Chef Mitch Omer instructing his staff in the fine points of proper fire safety techniques
We sat down to chat in a booth toward the back of his restaurant, and when our server came by, I couldn’t help but thinking, “It must suck to have your boss seated in your section.”
A few things on the menu jumped out at me, and most of those involved bison. There’s bison sausage, and there’s even a bison ‘sausage bread,’ which I guess is for people who don’t have the time to eat their sausage and bread separately.
I ordered the Bison Benedict and a Bloody Mary, and I hate to say this, Wheaties people, but that’s your ‘breakfast of champions.’ There’s nothing like biting into a hunk of majestic buffalo to give you that ‘top-of -the-food-chain’ feeling.
Meat is a big part of the menu here, and a fairly generic question about foie gras (which he keeps at home but doesn’t serve in the restaurant) led to this . . . passionate response:
“I’m sorry—I don’t give a fuck—its great! They been doin this for what—centuries? Look, if we can get free range, great, but . . . they’re bred to be killed.”
My vegan readers will probably be quite upset by all of this, but thankfully, due to their meat-free diet, they won’t have the strength to write me an angry letter.
The first thing you notice when you enter the basement restaurant / bar / music venue known as Hell’s Kitchen is the decor. Unlike a lot of basement restaurant / bar / music venues, the decor at Hell’s Kitchen isn’t just a tease–the food is as good (and as interesting) as the art.
Specifically, the art of Ralph Steadman, who has drawn iconic caricatures since the days when Rolling Stone was actually counter-culture. He may be best known for illustrating the drug-and-booze-fueled narratives of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
The walls at Hell‘s are covered in Steadman’s dark, bold lines, including an original called Big Head #5. And Mitch Omer has two Steadmans inked on his right arm, one of them autographed.
Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever liked an artist enough to have their work burned into my flesh. That’s probably just as well, since my tastes in music weren’t very adventurous when I was younger, and I wouldn’t want to have to explain a tattoo of John Denver.
Talking about Steadman naturally led us to Hunter S. Thompson (“his stuff was a Bible for me in the seventies”), so I asked Mitch to improvise a sandwich in Hunter’s name that would be suitably ‘gonzo’—
“You gotta start with a decent bread, gotta look at a focaccia, or something like that, and then I’d put some mayonnaise and Vicodin in and wash it down with some scotch, make it like a French dip, and . . . you dip the fucker in Scotch. So there you go, you got the Thompson Dip.”
Mitch spent some time working concert security (hence the aforementioned stabbing), but instead of making him jaded, he seems wistfully nostalgic about his ass-kicking past.
That same past, and a concerned roommate, led him, oddly enough, to try LSD . . .
“I was working as a bouncer during this time, and I started working third shift as a baker. I’d kick the shit out of bikers through the night, and roll in dough until the morning.
I was fighting every night and absolutely loving it. My roommate told me one night that he was afraid I was going to kill one of these bastards, and well, ‘this might mellow you out a little bit.’
I was still tripping on acid one day before work. It was wild; the dough was convulsing, the colors on the walls were running, and I had to take very slow, deep breaths to keep it under control.
Of course, as any aspiring pastry chef knows, you have to work with the dough until it completely stops ‘convulsing.’
It was cool, but I would never let that happen again. I wasn’t giving my employer my best work, and I’m all about quality. I’ll just stick to pot.”
I knew that Mitch wasn’t exactly a fan of celebrity-chef culture, and since he brought up fighting, I asked who would win if he fought celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain.
Bourdain, of course, has fashioned himself as something of a bad-ass (of course, how much of a bad-ass can you be when you’re featured on the Travel Channel?). So, who wins if it comes to foodie fisticuffs?
“That’s actually a good question. I’ve met Bourdain. He’s 6’5″, and I’m 6’4″ , and he’s younger than me by a ways, so he’s got that going for him . . .
What I’ve got going for me is a history of fighting.”
In addition to fighting random goons at rock shows, Mitch Omer has had to battle himself. He talks (almost proudly) about ‘finally’ being diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and seems at peace with who he is now.
