One of Jamestown’s favorite sons has recently returned to town for a very short visit.

This week, we’d like to share with you what we learned about Mitchell Anderson’s life, both growing up here in town, and through his career as a popular actor in television, films, and the New York Theater, and on into a second successful career as the chef and owner of his own restaurant in Atlanta, Ga. I can even tell you a bit about his recently published book, ”Food and Thought: Recipes and Conversation with Mitchell Anderson.”

He was here in town to talk with the public about his book, which is a combination of a recipe book, filled with farm to table recipes which are both healthful and which look positively delicious. I haven’t had the chance to taste them yet, but believe me, I will. Most are of his own devising, although he credits some as having been family favorites, or concoctions by friends or connections of his.

At the same time, the book is filled with a large section of rambling memories, which he includes to feel in contact with his customers. Each day, he publishes the menu of his restaurant, MetroFresh, and with it, he publishes whatever happens to be on his mind at the time. These range from memories of summer camp in his days of growing up, to the death of a beloved cat, to his thoughts on entering his fifties, and beyond. This tends to make him seem like a friend to the reader, and to produce regular customers, some of whom may eat as many as 20 meals per week in his restaurant.

Whether you knew Mitchell and his family, as he grew up in the area, or whether you watched him on television in his acting days, or whether you just enjoy a glimpse of a creative and intelligent mind, and enjoy an understanding of what it’s possible to do when you start from here, I think you’re going to like this week’s column.

In preparing this column, I owe an unusually large number of debts to others, who have contributed much to the effort. First of all, Mitchell himself did a generous amount of emailing back and forth with me, in advance of his arrival. He also graciously sat and answered my questions after his book signing, when a whole room full of his childhood friends and neighbors were clamoring for his time and attention.

Second, my colleague at The Post-Journal, Scott Kindberg, was a great help. Scott was a classmate and friend of Mitchell’s, and was serving as a host of the book signing, which took place in the undercroft of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, located at the intersection of Fourth and Main streets in Jamestown. Scott was generous, not only in sharing email addresses and other necessary facts, but when Mitchell sold every book which he had brought to the event, Scott loaned me his own copy to use in writing the column. Reviewing a book I haven’t even seen would be too great a stretch, I assure you.

Finally, my gratitude is owed to Greg Peterson, attorney extraordinaire and a founder of the Robert H. Jackson Center in Jamestown. Much of the book signing consisted of an interview of Mitchell by Greg, for his regular television programming. Sitting and listening to Greg’s inquiries certainly provided a lot of information for the column.

So, let me tell you some of the background which I have learned about Mitchell Anderson. He is another of those people who have risen high in the world, and who got there from here.

SOME HISTORY

Mitchell Anderson was born in Jamestown, Aug. 21, 1961. He was one of six children, born to successful area business couple R. Quintus and Sondra Anderson.

His family lived in Jamestown, while he was growing up and moved to Lakewood after he had left home. He attended Jamestown Public Schools, where he was an honors student, a successful athlete, especially with the swim team, and talented as both an actor and a singer. It’s hard to think of something at which he wasn’t good. Indeed, he was very good.

During his brief, recent stay in town, he visited with the members of the JHS A Cappella Choir, and answered questions for the young people who sat where he had once sat.

While growing up, he was active in activities at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, where he would eventually sign copies of his book.

After his 1979 graduation from JHS, he attended Williams College, a high-profile liberal arts college in Massachusetts, where he originally intended to study for a career in medicine, until he weighed his studies in organic chemistry against his love of the stage and of music, and decided his true calling was in the theater.

One might expect a very successful businessman like his father, to question the wisdom of leaving a prestige career such as medicine for one which isn’t always dependable, such as the theater. But, Anderson said there was no dissent. ”My father said he didn’t care what career I decided to have, as long as I worked hard and gave it my best, and that’s what I tried to do,” he said.

