Food GPS - Food. Drinks. People.

Jason Neroni grew up in Orange County and built up culinary credentials at New York restaurants like 71 Clinton Fresh Food and 10 Downing Food & Wine. He returned to Southern California and ran the Osteria La Buca and Superba Snack Bar kitchens before teaming with Sprout on Catch & Release in Marina del Rey and The Rose in Venice. In his “spare time,” Neroni also consults on two B Side Brick Oven Pizza locations in New York. In June, I met Neroni at Catch & Release, where we discussed his philosophy and approach.

Joshua Lurie: How did the opportunity with Sprout come about?

Jason Neroni: I was working brunch at [Superba] Snack Bar and Rory Herrmann, now my partner, walked in the door with two guys. Rory and I used to work together at Blue Hill and [Alain] Ducasse in New York eons ago. He was at Bouchon at the time…They come to leave. I said, “I heard you’re leaving Bouchon. What are you doing?” He said, “I’m getting ready to open five restaurants.” “Five restaurants? That’s advantageous.” I said, “Who’s that?” He said, “That’s Bill Chait…And that’s Michael Glick, owner of L.A. Specialty.”

A month later, [Rory] gave me a call: “I have an opportunity to do this thing.” I was happy with what I was doing…They took me down and showed me the [Rose] space and we talked about the opportunity. Bill told me about his vision for the space…People move away from certain things, and I didn’t see my future with the Superba and Pitfire group. Bill is very chef-friendly and is very chef-forward and gives chefs a lot of opportunity to grow. He puts the chefs in charge, and I really like that a lot about him. He wants chefs to get the best product, buys the best equipment, and is there to nurture you in that way. He respects everyone’s opinion and listens to you, and I thought that was great. That’s what I was really looking for in a partner.

JL: How did Catch & Release change the dynamic?

JN: I was still working on B Side in New York and got a phone call. They were like, “We’ve got this thing we want you to look at in Marina del Rey.” I came back and saw what was here. Rory and I used to talk about opening a spot like Mary’s Fish Camp in New York, for the longest time. Last summer, I’d spent some time in Maine, and we’d talked about it off and on. I was actually wearing a Russ & Daughters T-shirt the day I showed up to the meeting. He’s like, “Why don’t we do something like this?” I thought about it and talked to my wife, because my wife and I were still going to Maine every summer. My grandparents are from there. My grandfather, that’s him, and those are his boats.

[Neroni points to photos of his grandfather on the Catch & Release wall.]

JL: Your grandfather’s from Maine?

JN: He was actually born in Puerto Rico, grew up in Manhattan and was stationed in Portland. Those are lightboats. The lighthouses weren’t always effective enough, so the Coast Guard would send boats out. He would have to stay on these boats for a month at a time. Can you imagine? Terrible. He manned the boats, what’s coming in and out of Portland harbor.

JL: And they would fish on the boats?

JN: Of course. He got to know all the fishermen there, obviously, because he was directing them in and out. That’s what he did until he got shipped off to Vietnam.

Catch & Release came about because we didn’t want to lose the space. We didn’t want to lose the location. We wanted to do something that was fairly easygoing for the neighborhood without sacrificing the integrity of what we believe as chefs, serving quality seafood and product.

JL: My friend pointed out that the name is Catch & Release, but you’re not releasing a whole lot of seafood.

JN: Well, it depends. The art of catch & release is actually on the menu and gives all the times, according to actual catch and release records and logs, when you actually can catch and release a certain fish.

JL: So that’s the origin of the name?

JN: Correct. Some people thought it pertains to trout fishing, which is not true. California Department Fish & Wildlife catch and release logs. It’s actually practicing sustainability of catch and release, knowing when to catch and when to release.

JL: You mentioned the notion of value in seafood when I sat down. How are you offering value at Catch & Release?

JN: We’re trying the best we can to explain what we do. We opened with spaghetti with ramps and Dungeness crab, preserved lemon and breadcrumbs…The eggs we use come from Chino Valley, organic, sustainable eggs. To make the pasta, we use King Arthur Sir Galahad flour, and 00, all organically milled, ground within one week, made in-house with a $5000 pasta machine that’s imported from Italy. The Dungeness crab is alive when it comes to me, which we bring in every single day from Alaska. Kill it, pick it and preserve it. The ramps are being foraged by a friend of mine in New Jersey, put into a bag and shipped to me via FedEx twice a week. The butter is Straus. The lemons were preserved by us, in-house, three months prior to opening, in Cryovac bags. If you take all of those components from all over the world that converge into one small plate sitting in front of you, for $17, think about the monumental-ness that took to put that one dish together at that one time. To me, it’s worth so much more than that.

JL: How are people responding to the menu so far in Marina del Rey?

JN: It’s a work in progress. Most people are responding pretty well. We’ve tinkered with the size of the lobster roll. It was large for $22, then we did a small one for $12. Now we do it large for $24 and it comes with fries. Again, lobsters are flown in every day by Steve Connolly in Massachusetts. They’re caught in Maine and arrive at LAX within 24 hours. Parker House rolls are made in-house every 20 minutes, in intervals, as we bake them off. Giving more to have loss leaders helps us at the end of the day. I want nothing more than every single person to walk out of here happy. That’s why I’m in the hospitality business. We’re still trying to convey the message that we buy only the best, we serve only the best, as best we can.

JL: Do you really have the sense that every neighborhood is so unique in what they want? This is your first restaurant in Marina del Rey, but you’ve had many restaurants on the Westside.

JN: And I’ve had restaurants in New York City. I have one more being built in Venice. Neighborhoods change dynamics, 100%. This neighborhood is much more family oriented. Our clientele base is late 30s, 40s and 50s. Venice was young. I call that the Instagram set. I call this the Facebook set. If you follow the demographics and see it on Facebook, who is actually following you, there are different people. Millennials will spend very good money for high-end products, whereas I’m 39 years old. We look at the perception of value and where our dollar goes. We don’t have as much disposable income at times as some early 20s do, having fun, going out. They’re with their friends.

JL: Pre-family.

JN: Pre-family. Yes, exactly. Pre-mortgage. Pre two cars.

JL: Does that influence what you put on the menu, knowing the demographic?

JN: Yeah…I see a lot of families here, which we love. I have two kids. My kids run around this place four times a week, but it’s just a matter of getting to know your clientele. Do I focus the menu that way? Kind of. This menu is based upon a childhood. Most people under 30 probably have no idea what HoJo clam strips are. I grew up eating at Howard Johnson every Sunday with my grandparents, across the street from Disneyland. When my grandparents got here from Maine, it was the only place you could get that sort of back East throwback.

JL: What does a dish have to be to be a Jason Neroni dish?

INTERVIEW CONTINUED ON THE NEXT PAGE

Interview: chef Jason Neroni (Catch & Release + The Rose)

Food GPS - Food. Drinks. People.

Tara Lazar is a self-trained chef who’s carved out quite a niche in Palm Springs with Foundation 10 Creative‘s diverse roster. She started with popular breakfast spot Cheeky’s in 2008 and has since added Italian-inspired Birba and a boutique hotel called Alcazar on the same block. F10 also runs pan-Latin Chi Chi at the Avalon Palm Springs, and her group recently updated iconic Lyons English Grille, which now goes by Mr. Lyons. I met Lazar at Chi Chi in August, and followed up by e-mail to learn more about her philosophy and approach.

Joshua Lurie: Was it a given that you would become a chef and restaurateur, or did you consider other careers?

Tara Lazar: Not even close, I was a stock trader during my 20s, moved back to Palm Springs and was annoyed there wasn’t any good breakfast. My dad offered to pay me to NOT get into the restaurant biz. Quite a fluke. But in hindsight, I was always fascinated with food, eating, seeking out tasty snacks, etc.

JL: What do you remember about the first night that you cooked professionally in a restaurant kitchen?

TL: It was a morning (not a night), at Cheeky’s. I had no idea what I was doing, didn’t even know which way the chits should go. The line cook next to me had never worked a hot station and the griddle kept burning the pancakes. We turned it down and the pancakes came out undercooked. I think the first order came out about 25 minutes after it was rung in and 6 rounds of pancakes later.

JL: What are some of the unique challenges you face as a chef and restaurateur in Palm Springs, and how do you overcome them?

TL: As a chef, I always want more intense flavors that really capture the essence of the dish: a tomato salad should really taste tomatoey – it shouldn’t taste like dressing. And we are at the mercy of our local farms to provide us tasty tomatoes. However, when their truck breaks down or they aren’t going to make it down the hill that day, we have neither tasty tomatoes nor tomatoes at all…which is the challenge in this laid back resort town – labor and professionalism. Much of our lovely predominantly local team has not been exposed to the foods we are cooking or the experience we are providing so there is a steep learning curve that requires passion which is always hard to teach.

JL: What do you look for when you’re hiring somebody to work in one of your kitchens?

INTERVIEW CONTINUED ON THE NEXT PAGE

Interview: Tara Lazar (Foundation 10 Creative, Palm Springs)

Food GPS - Food. Drinks. People.

