725: The Recipe For a Classic NYC Restaurant with Alex Raij

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0:59Alex Raij:But I always wanted to go to Rafa's because it was like the place where, you know, Ferran supposedly went on his days off. Oh, wow. And it didn't disappoint. You know, I think you do this work and it's very pleasurable, but it also just like there's a lot of anxiety and like stress in the work. And there was something just so relaxing about that meal and just like pure enjoyment. This is Taste. I'm your host, Matt Rodbard. Alex Reich is the chef and co-owner of New York City restaurants Chiquito, St. Julever Fishery, and Lavara Restaurants singular in their approach and wide-reaching in their fandom On this episode, Alex takes the resi questionnaire And we learn about her journey as a chef, what inspires her Spanish-inflected cooking And her big hopes and dreams for the industry she cares so deeply about I hope you enjoy this episode

1:55Alex Reich, welcome to This is Taste. How are you?

1:57Alex Raij:I'm good. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Well, this is really a long time coming. I'm a huge fan of your work. And are you ready to take the resi questionnaire? I am. I don't know what I'm setting myself up for, but I'm ready. I'm always ready. It's a little This is Your Life. It's one of my favorite interviews we do. And I think we're going to learn a lot. I think we're going to learn a lot. First one, favorite thing you've ever cooked? I guess, I mean, I'm going to say capoletti pasta. It just was a tradition when I was younger. And I just, I really like, I like that it was an invitation to like play with your food kind of.

2:39Alex Raij:And that I learned a lot of techniques through it, you know, like not overdevelop the flour, let it rest, braising meat, like all the things that go in it. and then that things take time. Yeah. You know. This is a real craftsmanship with capaletti. Yeah, and it was like something that like we did together. So my mom would like sort of get us all involved. I guess like, you know, if you grew up making tamales, you're all in on the tamales. We were making capaletti. Your favorite meal from childhood? I've been thinking about this one because there are so many, but I think, you know, if I'm being totally honest, It was outside at my grandmother's picnic table because she had this sort of weekend house.

3:26Alex Raij:And there were like animals there and fruit trees. There was just kind of one of everything. And then she had a grill, you know, like an Argentine grill. But she would do it all. Like it was very much her work, not like man's work. And we would just eat like every part of the cow. and then we'd just be like in the trees all day, like picking stuff and eating like off the trees. It was very idyllic. Set the scene. Where is it at? Where is the place? Yeah. Oh, it was like two hours outside of Rosario where my mom grew up. Yeah. And it was just like a rural town, you know, like one of those towns.

4:06Alex Raij:I go to a lot of those towns now because my husband's from Spain that has like, you know, the park with the fountain in the middle and the fountains dry. Yeah. And I still do it. I'm realizing now that my kids get this every summer now in Spain. But it's similar, but without animals. Yeah, this like rural cooking slow lifestyle. Yeah, and outdoors, like a long table outside. A piece of kitchen equipment you cannot live without. A blender, honestly. Like the Vitaprep, I use it a lot. It's just very versatile. And I make a lot of mayonnaise and cold sauces and things like that. So that's like definitely the most used.

4:53It's a big one. Your favorite cookbook. Oh, my gosh.

4:58Alex Raij:I mean, there are so many. But I think in terms of impact, it would probably either be Flavors of Aleppo. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I feel like that. I'm going to stick with that one. Because I feel like that book, it came into being at a time where I was already interested in that subject. But it still was like very disclosing of something that felt like still a little more mysterious to me. And it aligned with like a previous interest in like Georgian food and Melissa. And it just sort of like connected a lot of dots for me. When you were writing your own cookbooks, were you going back to that one?

