We headed to Brooklyn for the weekend to watch a number of demonstrations, panel discussions and meeting with a number of vendors at the 14th Annual StarChefs International Congress. We were excited to do a deep dive into its various initiatives that it presents to those in the culinary community. We took some time at the beginning of this conference to talk with StarChefs' Managing Editor, Will Blunt on what took place at the conference, what he's looking forward to as well as the issues facing those in the culinary industry as we go into the next year.
ATHLEISURE MAG: Can you tell us about your background and how you came to Star Chefs?
WILL BLUNT: I grew up in Washington DC and my parents were in politics. I graduated from Georgetown University and like most people, I didn’t know what I wanted to do so I taught high school tennis for a bit and did some work on The Hill for a while. I then decided to jump-start my career by moving to NY – it was the height of the internet exuberance in the late 90s. I was thinking about going the path of a conservative banking job and I did some interviews and I got allergic to the concept. I eventually took a minute to help a friend at what is StarChefs now. This friend had been hired as the first employee after a fundraising round and I got the bug. I’m 20 years in now.
In terms of food, I fell into it and then fell in love with the industry. I do cook and I am really into food; however, I am most inspired by the industry and the people that work within it. In the early 2000s, like most internet companies, we didn’t have a lot of direction, but we were firmly committed with my business partner Antoinette to be completely on the trade side, publish for chefs and make our mission to support chefs and other people in the industry. The idea with that is that it’s a wonderful industry opportunity, but it is also one with with a number of pains and challenges. We have a classifieds area that helps with labor which is a pain, all of our publishing is about best practices and inspirations for chefs and they are really passionate people. I have been most inspired by them in this industry and I do love food. I have gotten to know them really well, but it is truly about the people for me.
AM: What are your day to day roles in StarChefs?
WB: Fortunately we have evolved a bit – we’re still 15 full staff and for this event, we have 100 people who work on it. I do a bit of everything now and we have fortunately evolved to the point that we have great people that have different departments. I do a bit of fundraising and development, HR, I make a point to stay engaged. So let’s say in the early days there were 5 people – I learned to use a camera and my business partner Antoinette as well – there was a rule that everyone needed to be able to use a camera – classic start-up that’s boot strapping. We would do the Tastings Interviews. I didn’t mention it, but our thing that distinguishes StarChefs from any other publication is that we do 600 tastings interviews on the ground, every year across the country. We organize that to the 4 markets typically by quarter and we spend 2-3 hours with the chef, pastry chef, somm, artisan baker, coffee roaster – anyone that’s industry and doing something well. We will visit them, document them and get to know them. We share what we think is done well and would be inspiring for other people. So, all of that to say that, I still do that. It’s important because it’s something I enjoy doing, but we now have a wonderful editor, writers, full time photographer who are super capable, but I still keep my toe in the editorial. Just to stay in touch and I love the culture of the restaurant community.
AM: What’s the biggest thing that you have learned about chefs by working in this environment that still keeps you inspired to be a part of this everyday?
WB: Yes, the industry is still – despite all of the media attention in food TV and all of the exposure with celebrity chef scenarios etc – it’s very merit based and egalitarian. So at the end of the day, even if you have a Top Chef show and all that goes with it, you still face the same challenges. Many of the chefs that really early on inspired me and were early supporters, they all started at the dishwasher level. I think Jean Georges who is one of our Board of Directors he made dog food to start his career – not even human food (editor’s note: at the beginning of Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s career in Michelin three-starred L’Auberge de l’Ill in Alsace, he cooked and prepared the meals for the guests dogs)! Marcus Samuelsson who is a great friend and supporter, worked a hot dog stand, Bobby Flay scooped ice cream and so it’s very honest in that sense. There’s less patience in the industry because the demographic is such that there is such an explosion and there isn’t really a shortage. There are more opportunities that are quicker in the industry, but at the end of the day, there is still this certain base or sense of needing to work to get to where you are. I admire that and I like supporting people that are working that hard and trying to make it in an industry that has a lot of opportunity, but a lot of failure. I think 80% of all restaurants fail in the first 3 years or something along those lines. I think that my staff has had a lot of great people that have worked in the industry or gone to culinary school. We are all motivated by trying to be that extra leg up, or piece of perspective or inspiration. Folks that come to this conference – the best version for their experience of busting their ass all year is to come here to get a few days off to be inspired and to remind themselves on why they do what they do.