Francis Mallmann is an accomplished Argentinean chef who’s traveled the world and now employs a repertoire of cooking techniques that focus on Seven Fires. His restaurants include 1884 Francis Mallmann in Mendoza, Patagonia Sur in Buenos Aires, and El Garzon Restaurant and Hotel in Punta del Este, Uruguay. He’s also preparing to open Los Fuegos in Miami’s Faena District in Fall 2015. He was recently in Los Angeles at Hotel Bel-Air to cook alongside Wolfgang Puck and Adam Perry Lang. I sat down with Chef Mallmann, who’s also an author and regular television presence, to discuss his outlook and approach.

Joshua Lurie: What more do you have to accomplish as a chef, if anything?

Francis Mallmann: I feel that this language of fires is on its way. I can’t say I have embraced all of it yet. There’s a lot more to do. I’m working very hard now on this new project in Miami to take what we do to another level of perfection and beauty and taste. We’ve been working on this for two years now, and I’m really looking forward to it because it’s going to be like a new branch of cooking and thinking about fires.

JL: What was it that convinced you to get involved with the Faena project?

FM: I’ve known Alan [Faena] for 30 years, and the possibility of having a restaurant with fires in America, and getting the permits, it’s not very easy. I’ve tried it several times and we haven’t been very successful getting the fire permits. I’m very happy with it. I think Miami has a beautiful audience of Americans and South Americans. It’s like an encounter place for all these cultures. Our way of cooking will do very well there, in that environment.

JL: When you travel internationally, what is it that you look to get out of those experiences?

FM: In life, once you reach certain things in your work, the only way to grow is when you become more like a generalist. For me, traveling is like going to university. It’s a way of looking into cultures, idiosyncrasies and languages, ways of walking, dressing, music and beauty. All that affects my cooking, a lot. I get very much inspired by all the surroundings in traveling. It’s not only that you go try some food and get inspired. The surroundings are more important to me when I travel.

JL: Are there any culinary aspects that grab your interest in California, specifically Los Angeles?

INTERVIEW CONTINUED ON THE NEXT PAGE

Interview: chef Francis Mallmann (Los Fuegos)

Food GPS - Food. Drinks. People.

City of Orange native and longtime caterer Brooke Desprez teamed with Chi-lin Pendergrast and husband Sumter on Sidecar Doughnuts in 2012. The Costa Mesa hit now has a branch in Santa Monica. Learn more about Chef Desprez and her seemingly magical rings.

Josh Lurie: What was your career trajectory like before Sidecar?

Brooke Desprez: I was a caterer for five years. The way I got into food – my daughter went to a school where the parents were really involved. I was in charge of the hospitality. That was about 10 years ago. That’s where I started experimenting with different flavor combinations and large quantities. That’s where my love of food really started.

JL: What do you remember about the very first donut that you made? How did that turn out?

BD: I spent a year. Believe it or not, my yeast dough, right off the bat, was pretty good. I just had to adjust it a little bit. It’s the cake that took me awhile to figure out. That was more difficult.

JL: What’s more challenging about the cake batter?

BD: I just want it to be really moist and light like a cake. It just took a little while to figure all that out.

JL: What are some keys to a great donut?

BD: Not over-mixing, for one. And the fry time is important. Using quality ingredients is important.

JL: What sort of oil do you prefer?

BD: We use palm oil.

JL: How come?

BD: It’s a saturated oil and doesn’t have any of that after-film. I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed, at some donut places, there’s a film that you get. [Palm] is a really clean oil. I just had the best luck with it. It doesn’t absorb as easily. It’s solid at room temperature. It’s a saturated fat. It’s healthier, believe it or not. They’re finding now that saturated fats like lard and palm are better for you.

JL:: How did you end up teaming with Sumter and Chi-lin?

BD: My daughter went to the same school as Chi-lin’s daughters, and that’s where I met her. We became close friends.

JL: What does the name Sidecar refer to?

BD: Sumter’s stepfather had the idea. When he was little, he remembers going to his favorite donut shop. As a sidecar, they served a little donut hole on the side. We thought it was cute and had a lot of different meanings. You can have fun with that name.

JL: What’s the criteria for a Sidecar donut?

BD: Fresh. Flavorful. If it’s a lemon donut, I want it to taste like lemon. Huckleberry, I want people to experience what a huckleberry tastes like. A lot of people don’t even know what a huckleberry tastes like. I love introducing them to what a foraged berry like a huckleberry tastes like. If it’s ginger, I want it to taste like ginger. Some people might say, “It’s too flavorful,” but I prefer that. I like tasting what it’s supposed to be.

JL: What were your expectations when Sidecar opened, and how have you met or exceeded them?

INTERVIEW CONTINUED ON THE NEXT PAGE

Interview: chef Brooke Desprez (Sidecar Doughnuts)

Food GPS - Food. Drinks. People.

Greg Denton Gabrielle Quiñonez Denton are the partners behind Ox and Superbite in Portland, Oregon. The duo met at Terra in St. Helena, became Food & Wine Best New Chefs in 2012, and recently released Around the Fire, which spotlights wood-fired cooking at Ox and at home. I met the couple at Republique in Los Angeles, where they shared culinary insights.

Josh Lurie: What are your goals with “Around the Fire”?

Greg Denton: Our goals for “Around the Fire” have never been to make money on a book. For us, it’s a way for us to put what we do as a living, and what we love to do, we get to put those things in somebody’s hands. They get to take something with them, not just an experience in a restaurant. Now they’re able to be inspired at home with what they might have had at our restaurant.

Gabrielle Quiñonez Denton: From a business point of view, we’re hoping that we’re enticing people to come to Portland, or when they do come to Portland, hopefully they seek out one of our restaurants based on what they’ve seen in the cookbook and hopefully what they’ve attempted to cook for themselves. From a more romantic point of view, we hope we don’t have to force people to use their grills, but we wanted to show people how many great opportunities there are to pull out their grill throughout the year. In the middle of winter, any time of year, there are so many great different vegetables and proteins that lend themselves to being cooked on the grill.

GD: It’s one of those things, too, the way the book is set up, we always think about inspiration. It could be this egg sandwich that I’m eating, or it could be by a very fine dining experience we’ve had. Or it could just be walking into a grocery store and looking at a Twinkie and something happens. You don’t know exactly what happens, but we wanted to show people, and express to people, when you look at something, it doesn’t just have to be the recipe. We want you to play around with the recipes and combinations that are in there. When you do that, you really start to explore your creative side. We wanted to share our creative process, and hopefully inspire them to be creative as well.

How did you decide which recipes to include in your cookbook?

GD: We didn’t hold anything back. A lot of people thought that we wouldn’t put in the chowder, which is a very popular dish. People thought we may not put the beef tongue in there because it might be a little too difficult. Or the chimichurri. “Did you put the right recipe in there?” Yeah, we don’t have anything to hide, and we really want to share our signature items plus more creative grilling items that maybe we haven’t even served at the restaurant. Things we’ve done at home and wanted to share based on the grill.

JL: What are the criteria for a dish at Ox versus a dish at Superbite?

GQD: At the starting point, it’s the same criteria. The dish has to excite both of us. Usually one of us will start with a concept for a dish, or maybe it’s an ingredient that we’re craving or want to see on our menu that we haven’t featured in awhile. So it will start with the bare bones, the basics of an idea. One of us will basically pitch it to the other person. It’s not until both of us are completely enthusiastic about the development of the dish that we go into the kitchen and start playing around with fine-tuning. That’s how it is at both restaurants.

GD: At Superbite, we have to consider portion sizes a little bit more. At Ox, portions are a little bit larger. A lot of things are more family-style. Our small is meant to be shared. Our large plate is meant to be shared among 4-5 people. At Superbite, a portion of the menu is actually bites. We can go a little more aggressive when it comes to ingredients and seasoning and even creativity, a little bit more. People aren’t committing much money or time or room in their stomach for that section of the menu. They can really taste their way through and make better decisions on how they’re going to complete their meal, whether it be plates or platters.

JL: Tell me how you collaborate on dishes. What was the process for the most recent dish you added to the menu at Ox or Superbite?

GD: There are a couple ways we create. The way Gabi described it is one way. One of us has an idea and we bounce it back and forth, kind of like tennis, until we get to a point where we’re both really excited about it. There are also times when someone’s just really excited or inspired by something and we go with it. Sometimes we really get excited about the same thing.

One recent thing we did, at Superbite, we do a duck liver scramble. That has caviar, chives, and brioche croutons. The way that came about, Gabi was just testing our duck liver pate, which is egg and cream, duck liver mousse. She sautéed it in a pan to fry it before we cooked it off. I tasted it and was like, “Whoa, that tastes like scrambled eggs.” Boom! Suddenly, I’m running to grab caviar. I put the caviar on. Gabi’s like, “Chives.” Now we need a toast. It just happened really quickly, and very organically.

