When did you decide that you wanted to be a chef? I dropped out of college and I took a job washing cars in the morning, and that wasn’t really doin’ it for me, so I took a job also washing dishes at a pool hall, bar-and-grill-type place. And they let me cook. I got excited by it. At that point, just the fact of creating something – the instant gratification – was really rewarding. At the same time, I grew up around food, so I knew I wanted to do something better than that. I knew what was out there, so I knew that I could, if I wanted to, do something cool.
You said that you grew up around food, do you mean your mom was a great cook? [I came from a family of] gourmands, my family more than I was. I grew up on canned Spaghettios; I was a really picky eater growing up. It wasn’t until I went to boarding school that I learned to like anything that tasted good. Anything besides what was in the cafeteria. My family was really interested in food. They always went out to good restaurants. Also, growing up, I had a nanny named Dia – her bread’s on our menu. She was the best cook I’ve ever met in my life. She was from Brazil. That really helped me later. I really grew up with some good food … – even if it was just some spaghetti with meat sauce, she made it really well. Feijoada, on the intricate side.
The food you make here is contemporary American. Where do you draw your influences when you’re creating the menu? It happens every day. A lot of chefs train a certain way and that’s what they stick to. For me, I did train a certain way – I was trained in a lot of French – but I got a lot of other world flavors in there. When I read about a new chef or a new dish, things excite me. When I see new products and vegetables or different meats, everything inspires me. We take those ingredients and we talk about them. I think talking about them, reading about them, studying them is where we get all of our inspiration. And it’s a team effort, ’cause we all sit down and we talk about a dish. We say, “Let’s create a dish. Here [are] the elements we have to work with, what do we want to do with [them]?” Being around people and talking to people is inspiring.
And you do a lot of creative stuff. Obviously, the bacon ice cream. Yeah. That always throws people.
If you do have a miss, how do you deal with that? Do you just say, “Well, I’ll take it off the menu”? Always. I’m somewhat crazy about it, actually. If I get a complaint coming back, I freak out. I kind of lose my mind a little bit. I taste it and ask why don’t they like it. Granted, everybody tastes things differently, but almost all of the time if somebody complains about a dish, it’s gone. I rework something. I redo something. My constant goal is to make people happy. When people say, “Oh my God, that was an awesome meal,” I love to hear that. That’s what we live for. It goes back to that instant gratification. Creating something, watching somebody enjoy it – all within a one-hour period. Things like foams and stuff don’t necessarily go over well with some people. We started doing that on our regular menu as opposed to the tasting menu. … We decided that if people wanted to get adventurous, they could, so we give people a route to get adventurous, but, at the same time, let’s please everybody.
Now let’s talk about your tasting menu. Because that’s where you get to play. We actually have [stopped offering] the tasting menu temporarily.
Why? We’re doing some reformatting with our regular menu. It’s going to take on a bit of a new style … sometime in July. We’re making our menu more interactive and more playful than the standard eat-three-courses-and-get-out. Tasting menu-wise, I loved that bacon dish: braised pork belly with bacon ice cream and polenta and, at times, brussels sprouts. We thought we’d get the weird complaints. We never had one person dislike it.
I got the complaints. I got the letters because I wrote about it! You got the people who were mad just to hear about it! But the people who tried it … We’d always watch that dish go out. The whole kitchen, we’d kind of gather around. You’d watch people’s faces just sink when they heard the description. They were totally disgusted, and then they’d taste it and you’d watch their faces light up. I had this 80-year-old woman come up to me and she said, “You know what? F— chocolate ice cream!” I was so shocked that she said that. But there are people [who] really enjoy these flavors. You have waffles with bacon and syrup poured over it. Sweet bacon is good.
What are some ingredients you’re working with right now that you’re excited about? We’ve made a huge commitment to have all of our meat be supplied from humane places. All of our beef is from American Grass Fed Beef. All of our lamb is from Prairie Grass [Farm]. All of our pork is either Hinkebein Hills or we use a company out of New York City that sources all these places, Heritage Foods. They source heritage breeds of pork. All of our chickens are coming in locally. Over the past two years, we’ve been able to source out enough people that we can really commit to that principle.
Do you find a difference in the flavor or is it more philosophical? It’s both. Philosophical, No. 1. But the flavor of this beef … it’s incomparable in my opinion. We … bring in a whole rib eye and trim it all the way down so there’s no exterior fat, we take off the culotte, right on the top of the rib eye, and we use that for our bistro steaks – that’s one of my favorite steaks, period. I mean, loaded with fat. Any time, and it goes to our vegetables too, any time you find people [who] care as much about what they’re doing as you do about what you’re doing, it’s going to make your food taste better. Their [product is] going to taste great and your food’s going to taste better because of it.
Your food is deceptively simple. You’ve got your own style – how’d you develop that style? I have no clue. I read so much, and I attribute that almost 100 percent to my cooking ability. I think that was the biggest part of my education. Granted, I worked for a bunch of good chefs and I worked very hard for them …
So what do you read? Cookbook after cookbook.
