PARIS — What was it that Joseph Campbell said? “Follow your bliss.” It became a catchphrase in the 1990s after Campbell, the author and mythologist, gave an interview to Bill Moyers on PBS. “If you follow your bliss,” Campbell said, “you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living.”

And so we find Sam Schwarz on the Rue de la Villette, following his bliss, creating seafood dishes for patrons of Soces, a restaurant in the Belleville neighborhood of Paris. He’s 31 years old, a 2010 graduate of Towson High School. With no formal culinary training, he has already worked in one of the world’s best restaurants and had his culinary talents praised in The New York Times. He’s now a chef in a place the Michelin Guide calls “a gem of a Parisian brasserie.”

How did this happen?

It goes back to when Sam was a kid. I was well aware of his presence in the world because — disclaimer coming up — his father and I worked together, off and on, over the last 40 years. But I spent more time with his dad than I ever spent with Sam. So I was unaware of his lifelong interest in cooking, what he calls “the somewhat magical idea of taking ingredients and transforming them into something delicious.”

His mother and maternal grandmother were skilled in the kitchen, and Sam took notice, if not notes. He also watched TV food shows. He started cooking meals and, when old enough, took a job preparing food at Graul’s Market. “It gave me an introduction to the food service industry and the grittiness of the business, but I totally loved it,” he says. “Getting to cook for people and serve them even from behind a counter gave me a lot of joy.”

He also worked at the Village Square Cafe in Cross Keys.

After graduation from Gettysburg College, Sam took a job as — narrative twist coming up — a claims adjuster with an insurance company in Boston. “I was just trying to prove to my parents and myself that I could have a grown-up job,” he says. “But I quickly realized I wanted to do what I loved.”

He followed his bliss to Nashville and found work in a few different places before landing at Rolf & Daughters, a still-new restaurant that won early acclaim from major reviewers. It’s where, Sams says, “my whole world became food and cooking.” The owner-chef, Phil Krajeck, emphasized creating seasonal dishes with local ingredients, an ethic that appears to be permanently instilled in Sam’s approach to cooking.

Following your bliss is a wonderful thing, but it helps to have tour guides. One was Krajeck, an American, the other Bertrand Grebaut, the French chef at Septime, heralded as one of the 50 best restaurants in the world by the collaborating reviewers who put those gaudy lists together.

Of course, working for Grebaut required relocation to Paris. So Sam made that big leap. He worked in a restaurant called Ellsworth before landing on the line in Septime’s Michelin-starred kitchen.

“The attention to detail was meticulous, obsessive and endless,” he says of Septime. “We were striving for perfection.”

Sam worked with Grebaut for about 18 months before returning to the states to have his visa renewed. He planned to head back to France, but it was 2020 and the pandemic forced a detour. He ended up in New York for the reopening of Fradei, an “Italian bistro” in Brooklyn with 14 seats. By May 2021, the dishes Sam produced in the tiny kitchen with Robert Cox, another young chef who had worked in Paris before the pandemic, were praised by Times critic Pete Wells.

As heady as that sounds, the Fradei job came with numerous frustrations. Sam moved to Le Coucou, the widely praised French restaurant in Manhattan.

But he wanted to get back to Paris, and that’s where he is now, cooking at Soces, a “seafood forward” place with a bistro vibe and a willingness to change menus every two weeks.

“The French have such a deep and intricate relationship with food that just doesn’t exist in the United States,” he says. “You can get really great quality produce, meat and dairy now, but the standard that the consumer sees as acceptable for human consumption is definitely higher in France than in the U.S. I think that has a lot to do with a much lower wealth disparity in France. People have better access to quality ingredients.”

A wonderful thing about the passage of time — personal reflection coming up — is seeing the young men and women we first knew as children, even on the periphery of our lives, find their own way and find happiness. It’s a wonder to see them mature, develop a worldview, create something new, make a mark.

And so I found myself awed by Sam Schwarz when he showed me a photograph of a dish he had created: “Young hakurei turnips blanched in heavily salted water, cut in rounds and semi-dehydrated to mimic the texture of scallops.” He served them under a classic French sauce and thin strands of agretti, a wild green plant that grows in marshlands. Plated, the creation suggested juicy scallops engulfed in undulating underwater grasses. It would have made a French impressionist smile, then pick up a fork.