Product. Passion & Salt.

In 2002 I moved from Richmond to Charleston, SC mostly to be near my mother.  I took over management of a stunning restaurant that had not, in its 18 months open, found its footing.

One night a waiter came to me and said that the guests on table 12 wanted to say hi, as they were from Richmond and had been fans of The Frog and the Redneck.

Sweetheart that I am, I go to the table to greet them.  There were two couples, one of which lived in Richmond and the other in Charleston.  Turns out the Charleston couple had moved from Richmond eight years prior and loved living in Charleston.  I innocently asked if they missed Richmond.  “Not at all!” they practically shouted in unison.  “Richmond is an angry town.”

I was shocked.  Not by the idea that they thought Richmond was generally angry, but that it struck such a chord with me.  I too sensed a lot of anger in Richmond, even before moving here in ‘93 and certainly afterwards.  People advised me not to open The Frog in Richmond saying it was a town that would never accept new ideas and certainly not a restaurant located downtown with such a silly name.  So many statements began or ended with “This is Richmond” that I banned it from use.

But there was indeed tangible anger.  Anger over the way things had changed, over local, state and national politics, over allowing women into VMI, putting Arthur Ashe on Monument Avenue, desecrating downtown with the 6th Street Marketplace and of course losing the Civil War.

Fast forward 20 years.  We’ve since moved to Las Vegas and the suburbs of Chicago and then back to Richmond.  Twice.  I’m often asked if I think Richmond has changed over the years?  Is it a ‘nicer’ place?  Hell yes!  It’s alive, with youth:  Bicycles, kids in strollers, dogs on leashes with grins on their faces, interesting restaurants, really good coffee shops and nicer folks.  How on earth….does that happen?

Well, cultural dilution, for one thing.  Back in the 90’s it seems that every week you read in the Richmond Times-Dispatch that some new company was moving its headquarters to Richmond.  That meant new blood, new ideas.  Come-heres as they were known.  And, speaking of the newspaper….

How awful.

Whoever coined the phrase ‘wrong side of history’ must have been talking about the Times-Disgrace.  Women’s rights, gay rights, racial equality, smoking in restaurants, Fox News politics and, if you’re old enough, bussing.  Remember “massive resistance”?  Does the name James Kilpatrick strike a familiar?  Or Ross McKenzie?  The first time I saw him in person I was stunned that he looked, well, normal.  I expected at the very least a lizard tongue and scales.

Such an embarrassment the Times-Dispatch was that the first time I was interviewed, back in 1993, the reporter, Charles Slack, started by saying that the news side of the paper had absolutely nothing to do with the editorial side.  It became an oft repeated refrain from their reporters.

Thankfully the RTD as we knew it is all but dead.  Perhaps the new ownership will help it to reflect the community instead of trying to make it into its image.

So, the answer is yes.  Even if I’ve forgotten the question.

Hello.  My name is Jimmy (Hi Jimmy!), and I’m a carnivore.  So is my wife.  And our son, although less and less so each year.  Our daughters are both vegan, the youngest committed, the oldest hardcore.  So hardcore, in fact, that she urged me to sell my interest in a Jamaican restaurant, with its awesome oxtail, cow cod and jerk chicken, and help her open a little vegetarian ‘bistro’  serving vegetarian pizzas, sandwiches, stews and desserts.  (It’s called Fresca on Addison, in Richmond, VA).

Early on a customer came in, perused the chalkboard menu, ordered some food, scrutinized the work area and then ate.  He came back a few days later and repeated the ritual after which he introduced himself.  Turns out he’s a heart surgeon at Bon Secours and claimed (are you ready for this?) that heart disease can be reversed with the proper diet.

Oh, I’ve heard stories and listened to customers over the years with their own tales of beating death with the right food.  Macrobiotic this, organic that.  Avoid meat and dairy and eat veggies without adding fat.  Now don’t get me wrong: I worked at Fresca for the first 8 months or so and something quite unexpected happened.  I forgot to eat meat.  Seriously, I’d go three or four days eating pizza with mozzarella, roasted red peppers and seitan ‘chorizo’, or roasted broccolini on one of Jenna’s warm, yeasty, baked-to-order pita breads.  Then there was the egg salad, chili or curried vegetables over stone ground grits.  So, am I ready to go all vegetarian, the Full Monty?  Hell no.  I’d rather die than give up foie gras and tapioca pudding.

 I may get my wish.

