Tag: The Shift List

The Shift List – Martin Cate (Smuggler’s Cove) – San Francisco

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

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.

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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 he 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 its salt is the music. As he writes in his award-winning 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. As Martin will explain in this episode, these sounds were actually countercultural to the greatest generation that made Tiki explode in its 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, owner), Portland (Hale Pele, co-owner), San Diego (False Idol, co-owner), or Chicago (Lost Lake, partner).

Martin’s Shift List 
Ixtahuele – “Colors of Hawaii”
John Kameaaloha Almeida – “Lei Hinahina”
Les Baxter – “Quiet Village”
Martin Denny – “Quiet Village”
Toots & The Maytals – “Sweet and Dandy”
Harry Belafonte – “Matilda”
João Gilberto – “‘S Wonderful”
The Ventures – “Diamonds”
Sweet Hollywaiians – “Hula Girl”
The Tikiyaki Orchestra – “Theme For Jetsetters”
The Evil Genius Orchestra – “The Imperial March”
Johnny Aloha – “Gangsta’s Paradise”
Glenn Frey – “Smuggler’s Blues”
The Crazed Mugs – “Smuggler’s Cove”

The Shift List – Honey & Co Revisited

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

This week, we revisit one of our favorite conversations from Season 1 of the Shift List, Mr. Itamar Srulovich from Honey & Co over in London.

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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. Feel free to head on over to Amazon now if you’d like to peak inside the front cover and maybe even purchase yourself a copy…

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.

Theme Song: Jamie Drake – “Wonder”

BGS Podcast ‘The Shift List’ Joins Osiris Network

Posted on by Editor

The Bluegrass Situation is proud to announce that season 2 of The Shift List is now hosted on the Osiris podcast network.

The Shift List goes inside the kitchens of leading chefs to find out what kind of music fuels their shifts in the kitchen, influences their food and touches their lives. Partnering with BGS, the leading online source for roots culture, The Shift List offers a unique perspective on music through the eyes of the culinary world’s driving forces.

Host Chris Jacobs has talked to innovative chefs from around the world about the music that plays in their kitchens during a shift, including Copenhagen’s Rosio Sanchez (NOMA, Netflix’s Ugly Delicious), Kentucky’s Edward Lee (610 Magnolia, Top Chef), and Oklahoma City’s Colin Stiringer and Jeremy Wolfe (Nonesuch, Bon Appetit’s #1 Best New Restaurant 2018).

“The Shift List is a unique look into music through the culinary world, providing an intimate and authentic view of music from some of the world’s leading chefs,” said RJ Bee, CEO of Osiris. “The launch of The Shift List, in partnership with BGS, represents our expansion into more musical and cultural genres. Look for much more roots music and culture content from BGS and Osiris.”

Season 2 will include innovative chefs sharing the music they love from places like Hawaii, San Francisco, Austin, Montreal and more. Catch up on every episode of Season 1.

Subscribe to The Shift List wherever you get your podcasts — Apple Music, Spotify, and Stitcher.

The Shift List – Phil Bracey (P. Franco, Bright) – London

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

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 last May, Phil was instrumental in P. Franco being named Restaurant of the Year by Eater London in 2017.

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

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

Music is paramount to the customer experience at both P. Franco and Bright, and like a good DJ, Bracey is constantly dialing in the playlists during each night’s service, doing his best to follow the flow of the evening.

Theme Song: Jamie Drake – “Wonder”

The Shift List – Ramael Scully (Scully, Ottolenghi) – London

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

A veteran of chef Yotam Ottolenghi’s venerable Ottolenghi and Nopi restaurants, Ramael Scully opened his first restaurant, Scully, back in March 2018 with the backing and support of Ottolenghi himself.

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Given that Ramael Scully was born in Malaysia to a mother of Chinese and Indian descent and an Irish-Balinese-Malay father, his palate was destined to be informed by mixed influences. Add a move to Australia as a young child, where he was ultimately raised in a multi-ethnic neighborhood, and you start to get a sense of how he 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 bergamot labneh. It’s neither Middle Eastern nor Colombian — it’s just Scully’s.