Then other times, it’s a seasonal things. Strawberries, what do we want to with strawberries? It becomes more of a back and forth that way.

JL: What were the first dishes you each remember cooking individually, ever?

INTERVIEW CONTINUED ON THE NEXT PAGE

Interview: chefs Greg Denton + Gabrielle Quiñonez Denton (Ox + Superbite)

Food GPS - Food. Drinks. People.

Justin West started cooking by age 11 in his father’s five restaurants in Eugene, Oregon. He committed to the restaurant world at an early age. He met Emma, his wife and front of house partner, at California Culinary Academy in San Francisco. They relocated to Santa Barbara. He spent time with The Wine Cask and San Ysidro Ranch in numerous capacities before the couple opened seasonally focused Julienne across from El Presidio State Historic Park in 2008. They added Wildwood Kitchen to end 2015, delivering “West Coast BBQ” to The Mill, a multi-faceted venue. I reconnected with Justin West at a Santa Barbara culinary showcase in L.A., and he recently shared several insights about his family’s Santa Barbara restaurants.

Josh Lurie: How did you decide on barbecue as a follow up to Julienne?

Justin West: My dad owned a BBQ restaurant called West Bros BBQ, for 15 years when I was growing up. These flavors have always been meaningful to me. Plus, the blueprint for this concept was there and tested. The other tenants at The Mill really liked the idea of BBQ and after a couple tastings of what my style of BBQ is, we were off to the races.

Josh Lurie: How did you decide which style of barbecue to go with at Wildwood Kitchen, and which type of wood to smoke your meats?

JW: We are calling Wildwood “West Coast BBQ”. We have a higher focus on Salad and Seafood than any other “traditional” BBQ restaurant. That being said, our style of smoking meats is very Southern and regional to the meats we prepare. The chicken and brisket are Texas style. The ribs are started Memphis style and finished Kansas City style. The pulled pork is Carolina style… When my dad opened West Bros. him and his brothers took a six-week road trip across the country and ate BBQ from all the different BBQ regions and what they brought back to Eugene was a “best of the best” idea of all the great styles under one roof. It fits perfectly with the West Coast BBQ idea because most Southerners are so proud of how THEY do it that they would never even consider combining styles like this, regions just stay focused on what they do (for the most part). But the West Coast is such a melting pot already… why not have the all under one roof style?

JL: What are the criteria for a dish at Julienne versus a dish at Wildwood Kitchen?

JW: Well, Julienne is more about what is in season at the market and trying to show the variety that the market provides. At the same time, at Julienne we dabble in many different cuisine types. At Wildwood, I still use the farmers market to help me write my menus in the Side Dishes and Salads section but the flavors are always going to be based in American cuisine.

JL: What is the first dish you remember cooking, ever? How did it turn out?

JW: The first thing I ever cooked was a Cream of Chicken Soup with Vegetables. It was a Julia Child recipe that I got from a CD Rom (did I just date myself?) on a Gateway 2000 computer that my parents bought for the family.. haha… There were cooking class videos on the CD and this soup was one of them It was unique though because there was very little cream in it. It used pureed white rice and onions as the thickener and “creaming” element.

JL: Was it a given that you’d work in restaurants since your father ran five restaurants in Eugene, Oregon, or did you consider other careers?

INTERVIEW CONTINUED ON THE NEXT PAGE

Interview: chef Justin West (Julienne + Wildwood Kitchen)

Food GPS - Food. Drinks. People.

Rustic Canyon Winebar and Seasonal Kitchen restaurateur Josh Loeb has gone on to open several other Santa Monica concepts with pastry chef/wife Zoe Nathan and the Rustic Canyon Family of Restaurants, including Huckleberry Bakery & Café, Milo & Olive, Sweet Rose Creamery, Cassia, and Esters Wine Shop & Bar, but Rustic Canyon remains the group’s seasonal touchstone. To start 2013, they welcomed chef Jeremy Fox, previously with revered Bay Area restaurants like Manresa and Ubuntu. To celebrate, talented chef friends join them in the kitchen for three anniversary dinners – October 3 (Out of Town Friends), November 7 (Local Friends) and December 8 (History of Rustic Canyon) – with the final dinner falling on their actual 10th anniversary. I recently met Loeb and Fox at Rustic Canyon’s bar, where they reflected on the restaurant’s progression, growth, identity, and future.

Josh Lurie: Josh, what were your initial goals with Rustic Canyon?

Josh Loeb: To open a great farm-to-table restaurant was something I felt like I had seen living in Berkeley, living in New York, a place that made everything by hand and used the best ingredients, but wasn’t stuffy. You could come in jeans and a T-shirt, or you come in a suit to celebrate your anniversary and have a crazy bottle of wine. I wanted to have that everything place, which I feel like I have.

JL: The notion persists that it’s a wine bar. You lead with that in the name. Do you still see it that way?

Loeb: I’ve been thinking of taking Winebar out of the name. It’s grown into so much more. We now have a real wine bar and wine shop in Esters. Sometimes people – especially if they’re writing about it – that’s the only time it really comes up…Especially with Jeremy’s food, the restaurant’s become so much more than that. Wine Bar doesn’t actually do it justice, but at the beginning, the reason I had Winebar in there was because I wanted it to be thought of as a friendly, casual place, not a restaurant that would intimidate. I still want that, but I feel like we’ve achieved that now, just with 10 years of people experiencing it. Now it’s a little unnecessary.

JL: Josh and Jeremy, how did you end up meeting, and what appealed to you about working with each other?

Jeremy Fox: We met a year or two before I actually started. We had briefly talked about doing something, but it wasn’t the right time. December of 2012, I was doing this pop-up, and Josh and Zoe came into eat. They were looking for a chef. I was looking for a job. That’s how it started. We talked about it for several weeks and made it official.

JL: Why was it such a good fit?

Loeb: We were both kind of vulnerable at the time, to be completely honest. As a restaurant, we had gone from two great chefs who were really important for the time – Evan Funke and Samir Mohajer – and we were going through an odd period, and it wasn’t really the right time. Jeremy was going through a transitional period for him personally, and in his career. He was looking for the right fit, and we were looking for the right chef. One thing about Rustic, I never wanted it to be one kind of food. I wanted it to reflect these principles of seasonality and craftsmanship, but I wanted it to go where whoever the most talented person available could take it, as long as it was warm and unpretentious. We had a lot of people cook for us. It was not even close. Jeremy was so much more talented than any person who came in our kitchen, and there were some really good people there. I felt like he’s on another level.

Fox: I did overcook the pork.

Loeb: You did overcook the pork, but everyone overcooks the pork. Evan [Funke] overcooked the pork when he did his tasting. Erin [Eastland] overcooked the pork when she did her tasting.

JL: What was on the menu for your audition?

Fox: Carrots with carrot top pesto. Shaved apple and kohlrabi salad. Beets.

JL: How would you say that Rustic Canyon has evolved since you arrived?

Fox: I’ve evolved since then. What I wanted with Rustic Canyon was to start a new chapter, maybe go in a different direction in terms of my food. I didn’t necessarily have a map for that. There wasn’t a strategy involved, but over time, it evolved to a place where it almost didn’t matter who was in the kitchen. There was a style that was Rustic Canyon that could be interpreted by any number of people, but the ethos and what it was, and the philosophy, was imprinted already.

JL: What have you learned from Josh and Zoe about running restaurants?

Fox: I’ve learned how to run a successful restaurant, that doesn’t hemorrhage money. It’s a place where people enjoy coming to work every day. Anything superfluous has been stripped away. What we’re looking for is just to be really great. Obviously not perfect. Anytime you have that as a goal, you’re going to fail. Just a really great restaurant with really great food that makes people happy, a restaurant that makes people feel welcome, and there’s nowhere else they’d rather be at that moment.

JL: What’s the criteria for a dish that would go on your menu?

Fox: The criteria for a dish, it just has to taste good. That’s it. If it looks great, that’s awesome, but what I think of as a beautiful presentation has definitely changed in the last five years. I just see the beauty in something, whatever it is, whether it’s roasted chicken with greens and a little bit of jus. That’s a great dish to me. I’m happy with that. As long as it’s great chicken, great product, whatever goes with it, it doesn’t matter. We’ve moved away from conceptual dishes, like, “This is my take on this.” That bores me now. Windrose [Farm] has this right now and Coleman [Family Farm] has this? That’s what is going to go on the chicken. You’re not going to go wrong. You can make some questionable combinations, but that’s just common sense. As long as you have good ingredients, they’re going to go well together.

JL: It appears that you’ve become known for intricate, interesting family meals.

Fox: I don’t even do them. I just take pictures of them.

JL: Tell me about that tradition, and what that process is like.

