Bryan Flaxbeard puts the soul in Creole

You’d never guess that chef Bryan Flaxbeard was a picky eater, considering that these days the New Orleans native can’t get enough of frog legs, alligator, crawfish and other fare that requires a more adventurous palate. Flaxbeard’s only job has been working in kitchens, including at Commander’s Palace in NOLA and Las Vegas, as well as stints in Seattle and remote Alaska. The jovial Flaxbeard recently landed his first exec chef position at Molly’s in Soulard, where he’s set to show St. Louisans that although “low and slow” Creole cuisine may not look gorgeous, when it’s well executed, you say, “Wow! It’s food that has a soul.”

You worked at Commander’s Palace in New Orleans and in Las Vegas. How does the St. Louis palate for Creole compare to those cities? So far, everybody’s been very receptive of it. I’ve gotten reactions like, “This is the way it’s supposed to be? This is awesome!” St. Louis is one of the coolest food towns I’ve lived in. The chefs are so willing to deal with farmers. It’s about getting the “cool” stuff, bringing stuff to the table that people have never seen or doing something that they haven’t had like that before. There are so many local farmers who are willing to do whatever. They are like, “You want me to grow you a child? We’ll figure it out.”

What is authentic Creole to you? Creole is a combination of Caribbean, West African, some country food. It’s also what slaves and poverty-stricken people ate. I think of cornbread, red beans, rice, gumbo ya-ya, which is chicken-andouille gumbo, lots of inexpensive vegetables like onions, peppers and okra. And greens. The masters would take the turnips or the beets and throw the greens away. The slaves took the greens and learned how to stew them down with bacon fat. Creole is a cuisine based on necessity, using what you have and making something beautiful from that.

You have said that there’s “a fine line between Creole and slop.” What do you mean? People assume Creole food is just something you put in a pot, turn it on low and let it go for four and a half hours. There’s more of a process to everything. Like with pork butts: You brine the pork for a day, slow smoke it for a day, then braise it. Red beans – there are a lot of little things you can do: sauté the garlic and onions, using beer to deglaze, throwing in andouille sausage or tasso or ham hocks, … slow cooking [the beans], … finishing it off with all the things that make red beans delicious.

How do you introduce seasonality into a cuisine whose dishes seem relatively fixed? Or is there something like a summer gumbo and a winter gumbo? After Thanksgiving, you use leftover turkey and greens and make gumbo with it. So it’s changing things up. Or knowing certain things, like alligator is best when harvested in the spring and summer because there are mammals around and their diet is not consisting of fish. If you get it then, the meat is a lot cleaner. So there is a seasonal thing to that.

You gave me a definition of Creole. What’s Cajun cuisine to you? Living off the swamp and being in tune with nature. It’s knowing when to go out and catch crawfish, knowing when redfish and drum are going to be running. It’s kind of a spontaneous cuisine – whatever you come out of the swamp with: I got this frog, I got this turtle, I got half a gator, cuz a gator ate half of that gator!

Some diners might be scared off by alligator because, well, it’s alligator. I’ve had a really good reception with buttermilk fried alligator. I think the reason is because it is not alligator in something crazy. It’s served with Dijon-butter poached crab meat.

What’s your secret to making those frog legs so tender that they practically fall off the bone? Just cook them right. Soak them in buttermilk and hot sauce and let it sit for a day. That tenderizes it and starts to impart flavor into the frog. I flash fry it with a bit of seasoned flour, just enough to give a crunch factor. But the crust shouldn’t be the main focus of the dish. I think frog legs are a facilitator for other ingredients, like the tasso cream with mustard in it.

How do you overcome the challenges of sourcing hard-to-get Creole ingredients in St. Louis? Nothing really gets shipped out of Louisiana. Like Ponchatoula strawberries, they barely make it past the border. The only reason they do is because somebody like my mother will stockpile flats and bring them somewhere else. When you call your friends or people you worked with in the past and say, “I would like to showcase your satsumas” or whatever it may be, they are usually like, “Right on!” because it is helping their business. And when you get your hands on stuff like that, you feel like you’re privileged.