And if obsessive-compulsive disorder ever had a telethon, Mitch could be its spokesman. He actually sent his book, ‘Damn Good Food–157 Recipes From Hell’s Kitchen’ back to the publisher on first printing.
That’s because it had 156 recipes, and he doesn’t like even numbers (readers with OCD will appreciate this, once they’re done counting the number of words in the preceding paragraph).
Mitch also acknowledged that his OCD can be an asset in the kitchen:
“Oh, God yes! When I’m cooking, I’m dialed in. And if I go into the walk-in, and that shit isn’t the way I want it, with the handles turned, or if anything’s not facing forward, with labels, and properly dated . . . I’ve actually had the health department take photographs, for their training.”
Since he used to knock heads at rock and roll clubs, I wanted to know what he listens to when he’s cooking—
“It’s gotta be movin’ . . . Led Zeppelin, or Allman Brothers off the first two albums, because you lose Berry Oakley and Duane Allman it’s not the Allman Brothers. Or blues—electric slide blues, someone like Sonny Boy Williamson.”
And as for the first meal he cooked for someone important to him?
“A chateaubriand I made for my mom and dad.”
When I asked Mitch to name his favorite utensil, he didn’t hesitate to give me a very. . . pointed answer:
“Fuckin’ knives! I’ve got a couple of gems in my office, and I’ve got some surgical tools.”
The ‘tools’ included this bizarre finger-amputation doohickey that looks like a cross between a cigar-clipper and a gun. It was comforting to remember that he doesn’t drop acid anymore.
Bonus question—if he had a time machine, where and when would he like to have cooked?
“Fifteenth century Italy. When Catherine Di’ Medici left Italy to go to France, she took her whole retinue with her, including her retinue of cooks.
They felt the French were coarse, backward people, and she was NOT gonna eat that food. So the Italians came with all their talents, and they trained the French chefs.
Now France is known as this gastronomic capital. They owe every fuckin’ bit of that to Catherine Di’ Medici. She invented high heels . . . Jesus Christ, she did everything! She was a great chick—she took a bunch of knuckle-dragging Neanderthals and taught ‘em how to cook.”
Note: She was also a tyrant responsible for
the massacre of thousands of Huguenots.
My question about adding a gourmet touch to the classic Minnesota ‘hotdish’ elicited a surprisingly passionate (and deep) response—
“Fuck that! These guys do that, take classic food and ‘deconstruct’ it . . . ‘Oh, we’re doing it with some different cheese or we’re doing it with homemade this and that or whatever,’ and I’m like, that isn’t it!
Wanna talk comfort food? Go down to Winona and talk to the women there that do the funerals. Every time somebody dies, they get the call . . . they bring hot dish—that’s what they do! And they’re not using venison, or, my God, heirloom tomatoes. Fuck that.”
You wouldn’t think that in such a meat-centric place, customers would rave about the porridge, but trust me, they rave. Senator Al Franken’s a fan, as was Nora Ephron.
It’s a concoction of maple syrup, blueberries, craisins, hazelnuts, heavy cream and Native American hand-parched wil
d rice, and it’s also a great lesson in commitment.
When Hell’s Kitchen opened a decade ago (that’s about three hundred years in restaurant time), there were two items on the menu that were less than successful—his ‘shrimp and grits’ and the porridge.
The shrimp and grits might have flopped because, as Mitch puts it, “It’s the Midwest. Nobody knows what grit is. NOBODY fuckin’ bought it. I mean NOBODY!”
He eventually gave up on the grits, but he believed in his porridge, at one point giving it away to get people to try it (the same business model my pot dealer uses). Now, Mitch’s porridge “has taken on a life of its own.”
I learned a lot in the hour I spent with Mitch. For instance, if you want pecans in your cinnamon rolls, you should sautée them first in a pan with salt and butter.
Then you add them to the dough after it rises, or else your nuts will be mealy (and how many meals have we all had that were ruined by mealy nuts?).
