The Shift List

Katie Button is at the helm of two restaurants in Asheville, North Carolina - the lively and authentic Spanish experience at Cúrate, the nationally-acclaimed tapas restaurant, and Button & Co. Bagels, influenced by Katie’s upbringing in New Jersey.

Chef Katie took a winding road to open her restaurants in Asheville, first pursuing science degrees at Cornell and earning her master’s degree in biomedical engineering in Paris.

Realizing that a life in Science wasn’t for her, she changed course to the culinary field, starting as a server at one of Jose Andres’ restaurants in Washington DC, volunteering on her days off to work at his avante garde restautant minibar to help prep in their kitchen, since she didn’t have any professional cooking experience.

Being in the kitchen made her realize that it was the place she wanted to be most, so from there, she got a position in the kitchen at New York’s Jean-Georges in their pastry kitchen as an intern.

From there, she moved out LA to work at The Bazaar by José Andrés, and that following Summer, she landed a postion in the pastry kitchen at elBulli, Chef Ferran and Albert Adria’s legendary 3 michelin star restaurant in Spain.

It was there that she met her husband Felix, and together they moved to Asheville to open a restaurant with her parents, where they eventually opened Cúrate in 2011.

The classic Spanish tapas restaurant received instant attention and accolades, from mentions in The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, and earning status as a nominee for the James Beard Foundation’s Rising Star Chef award in 2014, semi-finalist for Best Chefs in America in 2015 and a nominee for Best Chef Southeast 2018 and 2019.

This week, Ashleigh Shanti, Chef de Cuisine of Benne on Eagle in Asheville in North Carolina.

Benne on Eagle is located on Eagle Street in Asheville’s historic neighborhood called The Block. Ashleigh describes the food at Benne on Eagle as Appalachian Soul Food, and working closely with Chef John Fleer, who’s best known around Asheville for his acclaimed restaurant Rhubarb and it’s sister cafe bakery The Rhu, the menu at Benne on Eagle pays homage to the rich African American culinary traditions that once thrived in The Block, as well as honoring her own history as a Southern, African American female.

The restaurant opened in late 2018, and it’s captured the attention of numerous media outlets, including a feature for Ashleigh in the New York Times as one of the 16 black chefs changing food in America and most recently becoming a nominee for Bon Appetit’s Hot 10 List for Best New Restaurants of 2019.

Now 29 years old, Ashleigh traveled across the US on a six-month sabbatical before landing in Asheville after being tapped by John Fleer, and as that story in the Times reported, she decided that her next step as a chef needed to fulfill a critical desire “cooking food that celebrated her heritage as a black woman from the South and rebuffed assumptions about what that food could be.”

Jenn Dowdy, Music Director at AL’s Place in San Francisco, tells us how to create the perfect playlist for any kind of shift.

This is a special episode, because of all the restaurants featured on this little podcast, AL’s Place is the only one that has a Musical Director. It’s just one reason that this intimate neighborhood restaurant in the Mission District stands out amongst the plethora of dining options and Michelin establishments dotted around the Bay Area.

AL’s place is the vision of Chef / Owner Aaron London - he being the AL that the restaurant is named after (initals A.L), but almost five years in, with a Michelin Star under it’s belt, and many other accolades to it’s name (including the title of Bon Appetit’s New Restaurant of the Year in 2015), AL’s Place is a true team effort.

The space only has 46 seats, and finding an empty one is rare, so a shift requires everyone to be on their A game the entire time.

And while Chef Aaron London’s seasonal, ingredient-driven menu highlighting Northern California produce is the foundation, the service, vibe, and music are essential elements to the dining experience at AL’s Place.

Jenn Dowdy started as a server at AL’s, and after a few months of getting to know the space intimately, she asked AL’s GM Kimberly Litchfield if she could take over the restaurant’s playlist, and the role of Musical Director, previously held by a part time staff member, was bestowed upon her.

22 public playlists later, with many more waiting in the wings, Dowdy weaves together 7-8 hour playlists that are highlighly curated for AL’s, never repeating a song, and compensating for the turns that happen throughout a night’s service.

