This week, Host Chris Jacobs continues The Shift List's feature on music and restaurants in Austin, Texas with Mark Buley, Chef and Partner at Odd Duck and Sour Duck Market. In 2009, Bryce Gilmore opened a food truck, the Odd Duck Farm to Trailer, with his brother in South Austin. The trailer featured dishes utilizing fresh and locally-sourced ingredients, which was still something of a novel idea at the time, and it became the cornerstone philosophy behind all of their endeavors moving forward, including the eventual brick and mortar version of Odd Duck and the more casual Sour Duck Market. Mark Buley, originally from a small town in Wisconsin, journeyed to Austin in 2012 to partner with Gilmore in anticipation of Odd Duck opening as a brick-and-mortar restaurant. The pair have been working together ever since, and in the last decade, the Odd Duck collective has become a staple of the Austin food scene — fun and interesting, not too serious, and done well. Perhaps more than any of the restaurants recently featured on The Shift List, Sour Duck Market is intentionally communal. It’s a bakery, cafe, coffee shop, outdoor patio, and multi-service kind of place that’s designed for customers to stay a while. Sour Duck and Odd Duck are both open for curbside pickup as things in Austin still move to fully open up during the coronavirus pandemic; listening to this conversation is a reminder of how much we’ve temporarily lost and have been taking for granted, but it also serves as a hopeful promise of what we’ll get back when the time is right. In the meantime, if you want to bring the Sour Duck ethos into your own home, order a copy of The Odd Duck Almanac, a recently-released, annual cookbook/magazine-style publication that’s as true of a representation of the restaurants as you can get while we wait for everything to reopen.

This week, our first in a series of shows from Austin, Texas, starting off with Fermín Núñez, executive chef of East Austin’s Mexican-inspired restaurant Suerte and Eater Austin’s 2018 chef of the year.  As you’ll soon discover, Chef Fermín is a man with a mission: To create the perfect tortilla, every single day. As he recently told Eater, “It takes a village to make tortillas every night, and the foundation of Mexican food is masa.” The process starts with one of the restaurant’s staffers bringing a pot of water to a simmer, adding the necessary ingredients including the masa, cooking it to a certain level of doneness, and then letting it sit overnight. Another employee comes in the next morning to rinse the masa, the source of the day’s tortillas. It’s this attention to detail that has made Suerte one of the most beloved new restaurants in Austin, and Chef Fermín’s love of music is woven into each part of the day, from the making of the masa, to prepping his mise en place, to the entire staff stopping at 4pm to clap to a cover of "Achy Breaky Heart" in Spanish and prepare for the night of service ahead.  Speaking of service, Suerte closed for a few weeks back in early March to regroup and recalibrate as the city of Austin sheltered in place because of the new coronavirus. In mid-March they reemerged with the Suerte Taqueria, providing highlights from Suerte’s menu for takeout -- a highlight being the Suadero Taco Meal kit for families to enjoy at home. The kit includes all the ingredients needed to prepare Chef Fermín’s signature dish at home, including confit brisket, avocado crudo, black magic oil, signature tortillas, and sides. In addition to cooking instructions, they rounded out the experience with a video of Chef Fermín cooking along in his own kitchen, and a link to his favorite playlist in an attempt to bring the full Suerte experience into your kitchen.  The kits are still available, so if you live in the Austin area and need some high quality sustenance, head over to Suertetx.com.

This week, The Shift List closes out its miniseries focusing on the food of Montreal with chef, restauranteur, and cookbook author Dyan Solomon.  If you’re from Montreal, Dyan Solomon needs no introduction. She’s the co-owner of multiple restaurants there, including Foxy, one of the city’s essential fine dining establishments. Back in November 2019 she released the Olive & Gourmando cookbook, a collection of 150 recipes from the namesake cafe that put Solomon on Montreal’s culinary map when it opened back in 1999.  Host Chris Jacobs checked in with Chef Dyan via email the other week to see how her restaurants have been affected by the stay-at-home orders in Canada. She replied with cautious optimism, saying that while all of her restaurants are are closed until further notice, they are surviving and trying to remain positive about the future.   If you’ve listened to the last two episodes of The Shift List with Chef John Winter Russell of Restaurant Candide, you'll know that he highlighted the work that's being done to help support the Montreal Restaurant Workers Relief Fund, an organization set up to provide emergency relief to restaurant employees who are facing economic hardship due to COVID-19. Coincidentally, the fund was set up by Kaitlin Doucette, the Sommelier at Solomon’s fine dining restaurant Foxy, and donations are still being accepted at mtlrestorelieffund.org.

This week on the show, part two of our conversation with John Winter Russell, chef and founder of Restaurant Candide in Montreal. This episode was recorded a few months back, before the world was thrown into chaos, and it serves as a reminder of how integral chefs and independent business owners are in shaping the culture of our cities. Restaurant Candide is named after 18th century writer/philosopher Voltaire’s book of the same name, inspired particularly by the last line of the book: “Let us cultivate our garden." This line is the guiding force to Russell’s food, as he works closely with producers local to Montreal and creates four-course meals inspired by those ingredients, crafting dishes that are produce forward, but not exclusively vegetarian. The experience of eating at Restaurant Candide is unique and only something that can be experienced in Montreal. From the restaurant’s location, set in an old gothic church basement, to the warm interior that utilizes refurbished pews, and exposed brick along the walls that look into the kitchen. The restaurant is a defining part of the fabric of Montreal’s restaurant scene, not only in 2020, but overall. Thankfully, Russell feels that he and his staff will weather COVID-19 and should be able to resume business at the restaurant once restrictions are lifted, and in the meantime he's given back to restaurant workers affected by job losses in Canada by offering beer deliveries every Friday. If you live in Montreal and are craving some craft beer delivered to your house, send an email at info@restaurantcandide.com. All proceeds will go to the Montreal Restaurant Workers Crisis Relief Fund.

