Making Grilled Cheese for My Kids Is as Satisfying as Smoking Meat for a Living
When I was growing up, my mom used to say, “I never want my son to be a firefighter. He’ll run right into the fire.” I became a pitmaster instead (different kind of fire), but she was right. Once I see a challenge, I embrace it, face it, and try to endure. Opening a restaurant during a pandemic is just another challenge.
Since 2016 I’ve been doing barbecue pop-ups in Oakland. Those are 48-hour days: I’m buying the meat, prepping the meat, and sacrificing my sleep to cook it for 16 hours. Then I have to serve it, give customers that one-on-one experience—preparing the cuts they want, having personal conversations—and then clean up. By the time I go home, I’m exhausted physically as well as emotionally. The last thing on my mind is “Hey, I’m going to go in the kitchen to cook up a meal!” No way. I’m gonna order some takeout from the place down the street.
But since the pandemic started, things are different. It’s made me focus more on cooking here at home. It’s made me rely on the reasons I love to cook in the first place. Watching a fire takes me to a meditative state—complete peace. I’ve always said that if no one showed up to my pop-ups, I would be fine because I’m completely in love with what I do. Quarantine is proof of that: I find the same pleasure in cooking a 200-pound hog in my backyard brick pit as I do in making grilled cheese sandwiches and plain omelettes for my kids, Matty and Leilani, who are four and three.
During quarantine I’ve been able to spend a lot of one-on-one time with them, in their little world of toys and licorice and YouTube. I’ve had time to hone family recipes, like my grandmother’s cheesy potato casserole, which I plan to serve at the restaurant when we open. The other day she came by and tasted it. She didn’t say, “This is great.” She didn’t say it was bad. She just looked at me, smiled, and told me she was proud of me. I’ll take that.
When I open up the restaurant, it’s going to take time away from my family. I understand that, and they understand that too. But I’m trying to implement systems where neither me nor my employees are working all the time. We’re not going to be open seven days a week. We’re going to be open three to four days. And once we sell out, that’s it—we go home.
Originally Appeared on Bon Appétit