AM: Going into 2020, what do you think are 3 of the biggest issues that chefs are concerned about?
WB: Yeah of course! In this conference, I am hosting a session with Restaurateur Sean Feeney, his partner Chef Missy Robbins of Misi and Lilia and then Cosme’s Chef Daniela Soto-Innes – we will talk about restaurant culture and moving it forward. That was the theme of our conference last year, but it’s about being better humans. How you treat people and the culture. Everyone is on board in theory with that; however, I think that the challenge in terms of 2020 and beyond is how you walk the talk. It’s a challenge that’s easy to say in terms of providing benefits, treating employees better, more decent hours – but how do you develop the strategies to run a successful business and still do that?
I think that there is something that has developed amongst chefs and those in the industry in general, the brand image – it’s another panel we just finished. It focuses on how you manage your time and capital, what you invest in. That has been something that has built up over time. Which events do you decide to do and now it’s even more when you look at social media in how you present yourself and how much energy you put in to that. What opportunities do you say yes to and it’s pretty high level as not everyone is at that point. I think that even on a micro level, people who are starting out and opening a restaurant, they need to decide on investing in PR, social media and that’s another thing. I think there are the ongoing challenges that may not be 2020 challenges, but it’s becoming more acute with the larger companies that have bigger scale that are snatching up real estate that independent restaurateurs have harder times to access. Starting a restaurant is harder and harder and having to leverage to get the right space at the right price and to keep it once you're successful. That is a serious issue and when you look at NYC it's a great example because we have parts of Manhattan that are unattainable and all the leases are controlled by large management companies. Then you have the chains, I’m not saying that they’re all bad – they employ people and there are great ones that do home scratch cooking – but for the independent restaurant and chef that is a challenge.
AM: What are 3 panels, demonstrations, workshops etc that you are excited about for this year’s StarChefs?
WB: Our program is really strong this year and we tried to involve people that are more or less famous although our name is StarChefs, we’re not all about stardom. Some of the items I will highlight may seem like the less obvious ones. Ben and Brent from The Meat Hook will be doing an event on the main stage which they call Vintage Beef. I don’t know how much you know about them, but it’s my local butcher. They have been exploring different ways that they can be sustainable. One issue we have across the food system that we have with meat at least is a lot of our USDA and certification is centered around young animals. So they are going to be fabricating a 12 year old bull and they will serve it as a tartare. Apparently, I haven’t had it, but it tastes like an aged beef which is a cool thing to demonstrate that dairy cows, bulls etc have value if we could get to a place where we not only use the whole animal but all animals. I think that that will be a good one!
I think that an obvious one is that we have the most signups for Chef Francis Mallmann who is on Chefs Table on Netflix. He is so inspiring and I have wanted him to present for years! He is closing the show and he will be building a fire in the parking lot outside and presenting on the mainstage a vegetable roll! It will be carmelized and cooked with the fire ahead of publishing his Vegan cookbook which will be out next year. It's pretty cool as he has always been identified with a lot of meats. I think that for our chefs, one of the reasons why they are so excited for it aside from the fact that Chef Mallmann due to his great presence is that cooking with fire is really a thing that chefs find to be a bit of challenge. Everyone wants to cook with fire and it’s a trend, but how you actually harness fire, to cook consistently at different temperature points – those techniques are great takeaways for chefs.
I mentioned the panel earlier with the discussion with Daniela and Sean, they are 2 really special people that are models and examples of what the future of our restaurant industry should be and models that they should look at as one if a chef and one is a restaurateur. They have cool strategies to improving restaurant culture.
IG @StarChefs
We sat down with James Beard Nominated husband and wife duo of Don Angie to talk about their West Village Italian American restaurant.
ATHLEISURE MAG: Can you tell us about Don Angie for our readers who have yet to swing by?
ANGIE RITO: It’s an Italian American restaurant in the West Village here in NYC. It’s more American leaning than Italian. We both grew up in Italian American families – like super passionate about red sauce and we take quite a few liberties with it. We use a lot of different ingredients and take more of a global approach to it.
