total 1.5 million square feet when completed, is expected to house Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, the New Jersey Innovation Hub as well as a new headquarters for Nokia Bell Labs. While the indoor-outdoor food hall and Clydz would be feeding the complex's tenants, it is also expected to attract residents of New Brunswick as well as students from Rutgers University's main campus in the city.
Mazza is energized rather than daunted by the dining project, even as the opening date for the first phase of the dining offering, the food hall, looms in June. Strand Market @ the HELIX has been in the works for more than four years, according to Mazza. She is curating the food hall's offerings.
The food hall-restaurant project, announced in March by New Brunswick Development Corp., or DEVCO, is giving Mazza some creative flexibility, something she said she loves.
"It's exciting to go into work every day and work on different things," she said. "It's really wonderful — for everything from dealing with suppliers to packaging needs and so forth. From my perspective, it's really a dream-come-true-sort of role. ... As you age, if this is your career you have to figure out a way to age with the industry, or else you get burned out and you end up leaving.
"And I have successfully able to do that because you can't be a cook on the line forever. Your body just can't."
Fell in love with baking
Mazza's interest in cooking started when she was a child. She ended up earning degrees in culinary arts, restaurant management and baking and pastry at the Art Institute of New York City. She fell in love with baking, doing a stint as executive pastry chef at the upscale The Frog and the Peach restaurant in New Brunswick, followed by her role as head baker at ScratchBREAD in New York.
Returning to her roots, she founded Knead … Baked Goods, mentoring students while supplying artisanal breads to local icons like Destination Dogs and The Frog and the Peach. In 2018, she opened Fatto Americano, a neo-Neapolitan pizza bar, in New Brunswick that closed during the pandemic. At DHS, her duties include overseeing Clydz, Dee Dee's Pizza and Tavern on George.
The preparation has included doing research on different kinds of food hall concepts, according Mazza. It also entails considering the different types of customers Strand Market must serve — from Nokia researchers to medical students to local residents to construction workers, she said.
As far as creating a culinary oasis in the middle of a high-tech campus, Mazza said, "How cool, right?"
Her career has included appearing and competing on several popular cooking-competition TV shows, including "Cutthroat Kitchen," "Restaurant Startup" and "Beat Bobby Flay," a show that pits up-and-coming culinary talent against Flay.
Mazza appreciates what she learned from those outings.
"All of those experiences were so much fun for me," she said. "They are high pressure. ... The crux of those shows is thinking outside the box. If you look at it that way, that's something as a chef I have to do every single day. I like to call them problems du jour. "