Cooking Up Something Good w/ Brian Dumoulin

There are plenty of NHL players who will admit that they love cooking - grilling steaks in the backyard, or maybe even whipping up their own chicken and pasta on game days. But there aren’t many who can say they learned to prepare lobster thermidor from celebrity chef and restaurateur Ludo Lefebvre.

Los Angeles Kings defenseman Brian Dumoulin, however, can.

Dumoulin’s love of cooking started at a young age when he would watch and eventually assist his mother, Deborah, in the kitchen at their home in Biddeford, Maine.

“She would cook a rotisserie chicken and make a chicken noodle soup after with it, she would make her own pizza dough, she was always trying to make something for us,” reminisces the 34-year-old about his mom. “Maybe just having that food and knowing and feeling that kind of passion and that love when you’re cooking it kind of makes the food taste even better.”

Meals in the Dumoulin household look a little different now with two boys under the age of six - Brayden will be six in November and Brooks is only 16 months old - but Dumoulin’s favorite dish to cook is a Spanish paella. Although he prefers to cook at home, Dumoulin and his wife, Kayla, do consider themselves foodies, and authenticity is the number one item on the wish list when dining out.

“I like uniqueness. I don’t like just going to a steakhouse - I will - but if I heard about good Korean, good Thai, good Mexican, I like everything, I’ll eat anything,” Dumoulin explains. “I like feeling like either there’s a chef there that is passionate about it or anything like that or that they’re proud of where they get the ingredients from, or how it’s cooked, or their preparation. When you walk into a restaurant, you can feel the energy of the place, especially when you look at the menu.”

When Dumoulin played in New Jersey he lived in Hoboken, but would go into New York City for the food scene, which he compares to the one in Los Angeles.

“In New York City, it’s kind of like LA, you can find the best of everything no matter if you’re looking for the best Spanish, the best Korean, the best sushi - anything you can find usually there’s some authenticity to it,” asserts Dumoulin. “So that’s what I look for is authenticity.”

NYC is Dumoulin’s favorite place to eat in the world. For anyone looking for recommendations, Spanish eatery Casa Mono, a Michelin Guide restaurant, is high on his list, as is Rezdora, an Italian restaurant known for it’s handmade pasta.

Along with Dumoulin’s love for food and cooking comes his love of travel, and there was nobody to better cultivate the passion for that combination than Anthony Bourdain, whom Dumoulin is a huge fan of. Dumoulin has seen every episode of Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations and The Layover, both of which were travel and food shows hosted by the late celebrity chef, author and travel documentarian.

“I loved watching Bourdain because I love food and travel and he was obviously one of the best people who show you a place while creating a personality with someone and having a real conversation about what that place is like and where they’re from,” Dumoulin articulates. “I think the way he went about traveling and the places that he went were so unique and different. It wasn’t always a glamorous side of that country or that place that he went, but he tried to keep it real, which I loved and appreciated about him. That sparked definitely my passion for traveling and then with traveling comes food and wine, so I love those too.”

It should come as no surprise that one of Dumoulin’s favorite trips was to France. Starting in Paris, he drove down to Dijon, Burgundy, Leon, and stopped in St. Rémy, enjoying all the food and wine possible.

“St. Rémy was my favorite town that we visited, it’s where Van Gogh painted Starry Night - he was in jail there, actually,” shares Dumoulin, whose next big trip will likely be Japan. “It’s just kind of the small town, what you’d picture France being, cobblestone streets and a little stream running down the middle that just hasn’t been touched for hundreds and hundreds of years, but it still had such a quaintness and it wasn’t very touristy. It was kind of remote, there’s no airport nearby, you have to drive to see it, so that’s what I liked about it. I like going through those small towns that kind of are untouched.”

In 2020, during the Covid quarantine, the NHL launched a YouTube series called Skates & Plates, where they paired celebrity chefs with players that enjoy cooking. The chef would virtually instruct the player how to make a dish, and the event was recorded and turned into a video podcast. Naturally Dumoulin welcomed the opportunity and this is how he learned to make lobster thermidor from the Los Angeles-based Lefevbre, who is known for restaurants such as LudoBird, Trois Mec, and Petit Trois in addition to a multitude of television appearances on cooking shows.

“It was tough, it was challenging,” Dumoulin admits of his learning experience with Lefevbre. “I made it a few Christmases in a row.”

Learning and academics were always important in the Dumoulin household, which is one of the biggest reasons why, even at the beginning of his NHL career, Dumoulin made the effort to earn his degree in marketing from Boston College. After attending BC and representing their hockey team for three years, Dumoulin decided to embark on his NHL career. But he refused to sacrifice his degree.

“I went there for three years and I didn’t feel like wasting those years of going to class for nothing. It was hard, especially because at BC, they didn’t let me take online classes, so I had to go in after every season and go to actually be physically in class, so that was even more difficult. I had eight classes left when I graduated, and each summer I had to chip away,” explains Dumoulin, who chose marketing for ways it incorporates business, branding and sports, all things that were of interest to him.

As it stands currently, Dumoulin has cooked up quite an NHL career for himself. After being drafted by the Carolina Hurricanes in the second round of the 2009 NHL entry draft, he played 10 years for the Pittsburgh Penguins, during which he won two Stanley Cups, becoming the first Maine-born player to win one. The last two seasons were spent between the Seattle Kraken, the Anaheim Ducks and the New Jersey Devils, after which Dumoulin signed a three-year deal with the Kings in July of this year.

Dumoulin admits that if he weren’t playing hockey he would be a chef or a sommelier, which, considering his love of food and wine makes total sense. But for the time being, he and the Kings hope that their new blue liner will marinate nicely in his new environment, perhaps long enough to bring some new silverware to the dining table.