5:40Alex Raij:I don't know if I was. I think that cookbooks just sort of like enter my body and then they just sort of like are like cataloged there. And then I sometimes go back to them and I see things I didn't see in the past. I mean, I read them like literature, so I don't. But I feel like it's like a book, you know, you can go back and reread it or whatever. So I don't know that I was trying to emulate. I was actually trying to do something really different because I was trying to disrupt like what the current, how Basque people think about themselves and also how Americans think about Basque cooking. And so we divided our book up very sort of unconventionally, but I think it worked for the cuisine.

6:19It was a great, it's a great book. Yeah, I remember loving it and really pouring into it and pouring over it. What is your drink of choice?

6:29Alex Raij:I like wine a lot. I like a good gin and tonic, but that's kind of a known fact at this point. And I really love rum agricole or like cane juice style rum, which is what we specialize in at St. Julie Bear. Yeah. And the agricole, it's not the Meyers rum that some listeners might know about, like the darkened commodity rums. There are some aged ones, but typically it's just pot still and it's free-run cane juice instead of molasses paste. And it just has all this really sort of microbial complexity. I didn't know a lot about it. I just really liked it. And then I started to understand it more. And it helps me understand mezgal more and other spirits that are cool.

7:24It's very underrated rum agricultural. Yeah, I like that. Do you have a favorite food movie?

7:31Alex Raij:I used to say Tan Popo, but I really loved The Taste of Things. I was surprised by how much because I'm not a water for chocolate person or a Babette's Feast person. But I loved this movie. It surprised me. It was great. We had the director in the studio when it came out. And I mean, just the food styling in that film was exceptional. yeah and it was just yeah it was so it was just beautiful I watched it by myself and it was long you know like I think and yeah it's like a movie about patience kind of yeah you have to have patience to kind of get through it in a way but I think like a lot of chefs have connected with that film I love that a big one your favorite pizza in New York I think my favorite pizza in New York just closed.

8:26Oh, no.

8:27Alex Raij:I found out. I loved Oma Grasa. Ah, yeah. Because I think it was just such an ambitious, like, it was more than pizza. Like, I loved the wine. I loved, like, all the stuff. But for Slice, I love, I say L 'Industrie, but it's probably L 'Industrie. Either one is correct in our book. Yeah, they don't seem to care. They have a line around the block and down the street. but I think it's a good slice. What restaurant person do you admire the most? I think it changes. You know, like you meet someone new, and I just know how hard this is, and it's hard for the people to do it well. It's hard for the people to do it less well.

9:12Alex Raij:But I do admire people who, like, are, like, idea people, but then they're just, like, persisting at it. I think of, like, people like Shelley Lindgren, California, I'm always just impressed by how excited she still seems about what she does. Yeah. And then my friend Kristen Essig, who moved to New York not that long ago from New Orleans, she's out of restaurants and doing, like, all the food programming at a farm that's a nonprofit, and she feeds, like, this entire community. and I don't know anybody who like sort of like lives their values as like profoundly as she does right now. I mean, just because she's not torn, she doesn't have children.

10:01Alex Raij:And so I think she's like not there, those kinds of compromises aren't there. She's just really trying to like live, construct a life that like has a lot of integrity. And a lot of meaning in it Yeah, and cooking for a farm is, those workers are essential to farm working. And when you cook for a farm, it's something very special about that. Absolutely. And then they've got young farmers there that they're training. And so it's like a very full circle kind of intimate. I don't know. It's amazing. Very cool. Yeah. This episode is brought to you by Masterclass. You know how on the show, we're always talking to people who've spent decades obsessing over one thing, whether it's modern Korean food, new expressions of the Jewish deli, or the perfect Vampiro taco in South LA.

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12:06Book now at Hilton.com. Hilton, for this day. What has been the greatest restaurant experience of your life thus far?