Rum purveyor and exotic cocktail expert Martin Cate talks about the exotic soundtrack that plays every night at his world class tiki bar in San Francisco, Smuggler's Cove.

So, if you haven’t noticed, Tiki is having a major rennaissance all across the US, and it’s due in no small part to Martin Cate’s elevation and dedication to the form. As Martin likes to put it,“Tiki is a multidisciplinary genre. It’s not just about the cocktails, it’s about creating an atmosphere. All of the elements need to come together seamlessly, and when something is missing or discordant, it takes you out of the experience.”

And central to this experience in any tiki bar worth it’s salt is the music. As he writes in the Smuggler’s Cove book, along with exotica and other lounge music, the tiki sound incorporates hapa haole, which is traditional Hawaiian music with lyrics sung in English, as well as the sounds of surf music, which, as Martin will explain in this episode, was actually countercultural to the greatest generation that made tiki explode in it’s first wave of popularity back in the 1960s.

Be sure to visit one of his bars next time you find yourself in San Francisco (Smuggler's Cove), Portland (Hale Pele, co-owner), San Diego (False Idol, co-owner), and Chicago (Lost Lake, partner).

The Israeli born chef co-founded Honey & Co with his wife, Sarit Packer, a cozy spot located in London’s once sleepy Fitzrovia neigborhood that serves homey Middle Eastern fair directly across the street from their amazing food shop, market, and culinary boutique Honey & Spice.

Following in the footsteps of their UK colleague and cookbook author Yotam Ottolenghi, of whom they both worked for prior to starting Honey & Co, Itamar and Sarit have released a handful of Honey & Co cookbooks over in the UK, and they just finished a whirwind tour of the US to promote the release of their Honey & Co at Home cookbook just last month.

They visited cities and chefs all over the country to help promote the book, which presents their simple and delicious Middle Eastern dishes that are easy to make at home, and they stopped through Los Angeles to do a takeover of Sqrl, Jessica Koslow’s venerable breakfast and lunch spot which kind of feels like a version of Honey & Co in California.

Itamar excitedly talked to The Shift List about the role that music plays at Honey & Co last August, and we ended up recording this on two stools in a pseudo storage room in the working cellar underneath their Honey & Spice shop.

Chef Sheldon Simeon is as passionate about music as he is about bringing Hawaiian food to a new generation. On the Season 2 premiere episode of The Shift List podcast, Chef Sheldon revealed that if he could do anything other than be a chef, it would be a ukulele player.

“My cooking’s heavily inspired by music, for sure,” Simeon said on the podcast. “Like a song, food can tell a story, and that’s what I’m trying to do. With my food, I’m just trying to tell the story of Hawai’i, on the level of Ka’au Crater Boys,” he adds, laughing. “The greatest (Hawaiian) band ever!”

Chef Sheldon Simeon’s Shift List:

Ka’au Crater Boys - “On Fire”

Ka’au Crater Boys - “Brown Eyed Girl”

Ka’au Crater Boys - “Are You Missing Me”

Ka’ikena Scanlan - “Smoke All Day”

Ka’ikena Scanlan - “Utu Bang Bang”

The Green - “Good One”

The Green - “All I Need”

Ledward Kaapana - “Radio Hula”

Cultura Profetica - “La Complicidad”

Three Plus - “Who the Cap Fit”

Content to jam on the ukulele with friends in his spare time, Sheldon came to prominence on the mainland when he competed in the 10th season of “Top Chef: Seattle,” making it to the finals, and winning Fan Favorite. He returned to the show again in 2017 for season 14 of “Top Chef in Charleston,” once again winning Fan Favorite.

In 2016, Sheldon opened his very first solo restaurant, Tin Roof, in Kahului, Maui, where he serves up local dishes in take-out bowls, and last summer he opened Lineage, a full service concept for dinner that brings his interpretation of family-style dishes typical of a Hawaiian luau.

Phil Bracey is not a chef, but rather the manager of P. Franco, a neighborhood wine shop, bar, and makeshift restaurant in Northeast London's Clapton neighborhood. Along with Bright, a new restaurant that opened nearby las May, Phil was instrumental in P. Franco being named Restaurant of the Year by London Eater in 2017.