Fox: At Ubuntu in Napa, we didn’t even do family meal. When I started here, family meal wasn’t satiating. It was what it should be, clearing out the walk-in. There wasn’t a structure in place. You’re here 10, 12 hours a day, you want it to be really good. We weren’t buying anything for it. It got to a point where I took away family meal for a week or week and a half and said, “We’ve got to rethink this.” It wasn’t permanent, but something’s got to give. What if we gave the cooks a modest budget of what they could spend? They’re still using things that need to be utilized, but they could bring in tough cuts, off cuts, things like that, that are inexpensive. It gave people an outlet to do what they wanted to do. I have to guide the cooks, “Cook this, this way. This is how I want you to do this.” With the family meal, I didn’t tell them what they had to do. They were able to cook what they wanted as long as they stayed within the budget and made enough food for everybody. It was good for me because I got to see what everybody’s natural abilities were, which could help me guide the menu. This person’s really strong with doughs, we could do more with breads. Since we change our menu all the time, I can kind of do that. That was really useful for me. It was a friendly competition. People wanted to make the best family meal. They would come in and spend a little bit of time each day working on it, so the day they had to do it, it wasn’t all the work being done. It was just a great source of pride, and I started taking pictures of it. I did a hashtag for it, and that got more of a following than the food I was doing here on a daily basis. People love that family meal stuff, and I got to enjoy the benefits of just getting to eat it.

JL: What will family meals lead to, and what has it led to so far? Have dishes made the menu?

Fox: Yeah, for sure. Dishes have made the menu. Even if it’s just components, that’s how the green sauce for the posole happened. I had a concept for this clam posole, but I didn’t know what it was. We had this sauce; if you put this in with the cooking liquid at the end, it tastes great.

One of the cooks did this avocado crema with some sort of taco. It was awesome, we use that from time to time and morphed that into a sort of green goddess dressing. The cooks have worked in other places, they’ve cooked with other chefs, and they have their own repertoire. A lot of it is stuff that I haven’t been exposed to, so it’s a learning experience for me too. I’ve worked in fancy places, but until last year I never made stuffing before. A lot of basic home-style things, I’ve never really done and have had a chance to work into my regular repertoire.

JL: What was the process and inspiration for the most recent dish that made the menu?

Fox: Some of it is just what’s really good right now, what’s the best at the market. Sometimes, it’s myself, my chef de cuisine and sous chef, we meet every Friday. That’s our creative meeting. What do we want to learn? What do we want to teach ourselves? What do we want to do? That turned into pate en croute, which is something we’re kind of obsessed with. We’ve got one we’ve got to cut into today that looks beautiful. Sausages. There’s duck prosciutto. There’s sauerkraut. Olives are brining. There’s a slow food stuff that’s more the direction we’re into. It’s not just get this ingredient, cut it up, put it in a pan, and put it on a plate. We’re putting a lot more time into it.

JL: Who gets to work at Rustic Canyon, and what attributes do these people have to have? Has that changed in the last decade?

INTERVIEW CONTINUED ON THE NEXT PAGE

Interview: Josh Loeb + Jeremy Fox as Rustic Canyon Turns 10

Food GPS - Food. Drinks. People.

Massimo Bottura has established global reach from Modena, Italy, the city where he runs Osteria Francescana with wife Lisa Gilmore. In 2016, the restaurant earned the #1 spot on San Pellegrino’s prestigious The World’s 50 Best Restaurants list, and they currently rank #2. To start May, he was in L.A. to participate in several events for the inaugural L.A. Food Bowl, including a collaborative dinner with Michael Cimarusti at Providence and Food for Soul, a panel discussion on hunger and food waste with Roy Choi, Mario Batali, Dominique Crenn, and Mary Sue Milliken that Los Angeles Times restaurant critic Jonathan Gold moderated at The Theatre at Ace Hotel. A screening of the short film “Theater of Life” followed the discussion, featuring the story behind Refettorio Ambrosiano, a soup kitchen that Bottura conceived for the Milan 2015 World’s Fair to transform food waste into meals. Food for Soul, the non-profit organization that he founded, “promotes social awareness about food waste and hunger through a wide range of initiatives in collaboration with chefs, artisans, food suppliers, artists, designers and institutions.” I had a chance to correspond with Bottura by e-mail after the film. Learn more about his worldwide profile and mission to minimize waste.

Josh Lurie: In what ways have your life and restaurant changed (positive and negative) since San Pellegrino named Osteria Francescana the #1 restaurant in the world in 2016?

Massimo Bottura: From our point of view, mine and that of the whole team, nothing has really changed. The passion, humility and work ethic of the previous 21 years stayed exactly the same, even after this incredible achievement. Hard work is the base and humility keeps you learning all your life. If you are willing to sacrifice everything, then anything is possible. But without passions, those things that make you sing, I attribute this achievement to our ability to hold onto our passions, our humility, and work ethic. We never let go of our dreams during these long and difficult 21 years. But if you can dream it, you can make it happen. If you are willing to sacrifice everything, then anything is possible. Hard work is the base and humility keeps you learning all your life. But without passions, those things that make you sing, nothing really means anything. I love music, art, and food. I want to share all of those things with the people around me. That is what we try to do with our restaurant. Open our world and invite guests in to see things from another point of view. Everyone’s hard work and dedication is the motivation to continue following their dreams. You know, it’s just about hard work in the kitchen, 90% hard work and 10% talent.

JL: What was your reaction to being named the #2 restaurant in the world this year, versus #1 last year?

MB: Well, we have been in the top three positions for the past five years so there is really no difference. Being number one is fabulous (especially in New York!!!) and a once-in-a-lifetime sensation. But at the end of the day, it is the consistency that matters to us. Pushing the envelope, working as hard as we can, and being a top-rated restaurant.

JL: What will it take for you to consider Food for Soul a success?

MB: What we’ve done so far with Food for Soul is not only going beyond my expectations, but even my dreams. Three years ago, when just the glimpse of an idea popped up in my mind and I thought about launching the very first project, Refettorio Ambrosiano, I couldn’t have ever been able to imagine such a thing. We learned about our impact by doing, during the process of restoring abandoned spaces, recovering food otherwise wasted, welcoming all those people who haven’t been as lucky as us in their lives. We made visible the invisible in Milan, during a massive event like the Universal Exposition in 2015. We asked ourselves: what does “feed the planet” mean to us? And considering that one-third of the food we produce every year is wasted and almost one billion people are undernourished, our response to feed the planet – the theme launched by Expo2015 – was Refettorio Ambrosiano first, and then Food for Soul. In 2016, even Refettorio Gastromotiva in Rio de Janeiro came out of a dream, that turned into an idea, then a vision, then a shared project, then a real space in the beating heart of Rio, opened since the Olympics 2016. Our next project will take us in West London, where we will restore a community center that has existed for the last 25 years. Designers, architects and artists are already working to make this space beautiful and inclusive; chefs from all over Britain, as well as international ones, already answered my call to action and will join me to cook recovered surplus food during the whole month of June. The good thing is, that all these places are not pop ups; we build them to stay permanently, to leave a legacy to the city and be a pivotal space where the whole community can meet and grow. We recently had the great news that the Rockefeller Foundation will support us to grow sustainably and to expand in the U.S.: a clear message that shows how many other people and institutions are sharing our same mission. I can only say that in the future, I see more future. That’s the success of Food for Soul.

JL: What are three measures that most restaurants can take to reduce food waste?

MB: I’m an Italian chef. As so, I am very lucky to rely on the golden rules of Italian culinary tradition. Every cuisine has a way of working. The Italian Cuisine has traditionally been one where very little is wasted. This is because there was great famine and poverty in Italy before the wars. Every part of an animal is used; every part of a vegetable and even left-over ingredients are used. We practice this in our kitchen at Osteria Francescana and try to teach young chefs to be resourceful with ingredients, to not be wasteful, to have respect for the food that they are preparing but also the food they eat daily. Our staff meals are healthy and fresh because we believe in the regenerative power of food. Every chef in every restaurant can highlight the real value of food in very simple ways. First, using ingredients in their wholeness, from nose to tail, as the Italians say. Use vegetable peels and scraps, fish and meat bones to make broth. Second: don’t stop at the appearance. You can’t imagine how much good food is thrown away because it is ugly, say a brown banana, or is close to the expiration date, say a container of ricotta cheese, that is still perfectly good to cook with. So often these products are taken off the shelves and thrown away when they could be given to charity organizations. Ugly fruits and vegetables can taste just as delicious as beautiful ones, and sometimes even more, in the case of the brown (over mature) bananas which when used properly, like to make gelato or banana bread, is even more delicious. It is often said of a person that he or she is “beautiful inside.” A browned banana, a bruised fruit has still a huge potential in terms of smells, flavors, texture. The responsibility of the chef – as well as that of all of us, cooking at home – is to find that inner beauty in each product. Third, take the best of the ingredients from every stage of its lifespan. Straight out of the oven, a loaf of bread is good enough to be eaten as it is. The day after, it will be perfect to make pappa al pomodoro or bread pudding. After two days, the bread will make perfect breadcrumbs for meatballs, passatelli and cakes. That’s what the real beauty is: to make something valuable out of something that might be seen as not having any value at all. We often say, “Something recovered is something gained.”