12:18Alex Raij:Oh my gosh. I mean, I think my favorite has been this place called Rafa's, which is in Rosa's where El Bui was. Yeah. But I was never able to go to Abouye, and my husband worked in that area. But I always wanted to go to Rafa's because it was like the place where, you know, Ferran supposedly went on his days off. Oh, wow. And it didn't disappoint. Like, we got there, and it was super small, and it was just my family, and it just felt very calm, and I felt just content. you know I think you do this work and it can be it's very pleasurable but it also just like there's a lot of anxiety and like stress in the work and there was something just so relaxing about that meal just like pure enjoyment set up the meal a little bit what are some of the dishes what is the style of service it looks like a cafe like it's all tiled in there there's nothing special but you walk in and there's like a case and And you kind of can pick your fish or see your fish.

13:26Alex Raij:And then it's just all planta and sort of steamed. Very simple food. All the wines are not just Spanish but from the area. But the product, it's just pure product. And it's so pristine. And then right outside, there's this wood sculpture. I don't know if you've ever been there. I haven't. But it's like carved out of wood and it's a woman. It kind of almost looks like Tahitian, like wood carving. I don't know who the artist was. But it's such a contrast to the place inside that's like so humble and not ornate at all and like tiled over. But this thing is on the outside of it and it's just so beautiful and handmade.

14:19it's just to greet you with this sculpture before you go into this cafe style, this casual place it's kind of a nice contrast

14:27Alex Raij:yeah and completely unexpected and unassuming at the same time it's just bizarre it's almost paradoxical yeah I've been to Cadacus I haven't been to Roses I'd love to go is it a cool area to visit these days? I mean Cadacus is much more I think kind of more extraordinarily beautiful just because of the breathtaking views and like, you know, Cap de Cray is like insane. And we were in that area as well. But no, it's just like, it could be any town. It just happens to be where this like sensational place. This place was. Yeah, I mean, it's a beautiful place. But it's like one of those like little teeny, like little cove type beaches.

15:11I mean, it's called Roses. I mean, the amazing name. I know. branding for a boogie to be at a city called roses. It kind of worked together in a cool way.

15:19Alex Raij:Yeah, and also I think it's just like the fact that it's so isolated and like specific. Like there was just like the specificity of the fish that we were having there. It wasn't like, oh we flew this in from Galicia or it was just what there was there but it was just so good. Mediterranean. What has been your greatest professional achievement? I would say freedom. yeah, I mean, I think all I wanted to do was like, I don't want to say like, free to, free to, you know, I think to create like spaces and dishes that like on my own terms, I think a lot of people don't have that privilege. But I think my hope is that, you know, by doing it, it's just kind of made space for other people to do the same, Almost kind of requiring New York restaurants to, like, be a little more creative.

16:16I like that. It's just, like, the freedom and not being driven by trend, I'm hearing a little bit.

16:24Alex Raij:Yeah, not being driven by trend and not being, not, like, sort of reinforcing, like, these, like, false paradigms that actually are exclusionary. I think I'm just a very entrepreneurial person. And I don't think I would be very successful like cooking someone else's food. No, you need to be the boss. Yeah. Yeah. And I also like need to teach other people to like, I don't know. I just like those relationships. What single dish best describes your personality? For a long time, our restaurants were like sort of like exclusively Spanish and chiquito in particular. Yeah. Bask and it's such a narrow concept.

17:08Alex Raij:And I think people perceive that our food is traditional. Yeah. And it really isn't except for that it is like all the sort of traditional dishes exist in there, but they're sort of turned on like on their heads or like they're not even like really so much deconstructed as sort of like sort of interpreted. I would say. And so the squid ribbons at Chiquito, even though there are like, there are so many of these dishes at Chiquito because Chiquito is just that restaurant that we're like, everything is a signature. But that dish in particular, I would say is a pretty good example of, it reflects like my aesthetic concerns, the way what I like to eat, like product, my obsession with squid, like everything.

18:00It really just wraps it all up in one dish. It's a delicious.

