stlbites.com – st. louis food blog of bill burge

Ramblings and a Line Cook Letter

Mar 15, 2009 general food

It’s hard to imagine, but it’s been almost a decade since I was a legitimate full time cook in a restaurant. I’ve worked in a country club more recently–part time–but that doesn’t really count as I was doing mostly brunch because I found it to be fun. Whether it’s my current occupational choice or not, however, I think about it every day, and I’ve always considered myself closer to the back of the house and general restaurant staff, then all the butts in seats dining away in the front.

I find myself drawn more to cook-oriented cookbooks, blogs, websites, etc then the those that carry on about the latest trends, or that delicious paella Alton Brown erroneously made with one of the pots that was allowed to hang around in his kitchen because it didn’t serve only one purpose.

Possibly the most thoughtful of the former version is linecook415.blogspot.com

I’ve mentioned it before, and it’s permanently linked to over there somewhere ->

If you’re a cook or a chef and you’re reading it and not shaking your head in utter agreement at least 90% of the time–you fail. In my eyes anyway… If you’re not reading it (regardless of your restaurant affiliation), you should. It’ll give you a greater appreciation, respect, or whatever you prefer to call it for what’s going on in the kitchen.

Today I mention it because it’s no longer just a blog. For the past five weeks, site owner and San Francisco’s Nopa Restaurant sous chef Richie Nakano, along with two other Nopa cooks–pastry chef Amy Brown and daytime sous Corey Nead–have been podcasting about everything from the worth of culinary school, to the importance of sustainability, to how to get discounted organic produce.

They’ve requested listeners send in topics of discussion and, fired up after listening to podcasts three and four back to back, I did just that after typing up a hellaciously long—and terribly edited—email about what was on my mind. That left St. Louis’s beloved new 33 Wine Bar owner, Jeff Stettner, asking me last week how I have time to send four page emails but not blog about something.

As you can see, Jeff, I took that to heart .

Primarily though, it’s because the letter was one of those ramblings I previously would have edited the crap out of until it lost so much of it’s meaning it would have remained forever in draft-land.

Seeing as I actually got mentioned on Line Cook Podcast #5, however, I’m just posting the damn letter here. I’m bound to get at least one hit off their mentioning me. I was more stoked about it then expected, and I might as well drop in context-bomb for their listeners if they stumbled over here and care.

If you’re one of my people, however, whatever you take from this, at least take this: it is truly unedited closed-door Bill. This is what my friends and family get verbally, and these, specifically, are ramblings of things I was thinking about 7 days ago. Just like a comic book that’s going to leave you tremendously confused in spots because of the total lack of context, however, you’re going to need to grab some podcast back-issues to get the full story. If you have time to read my lousy blog, however, you should have ample time to listen to their highly entertaining (Either that or I’m a complete Nopa stalker) podcast.

One final comment to some of my people: Don’t take yourself so damn seriously. The produce thing is a joke–though it is true. But, you’d think grocers would have thought of that wouldn’t you?

You nailed it on this one. Anyone who has any clue about food–cook or not–and doesn’t find this entertaining is taking their food way to fucking seriously.

The craft conversation and the trendiness of local/organic/sustainable rant were great. I too worry that it’s a trend and it pisses me off when people are doing it for the wrong reasons. Having convinced a farmer to raise red wattle hogs, I don’t want the restaurants serving it to just buy it because it’s trendy to be able to reference the breed on the menu. I want them to realize they’re helping to preserve something that is a part of midwestern food heritage that just happens to also be delicious. I want them to realize that animal was raised right-and possibly go see that for themselves first hand.

Previous podcasts…

Amy: If you want a man I recommend perfecting (though you probably already have one in your repertoire) cinnamon rolls. Any dude worth dating goes crazy for the sweet scent of cinnamon rolls in the morning. Trust me on this. My wife has been looking for cinnamon perfume for years. I wouldn’t be able to contain myself.

Corey: You’re going about your organic theft all wrong. Self-checkout. That’s key. Organic produce numbers are the same as conventional but they tack on a leading 9. You just drop the 9 when you’re checking out and walla: perceived honesty while sticking it to the industrial organic man.

All of you: I almost thought you were going to lay into Missouri with the Justus comments and I was going to have to make a special trip to California to kick ass–and after all the nice shit I’ve said about NOPA. I was shocked to see Justus in the NY Times and I’m pissed that the secret is out on that place. We unfortunately don’t have anything quite that extreme in St. Louis as our restaurants have a hard time getting the quality and quantity of local product to sustain that model. For some reason as local demand has grown, our farmers haven’t really increased production along with the demand so they just stop selling to restaurants because they can get more dough at the markets.