JL: What have your favorite restaurant meals been in Los Angeles, and what made them special?

MB: We dined very well in Los Angeles from ethnic spots to casual hipster spots in Venice to fine dining in Beverly Hills and West Hollywood. There is great excitement in the air, serious food and a cool L.A. vibe wherever you go. We have never eaten better in Los Angeles than this trip. We hope to return soon!

Interview: Massimo Bottura (Osteria Francescana)

Food GPS - Food. Drinks. People.

Globe-trotting Shake Shack Culinary Director Mark Rosati was recently in L.A. to promote the release of the Shake Shack: Recipes & Stories, which he co-wrote with CEO Randy Garutti and Dorothy Kalins, and to preview breakfast service at the company’s LAX outpost. Learn more about how the Connecticut native came to be employee #2 at a tiny Madison Square Park burger stand, an opportunity that’s led to worldwide adventures and collaborations.

Josh Lurie: How did your opportunity with Shake Shack come about for you?

Mark Rosati: It was not my first choice, to be honest. I worked for Danny Meyer for three years prior to joining Shake Shack. I was a cook at Gramercy Tavern. I started out with the original chef, Tom Colicchio, and did a year and a half with him. I loved Gramercy Tavern. It was my favorite restaurant in all of New York. On special occasions, I would go to eat in the tavern in the front and do fine dining in the back. That restaurant was so exciting, so seasonal, that it inspired me to want to learn how to cook. I never went to school. I read a lot of books. I bought Tom’s book – Think Like a Chef – still one of my favorites. I met him at a food and wine event. I started hitting him with questions, like, “How do you guys make your steak in the tavern? I’m buying that same steak and it’s not tasting like yours. What’s wrong?” He said, “If you ever want to watch us cook one day, here’s my card. Come on in, man.”

That was the most exciting moment of my life because I’m finally in my favorite restaurant, in the kitchen, next to these line cooks. I’ll never forget one guy pulling a sirloin out of the oven, adding a little bit of butter – it started foaming and melting – and he added a little bit of garlic and thyme. That smell, that sight, and the cook having burns and cuts on his arms, and tattoos, I was like, “Wow, I want to do that!” I trailed off and on for a few years. I wasn’t serious about it. I was like, “I get to hang in a cool kitchen and learn how to cook wild mushrooms.” It started to become like a fever. I was doing stuff that I’d only read about, like cleaning bone marrow, cleaning sweetbreads, really boutique-y stuff that I couldn’t easily find. I was like, “This is great exposure.” The next thing I know, I’m offered a job. I absolutely took it.

Everything I learned was at Gramercy Tavern. Three years with Mike Anthony and Tom Colicchio, a year-and-a-half with each. I had a good grounding in the kitchen. Now I wanted to learn front of the house. The only restaurant available in our entire company, which was all fine dining, was Shake Shack. I was like, “Oh no. I can’t do this. This is a step back. All my fine dining buddies are going to think I’m the laughing stock of the town.” The only option was that, and it was for management, which I was grossly under-qualified for at the time. I figured, at least I’ll go for the interview. When I looked inside the shack, I saw it was the same meat we were using at Gramercy, the same thoughtful technique for cooking the ingredients. It wasn’t just throw it on the grill, smash it down and walk away. There was a lot of training and procedure, but the most important thing was the hospitality that Danny Meyer’s really known for, that he does better than anyone else. It was very much alive in the culture of the staff and how they talked and worked with the guests. It’s just like all our other restaurants, just more simplistic. I said, “I’ll do this for maybe a year. I’ll learn and they I’ll move on.” Funny thing, at the time, I was offered a job as a server at Per Se. Same thing. I said, “I don’t know how to serve. I want to learn.” They said, “We would never hire you, but you work for Danny Meyer so that stands for something. We’ll train you.” I called her and said, “I’m so sorry, but I’m taking a management job at Shake Shack.” I was ready for her to start laughing and she said, “You know, I’d do the same thing.” She said, “I think we do service incredibly well. If you ever want to learn the steps of service, then think about Per Se. Danny Meyer management, you’ll learn from the best in the business. Best of luck.” That’s when I started thinking, maybe this is the right choice. 10 years later, here we are.

JL: How many Shake Shack locations were there at that point?

MR: Just the one [in Madison Square Park]. When they hired me, they said, “Maybe one day we open another one, because we’re really busy, but we really don’t know. There are really no plans.” They were very honest with me, and at one point, I thought they were starting to move away from that idea because more fine-dining restaurants were opening at that time. We had a few more under construction, like Maialino. Again, I’ll learn for the summer and move onwards. Then our CEO Randy found another location on the Upper West Side. We didn’t think it would be busy. We actually thought that it was about the park. People come here in the summer to get a beer and burger in the park and enjoy life. It’s pretty magical. This one’s going to be indoors. How are we going to make a shack indoors? It’s not going to work. We worked really long and hard to try and take the shack aesthetic and plop it in the middle of a building. We used a lot of reclaimed wood. Bring in trees in a modern way. We still thought it would not be busy. When we opened up, the neighborhood came out and did not go away. The next thing we knew, that Shack was doing better business than the original. That was when we thought we had something.

JL: What were your expectations when you signed on with Shake Shack, and now what your expectations going forward?

I just wanted to learn management and people skills. The magic of this company and Danny Meyer, I walked into Gramercy Tavern with no skill set whatsoever, but they saw that I wanted it and that I would do whatever it took to improve myself. They said yes. Shake Shack was the same. I had no management skills and they said, “You have drive, and that goes a long way. We’ll teach you. Just keep bringing your passion to us.” I think that says a lot about this company. If you want to learn and are willing to put the work in, we don’t care if you don’t have the most beautiful resume in the world in this business. We’ll teach you. I really just walked in because I wanted to learn a new skill, but the culture and the people became very exciting to me. 10 years went by faster than any other thing I can remember in my life, any other job, it’s just flown by. It’s kind of shocking. I look at photos from when I started and think, “This job has aged me, but by god am I having fun.” Now we’d gone from one Shack and thinking, “Does it work in New York?” to opening in Miami, that was our fourth Shack, and saying, “Does it work out of state?” It does. As we’ve gone and opened more, we’ve gained more confidence in who we are as a company. Now that we’ve started to put the infrastructure in place, we have an amazing team. I was employee #2 for Shake Shack Enterprises. Now we have a team of 100. They’re all wonderful people that come from different backgrounds that are just inspired by what we do. They want to take a chance with us. It’s make us bigger and better. As we keep growing, in Los Angeles, we’re going to open another one in downtown next year. We’re opening at LAX in a few weeks. All fun things, and it gives us a chance to further grow our roots in this city, but at the same time, build our reputation and go to a brand new city or country and cook our style of burgers and bring our hospitality. For myself, I can’t see when my end with Shake Shack will come because there’s so many more challenges. Again, I feel we have developed who we are, but there are so many ways to continue to refine it and change it and morph it and just keep growing.

At this point, are you still with the company to cook or are you more in it to travel?

INTERVIEW CONTINUED ON THE NEXT PAGE

Interview: Mark Rosati (Shake Shack Culinary Director)

Food GPS - Food. Drinks. People.

Chef Andoni Luis Aduriz has become known for serving some of the world’s most daring modernist cuisine at Mugaritz in Errenteria, Spain. The Basque Country restaurant consistently ranks in the Top 10 of San Pellegrino’s prestigious The World’s 50 Best Restaurants list, currently check in at #9. Chef Aduriz recently flew from Spain to serve six courses on July 18-21 at The Bazaar from his more casual Basque-Latin restaurant, Topa Sukaldería. He was also in Los Angeles to collaborate on July 21-22 with ThinkFoodGroup Culinary Director Aitor Zabala (a fellow El Bulli alum) on an 18-course menu at Somni’s future home inside SLS Hotel Beverly Hills. I had a chance to correspond with Andoni Luis Aduriz by e-mail during his L.A. stay. Learn more about his international perspective and approach.

Josh Lurie: Have you ever created a perfect dish? If so, what was the dish, inspiration, and approach?

Andoni Luis Aduriz: Mugaritz is in a constant state of inquiry. We invest thousands of hours trying to create dishes that are worth showing. Every year we spend four months working exclusively on creativity: exploring, developing and working in new ideas, dishes and concepts. This creative process draws on our own experiences, our trips and also on the work with professionals from different fields. Just this year, the creativity period resulted in around 100 new creations. Therefore, it is really hard for me to choose just one dish as I’m proud of all of them. To mention some: Edible stones, Bitter ideas of velvet, Walnut omelette or An oyster’s frozen kiss. All of them have the characteristics to make a dish worthwhile: unpredictability, poetry, subtlety and contention.

JL: Mugaritz currently rates #9 on the San Pellegrino list of The World’s 50 Best Restaurants. You’ve been rated higher in the past. Are you content at #9? How much do these ratings drive you?