Oh, and I learned that bear meat is “stupid lean” and “sweeter than venison.”
I mentioned to him that it seems every time I ‘create’ something, I discover that a hundred thousand amateur chefs with internet connections came up with the same idea. He told me,
“Look, it’s like our lemon ricotta pancakes. I don’t remember ever hearing about lemon ricotta pancakes, I just remember thinking ‘I want to put some lemon and ricotta in a goddamn pancake!’
Bottom line is we did create these things, and if a million other people created the same thing, big deal!”
Coolest moment for me: when I told him about my special turkey burgers (with maple syrup in the middle of the patty), and he said, “I would have never thought of doing that.” I chose to take that as a compliment.
That led to his homemade maple-bison sausage, and then we were talking about the smells that come off the grill from the sugars breaking down, and suddenly we were just a couple of cooks, swapping stories about caramelization.
Cooking With Testosterone
Here’s how I know that I’m not a traditional alpha male: the idea of grilling does NOTHING for me. I simply do not have the ‘barbecue gene’ in my DNA. I’m fairly certain I have the ‘show tunes gene,’ but that’s rarely needed at a backyard picnic.
Sure, I enjoy the taste of barbecued meat, but I have no interest in creating it. Anthropologically, I get it. The whole ‘primal flashback to killing a wooly mammoth and throwing its carcass onto an open fire’ thing. But the deal is, human society has evolved, and now we can cook INDOORS.
The problem I have with the ‘primal’ argument for grilling’s appeal is that most people who throw slabs of dead animal on the fire didn’t hunt and kill the animal themselves. (Yes, vegetarians, I know you can grill vegetables, too. Not my point. Calm down.)
It’s just that you don’t really get that connection to primitive times and feel a visceral bond with your food if you’re slapping lamb patties from Trader Joe’s on your Weber. You should have to kill a damned sheep and drag it to your back yard.
I don’t embrace outdoor cooking for the same reason I don’t churn my own butter or do the dishes in a wooden barrel – because I don’t have to!
Romanticize your primitive ancestors all you want; I like to believe that my forebears wandered for centuries looking for somewhere to plug in a toaster oven.
Beyond the convenience, cooking inside the home offers a multitude of advantages for the modern family. For instance, you’ll probably have fewer bugs crawling near or landing on your food (unless you happen to be renting this studio apartment I had in Chicago).
And the most amazing benefit to cooking inside? If it starts to rain or snow, you can continue to cook! Again, unless you’re in that apartment I mentioned.
There’s also very little subtlety to cooking on a grill for most folks. It’s usually some guy on his fifth beer saying things like “How pink do you want your burger?” or “Could someone go back inside and get the ketchup?” And occasionally there’s “How long do you think we can leave the potato salad out?”
Here’s how nuanced grilling is—a website purporting to be a complete resource for grilling techniques addresses the all-important temperature issue thusly:
“So how hot is hot? The rule is to hold your hand above the cooking grate and start counting (until you can’t hold your hand there anymore)…five seconds for ‘low,’ four seconds for ‘medium,’ two seconds for ‘high.’”
Grilling culture (which apparently is not an oxymoron) is still dominated by men, I suppose because men are usually more about tools than technique.
I’ve had more than one male friend rave about his new grill in terms usually reserved for a new girlfriend. Not too many men will call you into the kitchen and say, “Hey, Jim, check out my new five-speed blender –she’s a beauty, isn’t she?”
Having never bought a grill, I was curious how much people spend for the pleasures of cooking alfresco. A hundred bucks? Five hundred? It is just a glorified fire pit, right? Then I found this in an online catalog:
“The Talos Outdoor Cooking Suite is an open-air professional kitchen. The hand-crafted stainless steel exterior houses a 42” grilling area, three 25,000 BTU cast burners, a 20,000 BTU searing station and griddle, a hardwood cutting board, rotisserie, sink and a warming drawer. It even has a bartending station.”
Because when the guys are over at my place (“It’s show tunes night, guys!”) I need almost FOUR FEET of grilling space.