But which cookbooks do you gravitate toward? A lot of the chefs’ books. For instance, The French Laundry was one of the biggest books to ever hit me as a young chef.
I see that in your food. That just blew me away. It’s not as much recipes as seeing what people are doing with food, seeing what people can do with, say, a pig’s head. From Thomas Keller, I saw that you can take a pig’s head and transform it into something great.
What do you transform it into? We take the meat off the bone and roll it and braise it for about eight hours … and serve it with a poached egg. It’s about to come on the menu with hollandaise [and] pickled asparagus. The flavor, the fat …
When do the pig’s heads come in? When are they delivered? When customers are not here! They come in every Saturday with our farmers. We try and take ’em down very fast. It’s the utilization of everything. Fergus Henderson from St. John in London is a huge inspiration. He uses everything on the animal; nothing’s wasted. These days, so much is wasted.
I just got a book from the Peruvian ambassador in D.C. called Peru. It’s a giant cookbook; there’s some really inspiring stuff in there. So nowadays, where the old chefs never had this opportunity, we’re getting stuff from Spain. … I just got a book from one of my great customers called Egg, and it’s just egg recipes from everyone from Ferran Adriá to Wylie Dufresne, Alain Passard in France, all these great recipes.
What I’m hearing from you is a passion for the creative process of cooking. When someone writes a song, they have their musical influences. Do you see a parallel there? Yeah. In the same regard, everyone listens to one band and then they don’t necessarily like them the next day because their style’s changed. But they’ve been inspired by something. They’re changing. They’re constantly progressing. I hate being stale. When I start to feel stale, my skin crawls. I probably move once a year – new houses – and I’m never very comfortable with what I have. I always want to do better. I always want to progress. I want my style to change. I’m open to that. I don’t try to say I’m stuck in this category, [that] I have to be French, I have to be American, I have to be Spanish. I just really want to be inspired, and I want to cook for people what I’m feeling right then.
Speaking of something new, tell me about pastry chef Matthew Rice’s bakery, Veruca. It is going to be a coffee shop, but at the same time it’s Matthew, our pastry chef, who’s such a dynamic person. Everything that’s going to come out of that is going to be really unique and cool. The thing that stands out to me is these mini-cupcakes. They’re bite-sized cupcakes. I love cupcakes anyway. There’s something really fun about cupcakes, but when they’re bite-sized, it’s even more sinful ’cause you just sit there and snack on them. They’re really cute, really fun, and that’s going to be the theme of everything. Even his coffee drinks. He’s got a Dulce de Latte where’s he’s making his own dulce de leche and adding that to his latte. Everything’s going to have a nice, fun twist to it.
How do you see it complementing what’s happening here at Niche? It’s going to be more of a morning-through-the-afternoon thing. No lunch, but he will sell some artisan cheeses and baguettes and wines, some more savory things. Just like a boulangerie. Come in, get a baguette, some cheese and some prosciutto and, then, great.
What kind of relationships do you have with chefs around town? I was talking to Maggie Kelly from Terrene the other day and she said that when they won favorite new restaurant last year, you came over with a magnum of Champagne. I was so excited for those guys. They have such an awesome restaurant. That’s the thing. In Washington, D.C., where I grew up, all the chefs had a huge community. And I … really enjoyed that, but when I was in L.A. I didn’t see that at all. Some chefs were friends, but it was more competitive. I really feel that here. I walk down to Sidney Street, and it looks like I work there sometimes. I’m probably down there once a day, talking to Kevin. Having him right there is inspiring. Guys who have been around and know these ingredients and are always raising the bar. I have a great relationship with some of the chefs. An American Place – Josh Galliano is probably the top chef around here. I love that about St. Louis. All the chefs are pretty much friends. Andy White and all those guys.
(Editor’s note: Margaret Kelly and her husband Dave Owens have since left Terrene.) You’ve been here for about two years – how do you see Niche evolving? I sleep so little right now. We’re growing to a pretty good size restaurant, able to do private parties, and, with the bake shop, for now I think I’m content with one restaurant.
For now. Yeah. For now. But constantly reworking this restaurant is important. When customers see that you’ve lost interest in your own restaurant, then they’re going to lose interest as well. I think the new menu we have coming up is really cool and fun, a fun way to eat. It’s going to give us more of an ability to step outside of the box as far as ingredients go. I might not be as confined by having to watch food cost every two seconds. It’s going to give me a little more control to give a whole range of foods. I’m not saying we’re going to be an expensive restaurant, but we’re going to have more of a range of stuff.
Can you give me a hint? I’m not sure of menu items yet, but I’ll bring in a little Kobe [beef] and get to play with that. The biggest thing I want to focus on is some more seafood. I’m from the East Coast, right off the Chesapeake, and I love seafood. I want to bring in more, but seafood’s costly.
And if you’re going to source sustainably, it is expensive. For good, good seafood, you’re going to pay for it. But our new style of menu is going to give people an opportunity to taste some of these really high-end fishes, and in a taste form it’s not as expensive and won’t blow the wallet.
This article appears in Jul 1-31, 2007.