A Trip Back Home, Part one

I have mentioned in the past that my first serious cooking jobs were in the world of Italian cuisine — in retrospect, they were my second, really. My first serious cooking jobs were in the family kitchen: peeling onions, measuring out cumin or browning meat for the chili, basting granddaddy’s brisket with his rich, tomato-y bbq sauce, heating up tortillas or cubing avocadoes for the fajitas... Italy may have been my first professional home, but I’ll always come back to Texas. I learned Italian cooking, American-ized Italian cooking, anyway - at a couple of different places: Ferrari’s, a ‘meh’ place that was long past its prime, and Cenare, a great place, busy and exciting, that I’ve written about in the past... But I went on to learn a great deal more in subsequent years—at one point, sitting with Sante Losio, an Italian wine merchant who had helped to organize Millennium’s first (only?) White Truffle Dinner, I was told ‘Bruce, You must go to Italy, it is your home’.

I did, too. I visited for a month or so in 2003, and he was right... and wrong. He was right because Italian cuisine is very natural for me; my love of local, fresh and handpicked foods, care, attention to detail with traditional preparations, knowing the farmer, knowing the field... the hedonism, the sincerity... the wild mushrooms, the local cheese; even the chaos of the markets (which made it clear that my wife Nicole would probably never call Italy home) was something that was daunting at first, but then, quickly became second nature, even a kind of giddy fun... He was right, it felt very natural to me, wine with lunch and afternoon naps are just so civilized--but he was wrong too. Italians drink espresso in the morning. Espresso is fine, but seriously, don’t you just want a cup of good ol’ North American drip every once in a while? And don’t say ‘Americano,’ that watery concoction just doesn’t pack enough punch. I’m not arguing in favour of or against pasta; lord knows I love pasta, but doesn’t a potato deserve a place at the table on occasion? And how about a bowl of chili? It’s not that I don’t love Italian cuisine—I do, I really, really do—it’s just that, well, I’m Texan. I like grits more than polenta (trick question, they are pretty much the same thing)...I like okra more than eggplant (but I do love eggplant, I just like okra more...bad example...) I like tamales more than ravioli (there we go!), I like brisket more than osso bucco... It was how I was programmed, from even before I was programmed, and it is how I will always be.

Years ago, in Austin, I worked for a brief stretch in a mediocre Italian restaurant... I came there right after moving to Austin and was hired as a lead cook, essentially a ‘chef de cuisine’, right out of the gate. The sauces were boring to me, I was coming from a fast paced ‘a la minute’ kitchen; but at this place, everything was canned, pre-made, cheap, underwhelming. The owner, I’ll call him Adham, was hardworking and honest, doing his best, and (this will become relevant)... Lebanese. I tried to understand what he was doing; there were dozens and dozens of mediocre Italian restaurants in Austin, but few, if any, Lebanese ones, either mediocre or amazing. While his Italian food was just OK (if not worse), he would prepare schwarma and falafel at home and bring it in for us to snack on and it was amazing; the flavours of his home-cooking were wild, exciting, outlandish. But the sauces we were instructed to serve the customers? Tomato. Cream. Alfredo. The one exception was his diavolo—a typically spicy sauce from southern Italy; in his version, it was amped up with an almost...how can I describe it? Lebanese? Yeah, that’s it...flair. I kept asking him, ‘Why Italian? Why not serve Lebanese?’ He never really answered, but I know he was afraid; no one else served Lebanese, he was just trying to play it safe.

I didn’t last long at this place (come to think of it, neither did he...). There weren’t very many customers, and there were even less happy ones, but while I was there, in a nearby neighbourhood, a Lebanese restaurant did open—one that is still there today, some 20 or so years later. As the first of its kind in that area, it was immediately lauded, folks came from all over the city to enjoy it, and to this day I can’t help but wonder, what if Adham had just had the guts to do something that seems so simple in hindsight; to quit trying to be something that he wasn’t and, instead, to cook what he knew? Would that success have been his?

When I wrote the first branch menu, I brought all of my experience to the table. Sure, I knew fajitas and steak, but I also knew stir-fries and spaghetti. I wrote the menu from my years of line-cooking and cheffing experience, from my travels, from my reading... I wrote it with the intention to provoke, to share the food experiences that had shaped me... I carefully considered the best meals of my life and sought out how to interpret them with local ingredients. In short, I set out to cook what I knew. But over these last five years, something else has happened: it seems that the menu, with the help of my local friends, customers, and family, has taken on a life of its own.