AM: Why did you decide to do it like that?
AR: To be honest, there are a number of reasons and the major one being – we like to incorporate a lot of flavors that we like that aren't Italian into our food. Whether they're like Chinese or Japanese - or whatever it is. We just like to cook ingredients that we like. In NYC especially, there are a lot of Italian restaurants so we really like to set ourselves a part and this is the main way that we do that. Coming up with our own style of Italian food that we like that’s a broad perspective on what we do.
AM: As a husband and wife team, how does that work for you to cook together, work together – how does that coupleship work?
AR: We’re both super passionate about what we do and that’s what drives us. We could never work in this industry separately because we would never see each other. We tried doing it for a while. At the beginning of our relationship, we worked separately and like I said, you’re working 14-15 hour days and we wouldn’t see each other. We felt that working together was the best way to do what we loved together. It also works to our advantage. We’re typically on the same page and we can read each other’s minds because we spend so much time being together. It kind of helps because we communicate minimally when we’re at work and we’re always on the same page.
AM: What would you guys say would be your signature dishes at Don Angie?
AR: The most recognizable one is our lasagna. It’s a pinwheel style lasagna. That’s the one that everyone photographs and it’s all over Instagram. Aside from that, our Chrysanthemum Salad which is basically treated like a Caesar salad with a garlic anchovy dressing a lot of parmesan, sesame bread crumbs. The third thing would be ….
SCOTT TACINELLI: I’d say it’s a toss up between two things, the Buffalo Milk Caramelle and the Stuffed Garlic Flatbread.
AR: Oh I agree! Our Buffalo Milk Caramelle is a two tone black sesame and persimmon pasta. We just did a demo of our flatbread. This is something that is traditionally Italian, but we totally take it in a different direction by putting sesames on it, garlic, garlic chives and so it’s different than the original one.
AM: When did you guys know that you wanted to be chefs?
SC: I changed my careers as I did something else for like 9 years. I always loved cooking when I was a child and then I decided that I should try cooking and took a few classes at culinary school and then I went full time.
AR: For me, I always wanted to have a restaurant since I was a little kid. I used to play pretend restaurant when I was a kid. I wasn’t sure about what path in terms of cooking, working front of house or what that would be. I grew up in an Italian American family that had a bakery and I liked working there. I grew up in a very food-oriented family. Once I moved to NYC right after college, I was working as a waitress in a restaurant and at that moment at 21, I knew I was so passionate that I really wanted to know how to cook it. I started cooking then and didn’t go to culinary school and just asked if I could volunteer in the kitchen and I kept going.
AM: Do you guys envision another location or going to an entirely different coast?
AR: I think that the next thing that we would do is probably something in NYC, preferably something in the West Village as that’s where Don Angie is and easier for us to be present.
ST: I don’t know if it would be another Don Angie’s. AR: No, it would be another concept.
AM: How was it for you when you were nominated for a James Beard Award?
AR: I was surprised – I was like, ok! It was super exciting and I just wasn’t expecting it.
ST: I was very surprised and it was such an honor to be recognized by such an esteemed organization!
AR: Especially in NYC where there are so many other people!
AM: Do you forsee having a TV show or presenting your brand in different ways that we know chefs utilize.
AR: We are working on a cookbook right now. It won’t be out until 2021.
ST: We’re going to take it day by day and see what comes!
IG: @DonAngieNYC
When it comes to one of our favorite comfort foods, it's pizza! It incorporates a number of traditional ingredients as well as those that aren't. We chatted with Emily Hyland of Pizza Loves Emily and Emmy Squared to talk about how this food became the catalyst to this successful business.
ATHLEISURE MAG: So, pizza – why do you like pizza so much?
EMILY HYLAND: I mean, I think it harkens back to the quality of this nostalgia that all of us have as Americans. We all have this memory of pizza parties with friends or going out and have pizza or enjoying a slumber party and ordering pizza. It’s this uniting American food that lives in the state of our history. So why wouldn’t we want to have pizza?
AM: We know a few people who say that they don’t like pizza and we’re like, “really?”
EH: My dad says that and then every time he comes in he eats like a whole freaking pizza!
AM: How did you transfer this love for pizza to saying, I want to have a restaurant and make a business out of pizza?