For some reason a lot of our farmers seem to think making money is dirty or something when clearly there is a way to make a shit-ton of money but do it in a responsible way that is sustainable to the land, animals, people, or whatever around you. Ironically our most sustainable restaurant in St. Louis is a St. Louis kid that moved to San Fran and back with the Little Star recipes in hand.

Continuing on the Trendy local/organics, etc…

You all live in a bubble. I looked at your menu the other night and you had spring garlic. I’m jealous because it’s easy to be fiercely local/organic when the growing season is wide. As Dan Barber pointed out last summer at the chaotic SFN, however, that doesn’t mean the shit always tastes good. There are a lot of vegetables that benefit from frost.

Other possible topics of random discussion:

Taste vs local/organic. Example: the #1 farmer of rhubarb in the St. Louis area lost his land to imminent domain or something. He planted a new bed, but it apparently takes a decade for rhubarb to get to a high quality of production. Loving the stuff, chefs in St. Louis can either a) buy from elsewhere or b) buy shitty green local rhubarb.

So, since local is not always better from a flavor perspective, is the goal to be fiercely local with disregard to quality, or to remain as sustainable as possible without compromising flavor. One argument could obviously be: don’t serve rhubarb. Ultimately, however, the dining public of St. Louis is much different than other cities and somebody is going to freak if the strawberry rhubarb pie/crisp/buckle/cobbler/etc doesn’t hit the menu at some point.

That was an interesting thing about your Coi conversation in that I’ve always said that there are three major food cities in America: San Francisco, Chicago, New York.

They can be summed up as:

SF: Look at what we bought.

Chicago: Look at what we did.

NYC: Look at what we did to what we bought.

So the Coi thing is interesting because he’s operating more inside the bubble of local then a guy wielding the same kind of technical skills and quality product in New York. There they’ll just import in a lot of the best shit because if they can’t get it locally they still want the best stuff. At Coi they seem to still be working inside the realm of what’s truly available to them in the region.

Another: On a menu in St. Louis a year or two ago a guy wrote: “the best of seasonal produce” in reference to California Figs. I say that’s not seasonal because, by that standard, you have the “everything is in season somewhere” rule. Where do you draw the line?

Still more: I watched a lady chastise a farmer at my local market because he didn’t feed organic feed to his chickens. His eggs are about $5.00 a dozen as it is because they’re raised and fed better than most. She couldn’t grasp that they would be $10-$12 if he did buy organic feed. These Michael Pollan, OD-Lovin’ people don’t seem to grasp–in the slightest–where food comes from outside of their reading about utopian farming in a book. To make the Polyface farm model sustainable is not an overnight thing-nor is it even possible in every climate. They don’t know what it takes to grow or raise what it is they’re consuming, and they don’t fully appreciate that farmers are ultimately running a business. From what I’ve seen: any farmer that gets too idealistic and doesn’t see that tends, more often than not, to tank.

So, in that this egg farmer is one I know well, I’ve been to his farm. I know he’s trying to do right by his animals and customers, but that he’s also turning a profit so as to do right by his wife and three kids as well. People aren’t fully grasping the reality that while local-organic is the ideal from a sustainability standpoint that, sometimes, costs dictate that a corner might have to be cut somewhere.

As another example-and commenting somewhat on Amy’s comments-some fruits can be a real bitch to grow organically. We happen to have a high quality organic apple orchard in Missouri that showed up to the last one or two farmers markets last season. However, we also have another farm that is not purely organic but goes to four markets each week and has for years. They don’t spray like mad as a rule out of the gate but, when their crop is threatened, and they’re faced with making no money for the season, or spraying to prevent infestation, they spray. But, I watched as people almost seemed to turn on them when the organic guy rolled in, and I felt badly for them, because I feel strongly that a huge reason to support local agriculture is to also be supporting your local community. They’re doing more for my community then the organic guy as they go to more markets so I’ve remained fiercely loyal to them.

It’s like chain restaurants vs locally owned. I know local people work in those places too, but with restaurants dropping like flies all around, why the fuck would someone go to The Olive Garden instead of some local place that will keep a greater of percentage of money in your local economy? Not to mention, they probably don’t have a 3 hour wait for a bunch of bagged chef boy-r-dee and they quite possibly might suck less and even cost less.

I’m excited about your last podcast so I’m starting to ramble because I listened to that shit on a 17 mile run and was thinking a lot about it when it was over so I’ll leave you with one last thought:

People want meat from animals that haven’t been treated with antibiotics. Why? There’s a big difference between treating a sick animal and feeding an animal antibiotics as a rule to prevent them from getting sick in the first place.

To paraphrase another Missouri farmer, Sam Hilmer (who is in fact organic-though not legally): “People are so concerned with all this organic business–and whether their meat is organically fed-but you’ve never met an organic human.”

Bill

Tags: Amy Brown, Corey Nead, Line Cook, NOPA, Richie Nakano