ALA: I have always believed that recognitions are signs of confidence, which motivate us to face new challenges and risks. They help us to clear up many doubts related to our work. This is not only important from an internal perspective, but also for the public, because just like almost everything in life eating is in part subjective. Professionals and ‘advisors’ guide people and help them in the decision making.

JL: What qualities does a chef have to possess to cook for you at Mugaritz?

ALA: I’d like my team to never lose curiosity and the enthusiasm to create – to think and rethink things and to work hard to contribute something new every year and improve.

JL: What’s the one restaurant in the world you haven’t experienced that you would most like to experience? What is it about this restaurant that interests you so much?

ALA: My main goal is try to learn something new wherever I go. I have the good fortune to have travelled around the world and visited many places. And I always try to bring something of each of them with me. I like to enjoy what’s best in each place I visit, from fine dining restaurants to secret gems.

JL: Which other chefs do you look to for guidance or advice?

ALA: I like to say that I have had different kind of “mentors.” The first ones guided me on the steps to follow on my career. Then I worked with some of Spain’s most renowned chefs such as Juan Mari Arzak, Martin Berasategui, Pedro Subijana, Hilario Arbelaitz, Ramon Roteta and Ferrán Adria, who allowed me to face the reality of Mugaritz in its beginnings. I also find inspiration in the work of people I have not worked with. But in the last years, I found that who inspires me the most are the people I work with. Every day I learn from them; they teach me many things and this way we grow together. Therefore my latest mentors are the people who surround me.

Interview: chef Andoni Luis Aduriz (Mugaritz)

Food GPS - Food. Drinks. People.

Chef Josef Centeno grew up in San Antonio and spent time cooking in New York City and for David Kinch at Manresa, but he developed his unique personal cooking style in L.A. He’s been a central figure in the rise of downtown’s L.A.’s Old Bank District. Centeno runs globally inspired Bäco Mercat, Tex-Mex based Bar Amá, seasonal American Ledlow, vegetable focused P.Y.T. and Japanese-Italian Orsa & Winston within a one-block radius, and recently launched fast casual BäcoShop in Culver City. Bäco: Vivid Recipes from the Heart of Los Angeles is a cookbook he wrote with partner Betty Hallock that beautifully explains the globally-inspired sauces and spice blends that fuel his flavorful, seasonal, multi-layered cooking. I recently interviewed Centeno by e-mail, which helps to explain his vision and approach.

Joshua Lurie: You must have developed hundreds if not thousands of recipes over the years. How did you decide which recipes to include in your cookbook?

Josef Centeno: A good percentage, but not all, of the recipes are from Bäco Mercat. Some are signature dishes—hamachi crudo with crushed avocado and potato croquette, Caesar Brussels sprouts, fava hummus and eggplant puree with lebni and za’atar. The rest are meant to be in the same vein—lots of flavor inspired by seasonality, different cuisines, textures, colors. I try to show how I think about putting a dish together and in turn hope they spark more creativity.

JL: In what ways have working on this book helped to focus or influence your culinary vision moving forward?

JC: I think it really brought into focus the way dishes are supposed to taste and how to make them consistent. And it inspired new ideas. Some of the recipes were entirely new but have ended up on the menu at Bäco Mercat or even P.Y.T. or Orsa & Winston.

JL: Pulling from all of the recipes in your Bäco cookbook, construct a dream day of eating. Keeping in mind the realistic limits of human consumption, what would eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner?

JC: Barley porridge with ginger and sautéed oranges for breakfast. Imjadra or maybe bulgur pancakes, with cumin-spiced beef and lamb patties with raisins and pine nuts. Chicken escabeche or the berberé chicken with creamy Pecorino rice.

JL: It’s no given that just because you’re a great chef, you can also juggle multiple restaurants. How did you develop a knack for the business side of the restaurant business?

JC: My grandmother had a big influence on me growing up. Other kids went to summer camp, while I spent my vacations painting her house, sweeping her drive, cutting the grass. She passed her work ethic onto me. I also come from an entrepreneurial family. Over the generations there were some successful businesses and some failed businesses, but the drive to try was there. I trained really hard as a chef, but I also know that running a restaurant is not just about cooking. You really have to be able to jump in and problem solve.

JL: What can we expect from you and your restaurant group moving forward? Different restaurant concepts? Additional BäcoShops? More cookbooks?

JC: We’re working on the Bar Amá cookbook right now, which will be published in 2019. In the meantime, I opened six restaurants in six years. So I want to take stock of where I’m at and figure out what my best move is, but for now there is no shortage of things keeping me busy.

Interview: chef Josef Centeno (Bäco: Vivid Recipes from the Heart of Los Angeles)

Food GPS - Food. Drinks. People.

Curtis Stone is no stranger to the spotlight. The Melbourne, Australia, native has been cooking professionally since he was 18. He racked up extensive experience in Europe before settling in London, where he found a notorious mentor in Marco Pierre White. Stone first ended up in front of a camera in 2003 with “Surfing the Menu” and has gone on to be a host or judge on shows like “Top Chef Masters,” “All-Star Academy” and “My Kitchen Rules,” in addition to frequent appearances on national talk shows like “Today” and “The Chew.” Somehow, he’s managed to balance his television commitments with helping to raise two sons with wife Lindsay Price and running two high-profile Los Angeles restaurants that pay tribute to his grandmothers. Gwen revolves around a wood-burning hearth and in-house butcher shop. Maude initially showcased a different seasonal ingredient each month, and will soon re-focus attention on the world’s wine growing regions. Stone has also earned a reputation for giving back to the community, as demonstrated by commitments to organizations like Chrysalis, a local organization that’s “dedicated to creating a pathway to self-sufficiency for homeless and low-income individuals by providing the resources and support needed to prepare for, find, and retain employment.” I recently spoke with Stone by e-mail and discussed four different cornerstones of his life: charity, family, restaurants, and television.

Joshua Lurie: L.A. houses dozens of charities doing great work for the community. What appealed to you about teaming with Chrysalis considering all the options?

Curtis Stone: I first heard about Chrysalis when my wife, Lindsay, and I were invited to the Butterfly Ball, their annual fundraiser. A guy from their hiring program spoke about how he had a rough start in life but was given a second chance at life through Chrysalis. I knew I had to get involved. The discipline of a kitchen is really suitable for people in transition and Chrysalis works with men and women who are low-income and sometimes homeless and gives them the skills to get and maintain employment. The team environment of a restaurant really works if everyone is going in the same direction. It’s been an emotional journey with these guys. They love the drive and passion of the kitchen and have become integral parts of our team.

JL: By committing to Chrysalis as your #commit2one cause for 2017, what are the actual commitments that your company’s making at Gwen and Maude? Are you referring to a specific number of jobs, or other types of support?

CS: We’ve hired through Chrysalis since Maude opened and this year I decided I wanted to become more involved. Linds and I acted as auctioneers at the Butterfly Ball this year. We also had a call to action and collected personal hygiene products to help stock the three resource rooms at the Chrysalis centers. The products are given to clients to get them interview ready. I’m looking forward to running the Turkey Trot in downtown L.A. on Thanksgiving morning. We actually have a team for the 5K and everyone can join and help raise funds for Chrysalis. You can sign up by visiting www.ChangeLives.org/Turkey. There are really so many ways to get involved.

JL: What do you anticipate your relationship with Chrysalis to be like after 2017 ends?

We hired our first employee through Chrysalis, Darrell, in 2014 and we’ll continue to hire through their program. The retention rate among those employees hired from Chrysalis is twice as high as my other kitchen staff. That’s an incredible statistic since turnover is so high in this industry. I hosted a group of restaurateurs and industry leaders this summer and encouraged them to hire from Chrysalis. A few of the Chrysalis guys shared their stories with those who attended. The response was emotional and powerful and people made the commitment to become involved. I couldn’t feel more encouraged to continue working with the organization.

JL: What are your favorite aspects of running restaurants?

CS: I love the bustle of the kitchen. I am at Gwen or Maude every night when I am in town. We cook over live fire at Gwen and there is something very primal about cleaning up the ash from the previous night, stoking the flames to get a new fire going, and cooking beautiful meat on the asador.

JL: What do you find most satisfying about working in TV?

CS: I get to meet amazing people, taste incredible food, and travel to fabulous destinations. I love being able to shoot in Los Angeles where daily schedules wrap early enough for me to get back to kitchen at the restaurants in time for service.

JL: Did you always feel comfortable in front of a camera? If not, what did it take for you to become comfortable?

CS: I was working with Marco Pierre White when I was approached to do “Surfing the Menu.” It really was the dream job – traveling through Australia, hopping on a surfboard, and making tasty food with my mate, Ben O’Donoghue. It was all very natural and it was the perfect entrée into television.

JL: In what ways has having children changed your relationship with food?

CS: I’ve really enjoyed educating my sons about where food comes from. We have a home garden and grow all sorts of vegetables and fruits that the boys help maintain. What we don’t use at home, I bring into the restaurants.

JL: What would be on the table for a dream meal for your family?

