This cook is key to the kitchen of York's upscale Handsome Cab. And he's only 17.

Christopher Chestnut, head chef at The Handsome Cab in York, describes Friday nights in the kitchen as orchestrated chaos – orders coming in and multiple chefs running around as several dishes are prepared.

In the middle of it all is line cook Nate Jamison. On some of those busy nights, Jamison is right there in the service window, at times running the line and controlling the chaos. His best quality is his anticipation of moments and knowing what other people around him need, Chestnut said.

Watching him in these moments, even Chestnut sometimes finds it hard to believe that Jamison is just 17.

“We definitely wouldn’t be where we are today if we didn’t have his help,” Chestnut said. “Dead serious.”

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Jamison is equally surprised. It was only two years ago that he found his passion for cooking at the York County School of Technology, and about 18 months since he was flipping a Metro PCS sign, hoping to find a job at The Handsome Cab.

“I applied (to be a) dishwasher or a bus boy,” Jamison said. “Working in a restaurant like that, as a line cook, my mind was just blown.”

So how did Jamison get this dream job at a time when most teenagers are prepping for proms? Having the owner’s ear helped.

At 15, Jamison was looking for a job, but because of his age, had a hard time finding a place that would allow him to work. Eventually, he found a job flipping a sign for a Metro PCS store.

Hoping to drive business from North George Street to the store, Jamison starting flipping the sign outside of The Handsome Cab. The restaurant wasn’t open yet, but a worker was outside painting the building’s window, and a sign out front said that they were hiring.

Jamison asked the worker about getting an application, and the worker said to bring it back, fill it out and give it to whoever he needed to. So Jamison did – he looked over the application “at least 20 times” and took it back to the restaurant.

What Jamison didn’t realize at the time was that the worker was Handsome Cab co-owner Robert Godfrey.

“I used to see him out on the sidewalk spinning the sign for the cell phone company quite often, but never thought too much about it,” Godfrey said. “We had at least 30 or 40 people that would come up all the time and say something similar, but never followed through. (Jamison) checked in, and checked in again and you can tell he had some ambition and was enthusiastic.”

It wasn’t long after when Jamison interviewed and eventually was offered the job as a line cook.

“We had no staff at the time, and he was very eager, intelligent and had a head on his shoulders,” Chestnut said on why they originally hired Jamison. “He had an eagerness and a desire to improve himself. (I told him,) ‘You’re going to school to learn this trade. Let’s see what you can do.”

Like any new hire, Jamison had his bumps in the road. He remembers one day early in his tenure when he had to pit dates – a task that normally takes 20 minutes took him more than two hours.

But he eventually found his footing, and as Chestnut said, his natural instincts kicked in.

One time, Stacey Walsh, sous chef at the Handsome Cab, said she was making a fish dish and couldn’t think of a starch to go with it, so she asked Jamison. Quickly, Jamison pulled some rice off a shelf, suggested making it with a Cajun spice and some pineapple juice, and it worked, Walsh said.

Walsh and Chestnut have relished the opportunity to take Jamison under their wings – helping him grow as a leader, teaching him new skills in the kitchen and, most importantly, not treating him as a child, but as an equal.

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“He’s an empty tool box, and we’re trying to throw some tools in there so he can put something amazing together later,” Chestnut said.

Walsh added, “It is like molding (clay). You need to always be learning something new. Even chefs in the industry (for years) can learn something new.”

When Chestnut looks at Jamison’s journey, he can’t help but be amazed at how advanced Jamison is at such a young age.

“If he keeps his head down, he’ll blow us out of the water and become a world-renown chef,” Chestnut said. “I just tell him, ‘Your mom raised you right. I don’t see this (motivation) in your generation.’”

Jamison’s mother, Kayla Tawney, said Jamison has always liked to cook, but she didn’t realize he had a passion for it until he was enrolled at York County Tech. They made dinners at home, but only simple things, not the high-end work he’s doing now, she said.

Tawney said her son hasn’t changed much since getting the job – just a general excitement that keeps him buzzing around the house, but Jamison said he’s noticed some changes at home.

“(My siblings) are always like, ‘Nate cook for us,’” he said. “At home, it’s hard. You don’t have all the ingredients. They try to encourage me, but I’m just like ‘nah.’”

Working at the Handsome Cab has given him a chance to learn “something new every day” from new dishes, different seafoods, foods from around the world and more.

Jamison hopes to go to college for business and hospitality management with the goal to open his own restaurant. It’s a journey he knows won’t be easy.

“I want to open a restaurant, but there’s so many steps you need to take that you can’t just wander into it aimlessly,” he said. “I want to go to college for these things so my business doesn’t drown.”

Ever the proud mother, Tawney gets emotional talking about her son and his high aspirations.

“I know he loves it, so I’m going to support him,” Tawney said. “I see him, the way he talks about what he does (and) how excited he gets… I think it’s great that (the Handsome Cab) took a chance on him and showed him things that he might not have learned in school.”

While sometimes Jamison is just the average teenager to Tawney, there are something that are, well, different.

“Kids these days worry about getting sneakers… instead of buying him Jordans, he’s asking me if we can go buy a chef’s knife from Williams-Sonoma,” Tawney said, laughing.

Anthony J. Machcinski is the food reporter for the York Daily Record. Follow him on Facebook, @ChinskiTweets on Twitter or email him at amachcinski@ydr.com.