I, as you may have noticed when I am outside of the kitchen, aspire to, at times, well...write. As such, I have often found myself seeking and reading words, advice, and wisdom from other writers. There is an anecdote I have heard from more than one novelist describing the act of writing a novel as something along the lines of ‘creating the characters and then letting them act, setting the stage, and then waiting to see what happens...’ This menu, once designed to appeal to a global palate, has obviously, over time, become its own actor. At first, by year two or three, about half of the menu had escaped my original design of its own accord and gone down to Texas. By the time of this writing? As much as three quarters has found its way south to my mesquite and bluebonnet covered home. Sometimes, much like the authors I am quoting, I don’t even feel like the author anymore, just another character on the stage that I helped to set. It is both exhilarating and terrifying...

The real thing we are talking about here, of course, is courage. Adham, my Lebanese friend, feared the rejection of his home-cooked specialties and went with what he deemed to be a ‘safe’ alternative. I have also faced those fears, even as I created a menu that I knew was provocative and hardly seemed safe at all, in the end, I realize now, I have been playing safe by sticking to meals that I knew, from my experience, would sell pretty well, would make people happy, would be easy for me to make, and would be, by those criteria, safe... Not to say that I have not ever ventured out of my comfort zone...But I have rejected any push to ‘pigeonhole’ myself, to get ‘locked into’ one type of food...but unlike my Lebanese friend, not out of fear, but out of, well, hubris.

My weakness, it seems, is not fear, but rather vanity.

In the end, Adham and I face the same demon, rejection. I fear rejection, not from my customers who by sales numbers alone have made their preferences clear, but from another more inscrutable audience; critics, compatriots...my cheffing peers...I fear rejection not for the food itself but for leaving the world of constant provocation, for letting go of that part of myself that co-authored the cookbook, that part of myself that knows that my hand can prepare a perfect hollandaise, that my mind can invent a new combination of flavours that will excite and incite, that, given the capital and the opportunity, I could foam, gel, sous-vide and flash freeze my way into any critic’s heart. Adham feared the much more tangible rejection of a business failing. I fear failure only if it is not on my own terms...

Adham’s business failed. His fear held him back and he had courage, but he had the wrong kind of courage and it killed his business. I, too, have shown a kind of courage in my convictions, a willingness to take chances, to experiment, to explore; but now, after these last few months, I have realized that it is high time for me to muster up another kind of courage. The kind of courage, and here things are going to get a little heavy, but bear with me, the kind of courage that it takes for a baseball player to hang up his glove... The courage that it takes for a player to do the right thing for his team, to stand back, to stop trying to be the star and to become the coach. I have a great crew; they are talented, capable, and nothing makes me more proud than the fact that I have helped to shape them. What they need is not to be on the same team as a star, but a job that will support them and their families; they need a restaurant that is not the success of a man, but the success of a team; a team that will go on and win championships with me as a coach, and, later, a team that will win when they become the coaches themselves.

Now that is an awful lot of sports metaphors coming from someone who may, every couple of years, catch the Superbowl, but rarely much else...(one of my ‘teams’, the crew at ASTI, used to tease me for my lack of sports knowledge by telling me stories about how a player had spiked the javelin in the end-zone, slam-dunked the field-goal and gotten a home-run...) I am getting used to the idea, that of all the meals I have prepared, the most successful moments of my cooking career were not the yuba and white truffle bresaole at Millennium’s White Truffle Dinner...or even the Tongue& Cheek entrée at last New Year’s Eve dinner at the branch...they weren’t even publishing a cookbook, cooking dinner for Alice Waters, being reviewed by Anne DesBrisay or Michael Bauer, being quoted in national magazines or even appearing, briefly, on the Food Network or any of a number of local TV morning shows...my finest moments were when Libby Goldstein called me to ask whether or not she should take the job at Chez Panisse, when CJ made it through his first full shift at ASTI without a screw-up, when Heather ran out of ketchup last weekend and knew how to make it on the fly...When Wesley ‘killed it’ on Sunday’s buffet...My biggest successes have not been what I have done, they have been what I have been able to teach other people to do...What I have helped them discover within themselves...

Courage is not writing the perfect menu, it is writing a good menu and then letting it become what it needs to be. A restaurant does not need a chef with a stack of gold medals and accolades; it needs hungry customers who are willing to buy what it sells. Success in business, I have come to realize, is not measured by how much I help myself; it is measured by how many others I am able to help.

When I wrote the first menu for the branch, I wrote the menu that I wanted to cook. I came from Texas and went far and wide, learning as I went. But I started in Texas, my first meals were there, and what I learned from cooking Texas food informed and informs everything else I have done. But when I wrote that first menu, I wrote it for me...Italian has always been prominent, of course, as has Thai food, Jamaican, Californian, French, modern, vegetarian, even ‘nose-to-tail’. I wrote a menu that was designed to challenge others but that was mainly, if I’m honest, designed to keep myself entertained. That’s a great way to get attention, but it’s not a great or an easy way to succeed...But as I have written it, and even more importantly, as it has evolved and started to write itself, it has taught me something profound... It has taught me that I need to go back to the start...

To Be Continued...