CS: Family-style and outside with lots of fresh veggies from the garden, some great steaks from the butcher shop at Gwen, a lobster dish for Lindsay since it’s her favorite, and a couple of nice bottles of wine.

Interview: chef Curtis Stone (Gwen + Maude)

Food GPS - Food. Drinks. People.

Nobody can say that Miles Thompson’s trajectory has ever hit a plateau. In 2014, Star Chefs named him a Los Angeles Rising Star. This fall, Jeff Gordinier honored Thompson as Esquire magazine’s “Rising Star of the Year.” The native of Westchester County, New York, first started cooking professionally at age 13. In 2007, he relocated to Los Angeles to pursue acting. Thompson rejoined the kitchen brigade, working for Alex Becker at Nobu Los Angeles, which shifted his focus back to cooking. He worked with Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo at Animal and Son of a Gun before developing contemporary Allumette (his first restaurant) in Echo Park. After relocating to Healdsburg to work at SHED, and helping launch Christophe Harbour on St. Kitts, he returned to L.A. in 2016 to work for Michael McCarty and son Chas at iconic Michael’s Santa Monica. I recently interviewed Thompson, who explained his career progression and upcoming plans.

Joshua Lurie: I read that you originally moved to L.A. to become an actor before joining the line at Nobu. What was the decisive point did you decide to give up acting for cooking? Also, in what ways have your acting lessons helped you in the kitchen?

Miles Thompson: There wasn’t a specific day or moment, but a few months after I moved to L.A., I was feeling restless with acting. I remember going on auditions and feeling bored waiting between these opportunities. I’d been acting since I was 11 and it had grown to feel monotonous. I wanted to do something that was productive, creative, and allowed me to work in a team environment to accomplish a common goal everyday — working in service at a restaurant is all of these things.

I definitely draw upon my acting background in the kitchen. I studied improvisation during my entertainment career and the ability to improvise and think on your feet is essential in the kitchen — one day an ingredient you ordered might not arrive and you need to be nimble and open to considering a different possibility for a dish. Learning lines and preparing for a role is similarly mirrored in how I prepare for a service — getting my mise en place ready, etc. It sounds esoteric, but as a chef, it’s also important to have the same spatial awareness you need as an actor to choreograph your moves with others in the kitchen. It’s a tight space and the entire team needs to be working in concert to be successful.

JL: What do you find most satisfying about working in restaurants?

MT: I would have to say that right now, and particularly at Michael’s, the culture of working in a modern restaurant is incredibly satisfying. It’s fun coming into the kitchen everyday where I’m surrounded by all these people who share a common love of food and are excited to share ideas. I feel very alive in that culture. The bonus is getting to serve the dishes we are creating to guests.

JL: What are some hallmarks of a Miles Thompson dish? Tell me about your general approach to building a dish, and the most recent dish that made the menu.

MT: The genesis of all the dishes on the menu are the products. For example, right now we are getting these amazing young chickens from a small farm, and my approach is thinking about how I can accentuate the natural sweetness of that young bird. I don’t want to battle the ingredient; the goal is to build around the shining star element of the dish and extend its qualities through supplementing elements on the plate. A general hallmark of mine is also to include multiple forms of acidity. For example, we have a Japanese sweet potato on the menu right now that features several different forms of acid. There’s nori yogurt that brings an element of lactic acid, wakami dressed with a raspberry leaf ponzu that contains rice vinegar and lemon juice, and then a hazelnut aioli with sherry red wine vinegar that I age in a juniper barrel. The varying levels of acidity within the dish get your savory glands going in a way that will continue to make it surprising. Texture is also at play here, but not in the traditional sense. It’s more a gradient of textures from soft to crisp — there’s the seaweed that offers a more distinct feel providing juxtaposition to the creaminess of the yogurt, super tender yam and the yam’s crisp skin. Seasoning is a given. I season everything from the base up, so I don’t need to use finishing salt at the end.

JL: In 2014, Star Chefs named you a Los Angeles Rising Star. This fall, Jeff Gordinier named you Esquire magazine’s “Rising Star of the Year.” What will it take for people to acknowledge you’re arrived, and are no longer rising?

MT: I hope to always be rising. When you’ve arrived somewhere, in a sense, it means you’ve made it and there’s nowhere else to go. I want to always be on an upward trajectory; it means there is still room to grow and improve. It’s cool to be acknowledged for that growth.

JL: What would be on the table for a dream meal from your current menu?

MT: In no particular order: the buckwheat sourdough bread; the broccoli with dates, fermented sunchoke and fried soft egg; the Japanese sweet potato; the pici with pork & veal ragu, Pecorino fulvi and black pepper; the cabbage with caramelized onion vinaigrette, huckleberries and dill; the hamachi collar with baba ganoush, mirza melon and marjoram vinaigrette. And for dessert, the roasted barley pot de crème.

JL: What should diners expect to see moving forward at Michael’s? What else is possible in your collaboration with the McCartys?

MT: Right now I’m working on applying Old World and more traditional techniques into the way we craft our dishes at Michael’s. Essentially throwing back to a legacy that pre-dates California cuisine with methods of preparing ingredients that could be informed by historic European or even Japanese techniques. We’re going to be curing olives using a traditional approach that involves wood ashes we are sourcing from Bestia, salt and alkaline (baking soda). In terms of the possibilities with Michael McCarty, we’re constantly challenging ourselves to think about ways we can improve the experience at Michael’s. That’s where our focus lives.

Interview: chef Miles Thompson (Michael’s Santa Monica)

Food GPS - Food. Drinks. People.

Chef Dominique Ansel is synonymous with the Cronut®, but you don’t earn the 2014 James Beard Award for “Outstanding Pastry Chef” and get named the 2017 “World’s Best Pastry Chef” by being a one-hit wonder. The France native started working in restaurants starting at age 16, spent nearly eight years expanding the Fauchon brand abroad, and worked for six years as Executive Pastry chef for Daniel Boulud on a team that earned four stars from The New York Times. Ansel opened a small bakery in SoHo in 2011. He and partner Amy Ma have since expanded to Tokyo and London and recently launched their most ambitious project at The Grove in L.A. You’ll find a large Dominique Ansel Bakery right on the main plaza, with their first restaurant upstairs. 189 by Dominique Ansel serves creative riffs on French classics and other plates that defy easy categorization. Leading up to their grand opening, I met Ansel in a booth that’s backed by a pattern designed to mirror a croissant’s inner crumb, and he better explained his approach.

Joshua Lurie: Did you always plan to cook in restaurants for a living, or did you consider other careers?

Dominique Ansel: I started working in kitchens when I 16 years old. At the time it was not really a dream. It was more of necessity. I left school and had to help support the family. I’m the last of four children. My dad used to work in a factory. My mom was at home taking care of the kids. We were in a poor neighborhood, so when I was 16, I decided to find a job and bring money home. I thought that working in restaurants would be easy, but I was wrong. I was really wrong, and I found out very early. I was working 16 hours a day washing dishes and sweeping the floor. Then I graduated to garde manger and would clean the salads and clean the fish, and more and more. I went to culinary school at the same time. I was going to school one week every month. I got an actual culinary education. That’s how I started. I had no big dreams of becoming a chef.

JL: What do you find most satisfying about working in restaurants?

DA: The most satisfying part is the people and the joy and happiness you can bring to guests. We carry memories and emotions to people’s tables. It’s not always just through the food. It’s not always how exceptional it is, how unique it is. It’s how you connect with the guest. That’s a pretty big driver for me to see people excited about what we do, and then come back and trust us because we deliver something else, more than just food.

JL: Why did you decide to open in Los Angeles?

DA: This is a huge country. We have people traveling from California all the time to New York, and even to Japan, to see us. It’s an amazing opportunity to be here. Los Angeles food culture is amazing. It’s so ethnically diverse, and there are some great chefs and great talent here. I love the weather. Coming here, it was an amazing opportunity for us to do something special with the space that we have. In New York, we have a tiny, tiny little shop. We have more options and more opportunities to express ourselves in different outlets, whether it’s the bakery, restaurant, or bar.

JL: How specifically did this opportunity at The Grove come about?

DA: I came here for a pop-up at The Grove almost four years ago. We did a pop-up for charity. We brought the Cronut® here for charity, for kids in Los Angeles. We had almost 700 people show up on a rainy day when we thought nobody would show up. It was amazing to see so many people excited about food. We always see people lined up for electronics and shoes, but when you can do the same with food and get people excited, it’s an amazing opportunity. I’ve always had a great relationship with The Grove and Rick Caruso. When we came here, they went above and beyond any expectations in terms of giving people hospitality, passing them food while waiting in line while it was a deluge outside. It’s a lot of what we do in New York, so naturally, we connected.

JL: What are the biggest challenges in making sure your food is unique in each city? How important is differentiating locations for you?