Theme Song: Jamie Drake – “Wonder”

The Shift List – Honey & Co, London

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

Itamar Srulovich is an Israeli-born chef who co-founded Honey & Co with his wife, Sarit Packer, back in 2012. 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.

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A cozy spot located in London’s once sleepy Fitzrovia neigborhood that serves homey Middle Eastern fare 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 bestselling 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.

Theme Song: Jamie Drake – “Wonder”

The Shift List – Nonesuch, Oklahoma City

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

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.

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In a landlocked state that rarely gets national recognition for its culinary ambition from any organization, Nonesuch was named Best New Restaurant in the country by Bon Appetit back in August, ahead of nine other concepts from food capitals like Los Angeles, New York City, and Washington D.C.

The inventiveness and inspiration for Nonesuch were set in motion when Stringer and Wolfe started 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 in Stringer’s home, and it was eventually shut down by the city for operating without a license. 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 Chief Andrew Knowlton wrote in his review of Nonesuch, the best analogy to describe the young chefs that run it are like “three guys in a band, heads down, making incredibly beautiful music together — that they doubt 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.

The Shift List – Jose Salazar – Cincinnati (Salazar, Mitas)

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

Jose Salazar is a chef and restaurateur based in Cincinnati, Ohio. Originally from Queens, New York, he got his start in restaurants around New York City, most notably working with Chef Thomas Keller for a four-year stint at Per Se and as the Executive Sous-Chef at Bouchon Bakery when it first opened its doors in 2006.

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In 2008, Salazar and his wife Anne moved to Cincinnati after receiving an irresistible offer to be the Executive Chef of The historical Cincinnatian Hotel and Palace restaurant, and in December of 2013, they opened Salazar together in Cincinnati’s Over the Rhine neighborhood.

In August 2015, Jose and Ann opened Mita’s, their second restaurant together, which has earned Jose nominations for best chef in the Great Lakes from the James Beard foundation in 2016 and 2017.

We had a chance to talk to Salazar in the back corner of a press tent during a rainy Saturday morning in Louisville, Kentucky, at this year’s Bourbon and Beyond festival back in September.

salazarcincinnati.com

The Shift List – Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack – Nashville

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

André Prince Jeffries is the owner and matriarch of Prince’s Hot Chicken in Nashville, Tennessee, the original and gold standard for Nashville hot chicken.

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Opened in 1945 by Thornton Prince, André inherited the restaurant and original hot chicken recipe in 1980, and has seen it grow into a culinary trend that’s caught on like wildfire in the past few years throughout the US.

Growing up in the 1940s and ’50s, young André witnessed the origins of her great uncle Thornton’s restaurant, and it turns out that music has been an important part of their success from day one. Just wait until you hear about the typical late night guests that would stop by back in the day.

Theme Song – “Wonder” by Jamie Drake

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The Shift List – Philip Krajeck (Rolf & Daughters, Folk) – Nashville

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

Philip Krajeck is the chef and owner of Rolf & Daughters in Nashville’s Germantown neighborhood. Distinguished in music city for bringing global cooking techniques to Tennessee’s Southern ingredients, he opened Rolf & Daughters in 2012 and it’s still full every night.

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His follow up, Folk, opened a few months ago in the Spring, and he describes the menu as loosely Italian-influenced food that he’d essentially like to eat himself on any given day.

Krajeck’s musical influences run far and wide, in no small part due to the fact that he moved to Belgium with his family at the age of 10 and soaked up the vast array of genres he was exposed to, most notably by listening to Engligh DJ Giles Peterson and learning about Dance Music, Hip Hop, Spiritual Jazz, Funk, Soul, World Music and everything in between, tapping him into an entirely new universe of artists that he otherwise may have never have discovered.

He contributes this passionate and eclectic spirit to the vibe at Folk, creating a seamless and relaxed dining experience that’s comforting but constantly engaging.

rolfanddaughters.com
goodasfolk.com

Theme Song – “Wonder” by Jamie Drake