On graduation from Williams in 1983, Anderson was selected to attend graduate studies at one of the finest and most difficult to achieve entrance – the Juilliard School, in New York City – majoring in acting, only to drop out, not long after he started, because he was scoring professional acting jobs which made it almost impossible to keep up with his class work, and because studying to do something he was already doing successfully seemed futile.

Probably the highest-profile acting job which he undertook was playing Dr. Jack McGuire, the adult resident physician who took under his wing Dr. Doogie Howser, a 16-year-old prodigy who had sailed through medical school, more than a decade ahead of the normal rate of progress, and was now a talented doctor, although socially, he was still 16. The show was a career-maker for Neil Patrick Harris, who played Doogie.

Another career highlight was when Anderson played Richard Carpenter, the piano-playing, background-singing brother of recording star Karen Carpenter in the CBS television movie, ”The Karen Carpenter Story.”

Other professional roles included appearances in ”Highway to Heaven,” ”21 Jump Street,” ”Cagney and Lacey,” ”Jake and the Fat Man,” ”Hill Street Blues,” ”Riptide,” ”Space Camp,” and a brief but noteworthy role in ”Jaws: the Revenge,” in which he was devoured, at the absolute beginning, by the famed white shark.

Area audiences whose memories stretch back a bit will remember the celebrations which took place when the beautiful but aged and neglected Palace Movie Theater was renovated into the beautiful Reg Lenna Civic Center, which is now the Reg Lenna Center for the Arts. Anderson was the master of ceremonies for the gala celebration, which brought back to town a number of people who started life in Jamestown, and went on the successful careers in the arts.

The high point of his live theater career came when he was chosen to appear in the successful Off-Broadway production of ”Visiting Mr. Green,” by Jeff Baron, in which he played a hard-driving young businessman, whose negligent driving caused him to injure an elderly Jewish widower. Sentenced to make a series of visits to his victim, by a judge who recognized that both the victim and the negligent driver could use some human contact, the character learns more about life than his ”master of the universe” history had ever taught him.

Hal Linden played Mr. Green, and the two were the only characters in the play, which won a great many awards and honors.

Life made a major change for Anderson in 2001, when he found himself in New York City during the terrorist attacks which led to many innocent deaths, and resulted in the destruction of the World Trade Center.

The actor found himself in the midst of a career which had brought him a dependable income, and the ability to get roles based on directors’ recognition, without needing to audition in many cases. But, he found it wasn’t enough. ”I found I wasn’t passionate about many of the roles I was seeking. They were OK, but they weren’t special,” he would later say.

In fact, the business had changed as well. A guest starring role on a network series once earned enough money for an actor to live modestly for two or three months. By 2001, the income from a guest starring role plugged a hole in the personal economy, but it was necessary to go immediately out in search of something to plug the next hole.

Anderson had formed a personal partnership with Richie Arpino, a stylist and celebrated photographer, but his work required that he spend most of his time in New York or Los Angeles, or on location around the world, while his partner’s career required that he spend most of his time in Atlanta.

So, he semi-retired from the acting profession, and moved to Atlanta, where he studied the art of both being a chef, and being a restaurant owner, with Jennifer Levison, the owner of a restaurant named Souper Jennie. Many successful personalities, whether actors, singers, professional athletes, or whatever, have decided to switch to a career in having a restaurant, but they rarely succeed.

This is because they hire a chef, and expect to cash in on their fame and public recognition by being ”the face” of the restaurant, greeting diners and being a presence in the dining room. What they usually find is that the public might go to a restaurant once, to meet a celebrity, but few of them become regular customers. They join up for the long haul if the food is good, the atmosphere is pleasant and the prices are reasonable.

Anderson and Arpino have now been together for 18 years. His restaurant expanded to a second site, although he found himself at yet another crossroad. He could continue to open more restaurants, create a fixed menu, so that service and food would be comparable at his various branches, and to build something of an empire for himself, or he could drop back to running just one restaurant, and doing it his own way, creating a different menu every day, and greeting his customers in person, allowing them to watch him cook, and entering into an occasional adventure, such as catering a longtime customer’s graduation celebration, or inviting his customers to participate in a cooking game, in which they select four ingredients at random, and he turns them into a quality meal.

