Goldman was born in Detroit, Michigan, to a Jewish family. He moved shortly thereafter to Missouri. Goldman\'s nickname Duff came about when he was a baby. His toddler brother, Willie Goldman, was unable to pronounce Jeffrey and kept saying Duffy. When he was four, his mother caught him in her kitchen wielding a meat cleaver and watching food personality Chef Tell.\n', '

After the divorce of his parents when he was ten, Goldman spent time living in both Northern Virginia and in the town of Sandwich on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. In 1992, Goldman attended McLean High School in McLean, Virginia where he played on the Highlanders ice hockey team. In 1993, he graduated from Sandwich High School in Sandwich.\n', '

From the age of fourteen, he began to work in kitchens; his first job was at a bagel store at a mall. Goldman has said that when he was a sophomore in college, he went to what he considered the finest restaurant in Baltimore, Charleston, and was inspired to apply as a cook there. The head chef, Cindy Wolf, looked at his résumé and noted that it consisted of irrelevant experience. However, Cindy did offer him a job to make cornbread and biscuits only, and this is what Goldman cites as the turning point in his career.\n', '

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