EH: It was a dream for me and at that time, my husband as a dream for many years. We were in a moment where I had transitioned out of being a public school teacher and was a full time yoga teach – which is a next to nothing earnings for that time and space in my life. We had moved to Brooklyn and he was apprenticing at a neopolitan restaurant. I remember the day that he came home and he said, “I put my hands on the dough and this is what I want to do.” So the time and space really opened up and we took a chance and that really got us into our first brick and mortar, Pizza Loves Emily. From there, we found growth partners through our wonder partner Howard who has taken this small little baby, our first child and has helped us merge this into a growing company.
AM: How does it feel to know how you started and how it has evolved into what exists now?
EH: It’s really been surreal and I haven’t digested it – no pun intended! It’s weird as the founder and the namesake to have this identity that’s so rooted in my heart and then to relinquish some of this control to this corporate structure that is developing. It’s tons of learning and really taking something that is so very much mine and making it ours in this whole team. I love it and I’m having so much fun! The people that we have brought on to help it grow like the Director of Operations, the Director of Marketing are so talented and really care so much about the concept that it has made it so much nicer to be able to go to work everyday.
AM: What would you identify as your 3 signature pizzas?
EH: Our 3 signature pies at Emmy Squared are the Colony – so that’s got pepperoni, pickled chili honey so you’ve got salty, spicy, sweet trifecta – hands down fan favorite. Not too far behind it is the Vodka Pie. It’s house made, really nice creamy vodka sauce – the way I do it is dollops of burrata on it – I do it like a Margarita and just go extra on it. Then the Roni Supreme. A classic pie with tons of pepperoni and tons of Calabrian chili on it. So it’s like an elevated pepperoni pizza and the Calabrian chili oil is not so much spicy, but warm - it really rounds out the pie really nicely.
AM: Where do you get your pizza inspiration from?
EH: That’s all from our head chef, Chef Matt. He is really talented at developing topping creations and is trained as a culinary artist and a lot of that vision is from him. He conceptually wanted Emmy Squared and Pizza Loves Emily to be fun and not rooted in the formality that so many more esoteric pizza places do when they say, “this is what pizza is supposed to be.” We just wanted to open ourselves up to the variety of toppings that we could have without judgment. What you want is what you like!
AM: What are 3 ingredients that you like to have on hand when it comes to making that best pizza?
EH: So I think it’s our cheese obviously! At our original location, we still make our own mozzarella by hand. Over at Emmy Squared, we have a chef blend which we sprinkle around on the outside of the edge of the pan and it carmelizes with the dough on the pan so you get a fried cheese which is delicious. Our Ezzo Pepperoni cups are our ronis that cup nicely on the pizza. We also use really high quality flour. We use King Arthur Flour that is here in America and not shipped over from Italy. We start from that simple ingredient and just build from there and just add yeast, water and a little bit of salt as it doesn’t take much and we’re very simple with our dough.
AM: What are your goals as we close 2019 and thinking ahead to 2020 – what are you excited about for your brand?
EH: For the brand for next year, we’re really thinking about what it means to grow on a national scale. We just opened in Philadelphia and we will be in Washington, DC by the end of the year. If not then, early 2020 and on a growth path from there. Through my lens from there, my goal is to figure out how I can maintain this genuinely robust culture as a restaurant environment for my employees as well as to ensure that the same level of warmth is available to our guests that are coming in to dine with us. That is a big goal for me and when we do openings, I try to greet every guest table the few days that I am there and to say hi and to instill that cultural feel. I think that the other facet of it is to just synthesize our team and to lean on the talent there. It’s 2019, we’re all leading full robust lives. What are the things that my team members do that they can bring in and to support the types of things that we’re doing so that we are growing. We’re very people focused!
IG: @EmilyHyland
When we chatted with Will Blunt earlier in this conference, he shared that we should catch The Meat Hook founder's session on Vintage Beef and how they are lending their craft to the sustainable movement. We sat down with Ben Turley and Brent Young to find out about this duo, their business and what the holiday season is like for them.
ATHLEISURE MAG: We enjoyed sitting in your demonstration focusing on regenerative agriculture. How did you guys decide that you would be butchers, was this always a plan?