You see, Jenna, our extreme vegan, asked a favor of me:  Dad, please.  How could I say no?  Go see a movie at the Byrd Theater sponsored by the Vegetarian Society of Richmond (wearing Birkenstocks I suppose).  It’s called Forks over Knives.  So Stacey and I went to see it and while I did doze off a few times, as I’m prone to do at movies, each time I revived all I heard was ‘meat is bad, vegetables are good’ blah blah blah.

Well, maybe that’s not all I heard.  There was this guy named Esselstyn from the Cleveland Clinic and a couple other doctor types offering testimonials of folks that have renewed energy, sleep better and no longer need Viagra, all from eliminating meat products.  Man, some people will say anything to get a rise out of me.

Oh, did I mention that a ‘whole food, plant based diet’ will magically lower LDL, blood pressure, heart rate and pretty much bitch slap diabetes.  Not a little, but dramatically and quickly.  Their star patient went from taking nine different medicines a day to one.  No more statins, no more blood pressure medicine, no more insulin.  Do they understand what havoc this can wreck on the pharmaceutical industry, not to mention cattle ranchers?  They could go the way of tobacco farmers.  These nuts want us to give up meat and pharmaceuticals?  Un-American I say.  What next?  Assault rifles?

Well apparently it’s not. Stacey and I were in NYC last weekend for our son’s wedding. A great time was had by all. Monday morning we got up and walked to a nearby coffee shop called Think Coffee. We had a cup of very good coffee (although there was some confusion among the staff as to who roasted their coffee, and a bagel (sesame for me, everything bagel for Stacey).

Anyway, halfway through breakfast a girl and her companion came out of the shop, sat down at one of the sidewalk tables, and lit up a cigarette. So I moseyed inside and asked the barista whether, under New York’s new smoking laws, one was allowed to smoke under the awning.

“They are not” said the barista. “Why? Is someone out there smoking?”

Not just someone, I noted, but an employee of the coffee shop. “Well,” they paused, “I guess we should, um….”

“Fire her?” I said, half in jest.

Whereupon a customer (in his early 30’s I’d say) piped up “I say live and let live.”

Me: Really. That’s interesting because that’s what I say as well. Let me live without breathing in cigarette smoke.

Him: Your advocating her being fired was a bit extreme, I’d say.

Me: I said it (half) in jest. Nevertheless it is against the law and reflects poorly on the
establishment.”

Him: You can always vote with your feet.

Me: Let me get this straight. You’re suggesting that I, what, walk away in the middle of my breakfast? Or should I just sit there and breathe in cigarette smoke? You do know by now, like anybody who can read, that cigarette smoke is a class A carcinogen.

Him: So are a lot of things. Deal with it.

Me: And that guy outside with his baby in the stroller, should he just sit there as well? Or perhaps he should grab his baby and run away. Is that what you’re suggesting?

Him: That’s not what I’m suggesting at all. Goodbye.

Me: Goodbye. And don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.

(Ok, I didn’t really say that. After all, this is still New York. Or, as a good friend of mine once said: The subways here are very safe. Just don’t make eye contact with anybody).

It’s true, I came very, very close to having a great meal while out of town Sunday.  The restaurant in question is quite new and has received huge acclaim in a very short time.  Huge.  So I went there with high expectations and was not disappointed.  At first.

The space is very nice.  Somebody sank a chit ton of money into it, and it shows.  Outside, the garden, front porch and side building/bar showed lots of attention and good taste.  Inside, across from the hostess was a large slate tally board that showed where every main ingredient came from and who produced it.  Quite impressive.  The menu relied on the farm to table philosophy and showed me that great thought, time and talent went into writing it.  Best of all, there were a dozen dishes that appealed to me.  My juices were flowing. Read the rest of this entry »

I was visiting my mother recently, in Charleston, SC.  She asked where we should go to lunch and I suggested the venerable Greek restaurant nearby.

“No way,” she said, “the last time I ate there they served me iced tea that had soured.”

Ouch.

“And, your father’s chicken was dry.”

Pause.

“Mom.”

Pause.

“Dad’s been dead for 36 years.”

Lesson for restaurants?  Don’t piss off Mom.

After my freshman year of college in the 70’s I took a job managing a Panasonic store at the Eastview Mall outside of Rochester, NY.  Brrrrr.  My roommate, Jerry, managed a shoe store at the mall.  At lunchtime a bunch of us would meet at the Steak and Cleaver for a burger and a beer.  (Drinking age was 18).

Anyway, there were two waitresses there named Nancy.  One, a blonde with a bit of a complexion issue, was soooo nice, so sweet.  “Hi Guys”, she’d coo, “what can I get you today?”  The other Nancy was old, maybe 26 or so, and had no time for niceties.  “Are you guys going to order or just sit there acting like asses?”