Oh, and you can’t really cook without having at least enough BTUs to power a steam locomotive. And I can’t count the number of friends who have left my place disappointed because I don’t have a dedicated ‘searing station.’
I love that it’s described as a ‘professional kitchen.’ I’m almost sure that anyone who can afford this probably could put all of these features in their ACTUAL kitchen, eliminating the need to go outside at all. But maybe I just don’t get it.
Incidentally, the above model retails at thirty-five THOUSAND dollars. You and your friends could fly to Argentina for dinner with that money. Or, buy a couple dozen cows and you’ve got steaks for years.
Or you could buy a decent car for thirty-five grand and just go to a drive-through. In fact, the only way spending that much on a grill makes sense is if it somehow also functioned as a car. Now that would be something to brag about.
Hot Dogs and Haggis
When I first heard about the ‘sport’ of competitive eating, I had two reactions:
1. It’s a sport?
2. It’s really a sport?
What began as a rural novelty at county fairs involving homemade pies has somehow become a sport, with a governing body, sanctioned events, and over half a million dollars in annual prize money.
Most people point to ESPN for the sudden validation of recreational gorging. In the mid-seventies, the network televised the annual Nathan’s Famous hot dog eating contest from Coney Island for the first time, and strangely, people watched.
Putting aside why someone would enter the contest, I can’t imagine watching it. If I’m watching traditional sports, at least a part of the appeal is imagining (or remembering) me playing the sport.
What I’ve seen of competitive eating has never made me think, “If only it could be me up there on a makeshift stage eating really fast.”
And I don’t ever remember stuffing my face as a youngster and thinking, “This could be my ticket to the big time.” Don’t get me wrong—I’m no stranger to overeating…just watch me in Vegas at a buffet. But I do that once every ten years or so. I’ve never thought of ‘going pro.’
Really, if we’re going to have people compete at basic bodily functions, why isn’t there a competitive sleeping championship? Local mattress stores could sponsor matches.
By the way, it’s not just hot dogs that these ‘athletes’ shove down their gullets. There are competitions for eating asparagus, baked beans, beef tongue, Buffalo wings, burritos, cabbage, catfish, chili, cow brain (?!), and donuts. A
nd that’s just the first part of the alphabet! Proving that, if we put our minds to it, Americans can over-indulge in anything.
Most events are timed affairs, except for haggis-eating contests. In those, I imagine the first person willing to eat haggis is automatically declared the world-record holder for haggis-eating.
For the uninitiated, in Scotland, haggis is traditionally served with mashed potatoes and rutabagas. For centuries, this has allowed the Scots to ignore the fact that their national food is a mix of sheep heart, sheep liver and sheep lungs. And I’m sure the whisky helps.
The International Federation of Competitive Eating (which, apparently, is a real thing) oversees the big money events. They also enforce the rules about, for example, vomiting, and right there, you lose me as a sports fan. If throwing up is actually mentioned in the ground rules of a sport, I’m pretty sure I don’t want to watch it on a flat-panel hi-def screen.
The competitors prefer to call themselves ‘gurgitators,’ which may be the least pleasant word any group of people has ever chosen to call itself. And they all have nicknames, so I guess in that sense, they’re like athletes.
For example, there’s Don ‘Moses’ Lerman, who was quoted in an interview as saying “I’ll stretch my stomach until it causes internal bleeding.” Who says there are no more inspiring stories in professional sports?
The biggest name on the circuit is Joey ‘Jaws’ Chestnut, who started competing in college, and now holds several world ‘records.’ He used to be ranked second in the world, but like with any sport, there was a scandal:
The former champion was stripped of his title and ranking by Major League Eating and the IFOCE for refusing to sign a contract which would have prevented him from competing in non-MLE sanctioned events. I swear I didn’t make up any of this.
Despite the fact that competitive eating doesn’t really make sense to me, I wanted to interview someone involved, until I found out they all have agents, like real athletes! How exactly do you ‘represent’ someone who does this?
Does This Taste Funny? A Half-Baked Look at Food and Foodies Page 9