DA: It’s everything. I worked for years at Fauchon. I was in charge of developing the brand internationally. I would travel and open the same concept and same pastry shops around the world. Some of these were a huge success. Some of them didn’t work as well. Early on I realized that being personal to the location and to the people was important. In all my travels, I would talk to locals and learn who they are and what they eat, why they eat this way. I think that’s my personality. I don’t like cookie-cutters. I don’t like repeating the same concept exactly. I like every location to have its own personality and finding connections with the locals. What they eat. How they eat it. Why they like it. And creating new dishes based on those facts. Culturally, locally, there are differences.

JL: Is there any risk that by opening in multiple cities, that your food becomes less special in New York or in each city?

DA: Every location is special. We have created hundreds of pastries in Japan that we have never brought anywhere else. Same in London. Same in New York. Creativity is not something you can turn off. Being creative is something I live for. Coming up with new ideas, I love it. It’s challenging. It’s difficult, but this is who I am. I don’t get tired of it. I get excited the more I do it. Personalizing those creations, those dishes, to locals, is who were are. This is our DNA as a company.

JL: You’re clearly not a one-hit wonder, but you’ve become synonymous with the Cronut®. Has there been any downside to creating such a signature pastry?

DA: The Cronut® is a beautiful creation. I will always love it. Of course everyone wants to talk about it…sometimes overshadowing some of our other creations that should be mentioned…After I created the Cronut®, I told myself, we won’t let our creation kill our creativity, and I will move forward from there. After the Cronut®, I created frozen S’mores, the cookie shots, and hundreds of other pastries. They’re not as popular as the Cronut®, but some of them are really close. People talk mostly about the Cronut®. It’s beautiful to have that creation. It’s like a singer. If you have a popular song, people always want you to sing that song. A singer wants to sing something else; they want to sing more songs. It’s the same with what I do.

I love the Cronut®. We change the flavor every month, which keeps it very unique. It’s the same creation, but it’s very eclectic. We’ve never duplicated any flavors in any countries, so they’re all really unique. We keep on moving forward and creating new things all the time. I don’t want to open a Cronut® shop and I don’t want to open hundreds of shops and have a factory. I want to keep it unique, authentic.

JL: People don’t associate you with savory food so much. What’s your approach with savory food?

DA: Well, my first job in the kitchen was as a savory chef. This is my foundation. I was actually not a pastry chef; I was a savory chef for years before I transitioned to pastry. Cooking is something I always loved, and never stopped doing. When it comes to savory food, it’s more than just savory food. It’s more the way to think of food, the way to present it, and the way of connecting with people. I like good food. I like food that people remember as well. Same as pastries. I like pastries that people remember. I like dishes that have emotion and have a story to tell. Some chefs create with more focus on ingredients. Some chefs are more story driven. I’m a little of both, but more story driven. I want dishes that have their own story and own voice.

JL: Tell me the story one of your dinner dishes.

DA: I love the roasted chicken. It’s chicken that’s inspired by me and my chef. I grew up in France and once a week we’d go and grab chicken with my family when we had any money. At the market, they had this beautiful roast chicken and I always remember bringing it back home and holding it. It was really, really hot. I would rip it open and have this beautiful aroma and flavor of chicken. I always loved this. My chef, Hyun Lee, he’s Korean, but grew up in Argentina. Growing up, he had a lot of samgyetang, chicken soup. We made a dish that combined both of our memories. We made rotisserie chicken with black garlic rice – really tasty, with this beautiful roasted deep flavor of black garlic – we serve it with a Korean scallion salad and rub the chicken with chile butter so it gets crispy and super juicy. That’s one of my favorite dishes on the menu.

JL: What would be on the table for a dream meal from your restaurant’s opening menu?

DA: A lot of dishes. Cabbage soup with ham hock broth. It’s meaty, beautiful, super tender cabbage. I grew up eating soup on weekends. My grandma used to do cabbage soup. She would cook it in the pressure cooker so it was super tender. We use a similar technique here, but we do a meaty broth with deep flavor.

JL: That would be the first course. Then what?

DA: We have shrimp that we cook a la plancha and put mentaiko butter over the shrimp and serve it with a shrimp cracker that we do in-house and sprinkle with tomato powder. That’s a really good one.

JL: Then the chicken. What would you finish with?

DA: We have a lot of really fun desserts. We kept desserts simple, but meaningful. I wanted people to dream about these desserts. There’s one we call The Well. If we make dough, a pasta dish starts with the well. Put flour on the table and put eggs in it. It looks exactly like this, but it’s made with shaved ice, so it’s milk granita, honey gelee, and passion fruit gel. There’s an eggshell on the side, and there’s fennel meringue on the bottom. So it’s crispy and fresh, refreshing, and sharp from the passion fruit. With milk and honey, it’s barely sweet. That’s a really good dish as well.

JL: When World’s 50 Best named you the World’s Best Pastry Chef earlier this year – that’s quite an honor – what was your reaction?

DA: I was so touched by such an amazing accomplishment. To have validation from my peers and people in the industry, that means a lot to me. I’ve worked really hard my entire life to be where I am today. I always work hard and don’t take anything for granted. This is a beautiful industry and when you have the chance to be the voice and pass on stories of what you do, and why you do it, and why you love it, it means the world to me. I’m very grateful for the honor and was not expecting it. It’s amazing. It’s quite an accomplishment, for sure.

JL: Are you the world’s greatest pastry chef?

DA: There are a lot of amazing chefs out there, tons of them. It’s always hard to recognize one. There are definitely a lot of talented people. There’s plenty of room for everyone. There are tons of pastry chefs and chefs as well that deserve recognition. We have different styles, different backgrounds, different definitions, and different visions. It’s just a matter of getting to know them.

Interview: chef Dominique Ansel (189 by Dominique Ansel)

Food GPS - Food. Drinks. People.

You may know chef Hugh Acheson from his stints as a “Top Chef” judge or as a “Top Chef Masters” competitor. The 2002 Food & Wine “Best New Chef” and 2012 James Beard Award winner as “Best Chef Southeast” also has five thriving concepts in Georgia: 5&10 and The National in Athens and Empire State South, Spiller Park Coffee, and First & Third Hot Dog & Sausage Shack in Atlanta. Acheson is also the driving force behind Seed Life Skills, a non-profit with a goal of “empowering students to become self-sufficient, resilient, and innovative stewards of local and global resources.”

To promote his latest cookbook, The Chef & The Slow Cooker, Acheson embarked on a 25-city tour by Airstream, with a live culinary demo at each stop and taco sales benefitting the aforementioned Seed Life Skills. Prior to his tour, I asked Acheson questions about his restaurants, non-profit, eating plans and preferences, including slow-cooking.

Joshua Lurie: Did you always plan to cook in restaurants for a living, or did you consider other careers?

Hugh Acheson: I went to university and dropped out after 2 years, but I have been cooking in restos since I was 15. It just became the thing I loved, so I went down that path 100%.

JL: What do you find most satisfying about working in restaurants?

HA: Making a broad swath of people happy at one of our tables, and doing what we do with authenticity, true excitement and skill.

JL: If you spent a day eating entirely from your restaurant menus, what would you order beginning with morning coffee and concluding with dinner dessert?

HA: I’d start with a cortado from Spiller Park Coffee with a fresh cheese toast and jam. From there I’d order the superfood plate from Empire State South. It’s a simple but wonderful lunch with a vast array of vegetables and a hanger steak. For dinner, I would order the smoked duck breast plate from 5&10 with a glass of red burgundy. For dessert I’d meander over to The National for Portuguese custard tarts and an espresso.

JL: Going on a 25-city tour in an Airstream seems like a great opportunity experience some of America’s regional specialties. What are the restaurants you’re most looking forward to visiting and why? Also, how do you decide where to eat on the road?

HA: It is! We mostly decide where to eat based on where we are, what time it is, and how hungry we are. Kind of simple, but the route and travel times make things interesting.

But I am looking forward to eating at Eventide in Portland, Prices Fried Chicken in Charlotte, fine dining at Baston in Nashville, and hopefully Bacchanal in NOLA. From there we’ll see but the wonder and amazing part about our current America is that there is great food and restaurants in your backyard, you just gotta go find them.

JL: What are your favorite aspects of cooking with a slow cooker?

HA: It allows you to live life and do the things you need to do in your daily routine, but can result in a great home-cooked, from scratch meal.

JL: What would be on the table for a dream meal from your new cookbook, “The Chef & The Slow Cooker?” Also, where would you enjoy this meal, and who else would be at the table?

HA: I’d make the kimchi braised chicken with rice and a summer salad of tomatoes and mint with my two kids, my sisters and their kids. And we’d be at our cottage in Canada just north of Toronto.

JL: America already has hundreds of charities doing great work for the community. What motivated you to start Seed Life Skills?

HA: I found that there was a lot of focus on school lunches and school gardens (which are great programs), but I thought that we were remiss to not also teach skilled techniques for all kids to cook from scratch (and other life skills) to give them every chance to make their future lives better and easily jump over the hurdles that life throws at them.

Interview: chef Hugh Acheson (5&10, The National + Empire State South)