18:03Alex Raij:And it's pasta at the same time, which is weird because there's no pasta really in the Basque country. Yeah, yeah. And you're just like leaning into that pasta kind of background that you have from childhood. I like that a lot. If you could go back in time and dine at a restaurant, what would that restaurant be? Well, we talked about it a week. But that was more of a curiosity to me than like a destination. Yeah. I might have been thinking of something else, but now I'm having like so much nostalgia that I'm thinking about this little like Chinese American place in my hometown called Port Arthur Cafe.

18:43Alex Raij:And I used to just go there with my mom, only my mom, at lunch, usually when I was playing hooky. And she would like let me order shrimp and stuff, which my dad was always like, don't order the shrimp. It's frozen. And of course. Yeah, of course. In landlocked Minnesota, but, you know, so often it is frozen anyways. Yeah. I don't know what he was talking about. Yeah. I love it. Was this one? It felt illicit. Was this, as a kid, was this, like, this restaurant, did it show you cuisine from outside of where you grew up? An example of it? Yeah, and it was a family-run restaurant. And they would usually be at this larger table.

19:19Alex Raij:I think they were open all night, but we would go at lunch. Yeah. And there was a larger table where the family would sit and they would be like, you know, picking the ends off of the bean sprouts or like, you know, just sort of like the way that we would sit at my grandma's and like, you know, like do what we were doing. The prep table in the middle of the dining room. Yeah. It was very like you could see all the care and the details. And I just I wanted to be part of that. What is your wish for the restaurant industry? That it can thrive in urban places, honestly. Yeah. I worry that all the good restaurants will move to the Provence.

20:14Alex Raij:just because I think it's, you know, the cities have made it quite difficult to thrive in urban environments. So I just, I mean, I love going to a rural restaurant, but I also feel like we need these gathering places. In cities, absolutely, and for neighborhoods too. Especially in like New York where you like, you know, live in apartments and, you know, we're a little more in some ways isolated. You know, we need those public spaces. What do you do well? So many things, but I'm so preoccupied with what I don't do well. I think I'm a really good sauce maker and menu making. Writing menus, progressions, organization, selling things off the page.

21:04Alex Raij:Yeah, exactly. And also just having something be coherent and cohesive. Yeah. Is there a restaurant right now in your group that you feel is really at its most cohesive moment? Well, we reopened Chiquito after the pandemic. We also got a chance to renovate it because we didn't really have any clientele there. So we opened it last because we couldn't reopen three restaurants at once. And so it was very refreshing to have the self-edit on the food and then have the food and the ambience be sort of revised at the same time. That was really exciting and refreshing. And so Chiquito definitely is in that place.

21:51Alex Raij:and then St. Julie Bear is such a just a very free concept it's like a very imaginary place that I go it's a restaurant about travel but it's really about like where you go when you can't travel and so it's very fusion-y but it's also like very playful and it's where I get to all the things that are like sort of subtext-y at La Barra where at Chiquito they get to be like sort of the pretext there. Articulate way to talk about your restaurant. Subtext and pretext is cool. I love that. I've never thought of restaurants that way, but it makes perfect sense to me. What's it like in Cobble Hill, like having these restaurants in a neighborhood that has experienced so much change?

22:40I mean, I lived in Carroll Gardens since the early 2000s. I moved out about four years ago, and I just saw so much change. And I feel like your restaurants really were anchors in a very transient, changing neighborhood.

22:55Alex Raij:I'm sure that you're right. I am a Lower East Sider. Yeah. I always joke. I work there. I don't live there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's kind of telling in a way, like, that we're, like, sort of naive outsiders and we come here and, like, sort of maybe, I mean, New York, like, intentionally disrupt New York. Yeah. But definitely perhaps a little naive of us to go to that street in Brooklyn. I mean, people told us that the space was cursed that LaVarra was in. And I remember reading all the Yelp reviews of the place that was there before. What was it called again? Because I loved it. It was called Brooklyn with a Dutch.

23:34With the Dutch spelling. Yeah. But before that, it was another space that I loved.