There’s only one restaurant, now, but it’s thriving. It has been open for seven years, and has recently expanded in size to double its former seating capacity. Anderson said there is only one dish which is available every day at MetroFresh, and that is his turkey-based chili, which he has allowed his customers to name for him. It’s called ”Mitchili.” Visitors to the book signing got to sample a big pot of the chili, along with a number of his other tasty creations.

In his book, he encourages readers to experiment with his recipes, to change ingredients to suit their own tastes, and to make them their own.

Anderson said he had greatly enjoyed his brief time in Jamestown. He told the audience at his book signing that his parents are now living in Florida, where they can enjoy and more easily cope with the milder weather, and where both are dealing with the challenges of being in their 80s.

”It’s kind of tough to realize that there has been an Anderson property in Jamestown, which belonged to our family, since the mid 1800s, but when we sell my parents’ house in Lakewood, that will be the end of that era,” he said.

Examining the beauty of St. Luke’s Church, listening to the familiar voice and the razor-sharp questions of Jim Roselle, when he sat for an interview on local radio, talking with the members of the A Cappella Choir, and all the hugging and hand pumping, and exchanging of memories with the full room of his former friends and neighbors, who came to visit briefly, and who bought up more than 100 copies of his book – all these things made for an emotional and heart-warming day.

If you’re interested in acquiring a copy of Mitchell Anderson’s collection of recipes and random memories, you can do so at his website, which is metrofreshatl.com.

WINKS

The Chautauqua Institution is seeking 80 outstanding young musicians, at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, to study and to perform with the Music School Festival Orchestra and in chamber music ensembles for the 2016 season.

Applications will be accepted through Feb. 1. Applicants may audition in person at sites around the U.S., or by recording and submitting an audition. Dates, times, and locations for personal audition sites are available on the institution’s website at ciweb.org.

An application form and instructions on how to audition are available on that site as well.

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We regret to inform our readers that The Violin Channel, an online network for lovers of stringed instruments, has recently announced the death at age 82 of Joseph Silverstein. Silverstein is a former music director of the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra, and has often appeared as a solo violinist with the CSO and with top symphony orchestras around the world. He was both a fine musician and a true gentleman.

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Women Create, a Jamestown-based organization for the promotion of art by women, has announced that they have extended the deadline for women artists wishing to enter work in their spring exhibit. Work may now be submitted through Jan. 31.

For complete information about the competition, go to the organization’s website at womencreate.org.

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Music lovers will be pleased to know the schedule by which they can attend holiday-related performances by the Buffalo Philharmonic:

The singing group Celtic Women will perform with the orchestra Dec. 9 at 8 p.m.

Classical Christmas programming, conducted by JoAnn Falletta, music director, and including performances by the Buffalo Philharmonic Chorus will be performed Dec. 11 at 10:30 a.m. and Dec. 12 at 8 p.m. Free coffee and doughnuts will be served before the Dec. 11 performance.

A Jingle Bell Jam, made up of holiday tunes and music from the film ”Frozen Express,” will be performed Dec. 13, with pre-concert activities beginning at 1:30 p.m., and the concert beginning at 2:30 p.m. The debut of John Morris Russell, the orchestra’s new principal pops conductor, will take place at concerts Dec. 18 at 10:30 a.m., Dec. 19 at 8 p.m. and Dec. 20 at 2:30 p.m.

These concerts will be performed at Kleinhans Music Hall, at 1 Symphony Circle, in Buffalo.

Also, the orchestra will combine with the Neglia Ballet of Buffalo and Shea’s Performing Arts Center to present performances of the ballet ”Nutcracker” this evening at 7 p.m. and tomorrow at 2 p.m., at Shea’s.

Tickets to the Shea’s performances range in price from $8 to $48, and may be purchased at eventsticketcenter.com