BEN TURLEY: We were both line cooks for a long time and living in Richmond, Virginia which is where we met. A small little butcher shop opened and we started interning there on our off time and the more you learned, the more questions we had. It wasn’t a whole animal shop as that’s not what existed at the time. The more we dug into it, we realized we wanted to do this and we moved to NYC to do just that. We could only find one restaurant group on the East Coast that was doing a whole animal program and we ended up opening a butcher shop for them and very quickly, it was disorganized and if you were going to be in it, you had to know everything like the finances. We thought we had to do it for ourselves and we ended up deciding to open our own shop. But essentially, we fell into it backwards and we were genuinely super interested in it as no one was doing it and we did and that was it.
AM: How do you go about finding the different farmers and farms that you’re working with? Are you constantly rotating things in?
BT: No not really. The whole idea is to develop a relationship with someone that you are going to find at a Farmer's Market and has dedication to their their craft. We’re very lucky to have found a great network of farms when we started. The whole idea was that we wanted to work with one farm that did one thing and that way, every single week, we’re able to give them feedback and not just buying things from all over. It was about having a very structured system and it was great because people could enjoy it and say that they would like to visit us and we could let them know the farm for them to visit. We wanted complete transparency in the food chain which is a major reason why we started this.
AM: We were talking with Will Blunt earlier this morning and he was talking about how you work with age cows. We had never had one before and we wondered what a Jersey cow would taste like. What was the thought behind integrating this as well?
BT: We had been tasting this on our own and when we would go up to the farm, we knew that they were not going to go and grind an older animal. We knew that they would have it in their farm store so when we went up there, we would just make a habit of asking if they had older animals. We would take them home and I remember the first one that I had cooked. I cooked it to medium and it was tough as nails and it sucked; however, the flavor was still incredible and you could tell that there was something still there. So we just brought it home for ourselves when we were there and eventually, we realized it was something that we had learned enough about that we could bring this into restaurants and have a dinner focused around these older animals. We were always blown away by these older animals. The texture was so different then what we had always been told it would be like and we thought it was phenomenal that no one knew about and no one was giving towards.
AM: Are there various breeds of cows you tend to deal with more versus others?
BT: Because everything we do is grass fed and grass finished, only a couple of breeds do well on grass and that would be Angus, Devon – that’s the best and what the farmers raise. We’re like, you guys know the grasses and we’ll tell you how it tastes. We’re the marketers for them!
AM: With the holiday season upon us, how crazy is this time of year?
BT: Bonkers.
BRENT YOUNG: Very busy!
AM: Do people order in advance with you. Just thinking about our readers that may be interested in swinging by today or prepping for their holiday meals, how would they go about it?
BT: We do everything online. We realized that after a few years, the amazing nature of human fallibility and error, all ordering is on our website. For Thanksgiving, we have a lot of options on our website. We’ll have over 550 turkeys for Thanksgiving this year. We normally sell 450, but we decided to go for it this year so we have a lot of turkeys. Then early Nov we’re heads down and you can’t even look up until after Thanksgiving and then 3 days after Thanksgiving, Christmas ordering happens and it’s heads down through New Years.
AM: Is there a down season when the orders aren’t as frequent?
BT: March. Just because we’re in NYC and everyone leaves in March. If you can get the hell out in March, your probably should!
AM: What are 3 dishes that you guys like to make with the items that you butcher when you’re at home?
BT: Both of us shop and we use what needs to be used. My personal favorite is beef shank and we always have beef shank. I think it’s still the most delicious things – it’s a nice project and it takes a couple of hours to get to relax and cook for that time.
BY: Chicken! Chicken in all forms. Last night was Chicken and Rice with scallions and a really simple sauce that was perfect for me. A real chicken and rice dish. I think that chicken to this day is so versatile and could be used in so many ways. It’s worth twice the price that you can pay for it.
AM: Why did you guys want to participate in this year’s congress?
BT: First year and I mean we were asked. We jumped on the opportunity. Talking about local meet is our mission and super fun and doing demos is fun too – no brainer!
IG: @TheMeatHook
PHOTO CREDITS | Paul Farkas
Read the Nov Issue of Athleisure Mag and see 14th Annual StarChef’s International Chefs Congress in mag.