It’s important to note that ‘manager’ is a broad term, as Phil admits that even he doesn’t know what his actual title would be at both spots. Granted, he helps to procure and looks after the wines, but more important, and less easy to recognize, his approach to hospitality is passionately personal.

Fed up with the pretentiosness that often accompanies drinking wine, Phil set out to make P. Franco a welcoming space that encourages experimentation from customers, allowing them to discover natural wines in an environment that’s relaxed but lively, a space that you can pop into for one glass and ultimately end up staying for the rest of the night.

Paramount to the customer experience at both P Franco and Bright is music, and like a good DJ, Phil is constantly dialing in the playlists during each night’s service, doing his best to follow the flow of where the evening should go.

A veteran of chef Yotam Ottolenghi’s venerable Ottolenghi and Nopi restaurants, Ramael Scully opened his first restaurant "Scully" back in March of 2018 with the backing and support Chef Ottolenghi himself. Given that Scully was born in Malaysia to a mother of Chinese and Indian descent and an Irish Balanese Malay father, his palate was destined to be filled with mixed influences. Add a move to Australia as a young child, where he was ultimately raised in a multiethinic neighborhood, and you start to get a sense of how Ramael Scully eventually found his culinary voice.

Utilizing a range of ingredients from homemade spices, pickles, preserves, oils, animal fats, dairy and sprouts, his food can only be described as his own, like the arepa stuffed with eggplant sambal and bergamont labneh - it’s neither middle eastern or Columbian - it’s just Scully’s.

Itamar Srulovich is an Israeli born chef who co-founded Honey & Co with his wife, Sarit Packer, back in 2012. A cozy spot located in London’s once sleepy Fitzrovia neigborhood that serves homey Middle Eastern fair directly across the street from their amazing food shop, market, and culinary boutique Honey & Spice, they also opened Honey & Smoke in 2016, a big and buzzy grill house serving everything from lamb kofta and chops, whole fish and slow cooked octopus, charred cauliflower and amazing drinks.

Itamar and Sarit racked up impressive resumes before going into business together with Honey & Co, both serving as alumni of the venerable Ottolenghi restaurant and cooked together in restaurants around Tel Aviv before their time together in London.

Three restaurants and three best selling cookbooks later, family is the through line that brings everything together at Honey & Co,, and not just because Itamar and Sarit are married. It seems like Itamar knows every staff worker, diner, and shop customer intimately, exuding a warmth and friendliness that surely brings people back.

Itamar is the music lover between he and Sarit, so he sat down for this interview, which includes music from Israel, Egypt, Nigeria, the UK, and the US.

Colin Stringer and Jeremy Wolfe are two of the three chef/founders of Nonesuch in Oklahoma City, an intimate 22-seat restaurant that focuses on cooking with ingredients that come exclusively from their native Oklahoma.

In a landlocked state that rarely gets national recognition for it’s culinary ambition from any organization, Nonesuch was named best new restaurant in the country by Bon Appetit magazine back in August, ahead of 9 other restaurants from food capitals like Los Angeles, New York City, and Washington DC.

The inventiveness and inspiration for Nonesuch started when Stringer and Wolfe starting running a supper club back in 2014 called Nani in the 100-year-old Victorian house that Stringer also lived in near the heart of Oklahoma City.

Word grew around town about the semi-legal restaurant operation happening in Stringer’s home, and it was eventually shut down by the city for operating without a warrant. So when Nonesuch opened back in October 2017, it wasn’t a coincidence that the dining experience felt intimate, familial, and hospitable.

As Bon Appetit’s Editor in Cheif Andrew Knowlton wrote in his review of Nonesuch, the best analogy to describe the young chefs that run it are like brothers in a band - heads down - making incredibly beautiful music that they doubted anyone would ever hear.

A little over a year after their opening Nonesuch is booked solid for the foreseeable future, and the guys are poised and focused to take on the newfound attention with a unique sense of artistry and a killer playlist.