Next thing I know, Jerry was dating Nice Nancy and then inviting her to move into our house.  Then, as fate would have it, Nasty Nancy’s boyfriend gets busted for selling drugs and Nancy needs a place to stay, so she takes our spare bedroom.  Now we have Nice Nancy and Nasty Nancy living with us.  Guess what?  Turns out Nice Nancy was nasty.  And Nasty Nancy was nice.

At a restaurant where I was consulting last year, I asked the waitstaff, one by one, to name the best restaurant meal they ever had.

Margaret:  Umm.  Umm.  Sorry chef, I have nothing for ya.

Don:  Uh, let me think.  Uh.  Can’t come up with anything.

Joey:  I don’t eat out much, sorry.

Billy:  None stand out Chef.

Ryan:  It was in Charleston, South Carolina.

Me:  Great.  What did you have?

Ryan:  I don’t remember, but I know I liked it.

Me:  OK, interesting.  What was it called?

Ryan:  I don’t remember the name.

Me:  Let me get this straight.  The best meal you’ve ever eaten in your life was at a restaurant whose name you don’t remember and you have no idea what you ate?

Ryan:  Yes Chef.

Hard as it is to believe, only one of the 15 or so waiters had eaten a meal so memorable that they could recall it.  That server had eaten with her parents at the French Laundry.  Not too shabby.

Now it gets really bad.  I challenged the chef of this restaurant’s other location to name a great restaurant in Richmond.  His reply (in front of the mortified owner) was “I like Applebee’s.”  Five for five, Baby.

Swear to god, I’m gonna write more.  Screw inspiration.

Just picked up some ramps from the West Virginia/Virginia border.  My digger is a true mountain man, Bill Kincaid.  He pretty much hunts every day of the year:  deer, turkey, ramps, morels or chanterelles.  He has become a friend as well.  We have a lot in common seein’ as how my Dad was born not far away, in the hills of WV.  Hey, maybe we’re related!

Years ago ramps made my personal list of the ten great foods of the world.  They’re either a wild leek, wild garlic, wild onion, lily of the valley or the source of all that’s holy, depending on whom you ask.  Raw, they’ll make your eyes flutter.  Dip them into good salt first.  Cooked they become rich and deeply flavorful.  Ramps seem to grow best throughout the Ohio Valley, and not too well anywhere else.  I’ve had ‘em from the Northwest but they’re wimpy.

Back in the days before interstates, very little ‘foreign’ produce made its way to the dinner tables in the ‘hollers’ of West Virginia.  So the Hatfields and the McCoys made do with whatever they could hunt, or forage.  They ate ramps and eggs for breakfast, ramp sandwiches for lunch and ramp salad with dinner.  Out of self defense, they passed a law that allowed teachers to send home any students that ate ramps to the point that ramp essence oozed out their pores.

To that point, the first time Bill dug ramps for me I went to him to get them.  The next time I told him to stick them on a Greyhound bound for Richmond and I picked them up at the Greyhound station in Richmond.  A week later he got a letter from Greyhound saying that whatever it was he shipped, please don’t do it again.

Hopefully we’ll have ramps into early May.  Today I added a couple of raw ramps to an egg salad sandwich on warm, freshly baked pita.  Holy shit.

Three times in the last two weeks someone has inferred that working at Fresca on Addison is somehow beneath me.  One customer asked if it wasn’t below my ‘pay grade’.  A food writing friend suggested, twice, that it isn’t possible to realize culinary greatness in a vegetarian bistro.  Bullshit.  First of all I’m working six days a week with my wife and two daughters.  Second, we’re doing food that I like very, very much.  Third, this concept has legs.  And fourth, a restaurant doesn’t have to be expensive to be great.

Back in the day I had a choice:

• .   Cook crap in awful restaurants (been there, done that).
• .   Cook simple food to the best of my limited abilities (btdt as well).
• .   Cook fancy food for wealthy people.
• .   Learn fancy food, cook simple food.

My first serious job in a legit kitchen was at the Four Seasons Hotel in D.C., back in ’81.  Then Jean-Louis Palladin, then Guenter Seeger.  I spent six years working with unimaginable product:

• .    Freshly killed capons, still steaming under a bed of shaved ice.
• .    Tree sections flown in from Brazil, to be stripped of their bark layer by layer until the heart of the palm was exposed.
• .   Buckets of live elvers, or baby eel, clear as rice noodles with two miniscule black dots for eyes.
• .   Truffles the size of tennis balls, filling the entire restaurant with their remarkable perfume.
• .   Caviar.  Not just caviar, but Royal Golden Albino Osetra from Iran.
• .   Langoustine from Spain, caught yesterday.
• .   Olive oil from Chateau Lafite.
• .   Armagnac that made Louis XIII taste like soap.
• .   Rabbit livers, turtle eggs, duck balls, kidneys, brains and marrow.
• .   Forty kinds of mushrooms, all hunted within 100 miles of D.C. (hey Ray!).

I knew this wasn’t the type of food that I would be cooking in my own restaurant one day.  But I certainly wanted to discover it, enjoy it, learn to respect it, if only to be able to use this experience to better appreciate a perfectly ripe tomato, or a great burger.

Will I do another ‘major’ restaurant?  I think about it all the time.  The Frog and the Redneck was a magnificent undertaking, as was Tristan in Charleston, and SugarToad outside of Chicago.  Yep, I probably will.  I’ve even identified some locations, here in Richmond of course.  Will it be ‘better’ or more fulfilling than Fresca?  I doubt it.  But hopefully it’ll make more money.  Hey, I might want to retire someday.

* * * * * * *

Speaking of SugarToad: a real challenge it was.  After all, opening a luxury hotel 35 miles west of Chicago with a 70 seat restaurant?  And to boot, it opened in September of 2008 as the economy was hitting the proverbial fan.  Yet, just 8 weeks open the Chicago Tribune awarded us 3 stars out of four, practically unheard of for a restaurant so far out in the ‘burbs’.  A month later their restaurant critic, Phil Vettel, then named us as one of the “Ten Best New Restaurants in Chicago” and, a month after that, he named our crabcakes as one of the Ten Best Dishes of the Year.  Not too shabby.

The point of this ‘self patting on the back’ is to acknowledge that it happened in no small part because of the efforts of the Chef de Cuisine that I hired, Geoff Rhyne.  Now, two and a half years later, I’m confident in saying that Geoff is as good a cook, at 30, as I have known.  He’s leaving SugarToad and coming back east to be with his wife-of-a-year.  If you’re anywhere near Chicago in the next few weeks, go to SugarToad.  Really.

A few times a year a young cook will approach me and say something like, “Chef, you won’t remember me but a few years ago I helped you cook a charity dinner……”  (They’re right, I don’t remember but that’s the result of either advanced years or, um, I forgot the other thing.)  To which I reply, “Was I awesome or a total dick”?  A typical answer: “I thought you were awesome.  But a couple of my friends thought you were a dick.”  Fair enough.

Generally speaking, here’s how it plays out:  I arrive at the venue at the same time as 20 other chefs with their staff or, in some cases, entourage.  The organizers offer me a couple of helpers, usually from a local cooking school.  I pull them aside and lay down the rules: button your chef coats to the top, fold your cuffs one turn only, no cigarette breaks and no alcohol until everything is cleaned up and put away at the end of the night.  You’re here to work and not prance around like some kind of prima donna.  Listen to what I tell you; I’ll give you clear instructions as to what you need to do.  Do not ask me to repeat myself.  I hate repeating myself.  I hate repeating myself.  I hate repeating myself.

Example: John, core the tomato like this, make an X on the bottom with the point of your knife, drop it into boiling water for 15 seconds then immediately into ice water.  Peel the skin off, trim the flesh from the seeds and cut into strips, then dices exactly this size (see specimen on cutting board).  I need two quarts of diced tomatoes.  Debbie, take these baguettes and give me 600 slices exactly this thick, use long strokes when you slice, let the weight of the knife do the cutting, don’t push down.  Like this.

So for six hours we slice, dice, sauté, toast, portion, serve, clean up and do it again.  Meanwhile, their buddies are walking around (remember these are culinary students) with their champagne glasses, Ray Bans, open collars and ‘cock of the walk’ attitude checking out all the auction items, and the other chefs.

While my guys are working I walk up to them and say, “Some of your diced tomatoes look like sugar cubes and others look like you stepped on them.  Where’s the example I left you?  I want every dice to look exactly like the next.”

At the end of the night these kids have learned soooo much.  They’ve learned to follow instructions, work clean, symmetry, knife skills, humility and pride.  Holy shit.  No wonder they [love/hate] me.

* * * * * *

Richmond story: I was interviewing a local cook for a position at The Frog and the Redneck 15 years ago.  I asked him where he worked.

I’m the chef at ——- he said.

Who owns it? I asked.

—– —–, he responded, and boy does he hate your guts.

—– —–?  I don’t remember meeting him before.

Oh, said Mathew.  He’s never met you.