This week, a conversation in quarantine with John Winter Russell, Chef and Founder of Restaurant Candide in Montreal. Host Chris Jacobs first had the chance to speak with John at Candide before everything shut down, and decided to reconnect with him recently on FaceTime to see how he is facing the challenges of being an independent chef and restaurant owner in the time of Covid 19. They get a chance to talk about some of the music he’s listening to in quarantine and the food he’s making at home, but John also talks about some of the ways he’s been able to give back to the restaurant workers affected by job losses in Canada, as well as a recent opportunity to create menus for the food banks of Montreal. If you live in Montreal and need some craft beer delivered to your house, send an email at info@restaurantcandide.com. All proceeds will go to the Montreal Restaurant Workers Crisis Relief Fund. We’ll be airing our non-quarantine episode from Candide in Montreal on April 17.

This week, a replay of our conversation with Chef Edward Lee, recorded back in 2018. Chef Lee is helping to lead the way in bringing restaurant workers relief with his Restaurant Workers Relief Program through The Lee Initiative. Due to the closure of restaurant and worker across America, thousands of restaurant workers have an urgent need for assistance, and they need our help now more than ever. In partnership with @makersmark, Chef Lee is transforming restaurants across the country into relief centers for any restaurant worker who has been laid off or has had a significant reduction in hours and/or pay. The Lee Initiative, in conjunction with local chefs in every majorly affected community across the country, is offering help for those in need of food and supplies, and each night, they’re packing hundreds of to-go meals that people can come to pick up and take home. Restauranterus like Nancy Silverton in Los Angeles, Jose Salazar in Cininnati, and Lee’s Succotash team in D.C and 610 Magnolia team in Louisville, along with many others across the country are doing so much good right now, so we at BGS want to do what we can to spread the word and shine a spotlight on this important relief work. For more information and to donate, visit leeinitiative.org, and in the meantime, while we’re all trapped indoors, continue to support your local community by ordering takeout and pickup.

Justin Cucci sits down with The Shift List. A mainstay of the Denver food scene with an ever-growing list of both homegrown and high concept restaurants, including Root Down, Linger, Ophelia’s, El Five, and more. A New York city native, Justin grew up revering the chefs and culture at the Waverly Inn - a west village dining institution that was owned and operated by his grandparents as a kid. About the same time, Justin started playing in bands, and continues to do so to this day. He opened Root Down, his first restaurant in Denver, over a decade ago, transforming the building from a gas station to a neighborhood restaurant with a cult following that serves globally-influenced seasonal cuisine, with a focus on organic, natural and locally-sourced ingredients. Root Down features two onsite gardens, which not only provides seasonal vegetables for the restaurant, but for it’s sister restaurants, Linger and Ophelia’s. There’s even a Root Down at Denver International Airport, one of the main reasons to book a long layover in the city. Justin has infused music into the culture and business of all of his restaurants - each one of their business entities is named after a Steely Dan song, for example, and you’ll find out what each of them are soon. There is plenty of Steely Dan in this episode, so yacht rockers rejoice.

Chef Duncan Holmes and Allison Anderson have incorporated music and a guest’s entire experience at Beckon/Call in a way that is completely holistic and natural. Perhaps it’s becuase it’s baked into Allison’s title - as the Director Of Experience, she takes the role of what would normally be considered General Manager and elevates it to a master class in hospitality. Consider the music at Beckon - the evening’s answer to their popular all-day dining option over at Call. Beckon is a ticketed chef’s table dining experience with ever-changing, seasonal menus. It seats 34 people in a U-shape with Chef Duncan and his team serving you from the center of the intimate dining room, and the entire meal takes about two and half hours. Becuase the meal happens in phases, each evening’s soundtrack is a hand-picked selection of albums played in their entirety, allowing the staff at Beckon to play through about three records of their choosing over the course of a meal. In the age of streaming music and playlists, the decision to play through records at Beckon is an extention of the meal itself, forcing you to slow down and pay closer attention to each of your senses throughout the experience. Call was named one of Bon Appetit’s Hot Ten Best New Restaurants of 2018. Bon Appetit described it as an all-day hang where you may arrive at 10am, but end up staying until 2pm with all of the spritzes and endless slection of unique items to snack on, like their smoked salmon tartine, roasted carrot salad with peas, and Scandinavian-inspired bites. Call is now on a brief hiatus as Duncan, Allison, and the team undergo some renovations, but Beckon is now a year in and has topped multiple must eat lists in Denver and beyond.

This week on the Shift List, Jonathan Whitener — chef and co-owner of Here’s Looking At You in Los Angeles’s Koreatown. Similar to his cooking, Jonathan’s musical tastes are a reflection of his family and surrounding environment. Outlaw country from his father, ’80s metal from his brothers, and a love for Glenn Danzig that continues to this day. Since it opened in 2016, Here’s Looking at You has appeared on almost every ‘best of’ restaurant list around LA — and that’s due to a number of factors: Co-owner Lien Ta’s laser focus on service and comforting hospitality; top-notch tiki-adjacent bar service; the evolving playlists blending old school hip-hop and post-punk; but it’s anchored by Whitener’s anything goes approach to cooking. Whitener grew up in Huntington Beach, CA the son of a Mexican mother and a German father. Growing up near Orange County’s thriving Vietnamese and Japanese communities, he pulls all of these influences into his “SoCal tapas-style” menu with standout dishes like the shishito peppers accompanied with an tonnato sauce — the Italian answer to hummus — sprinkled with Huamei, a preserved Chinese plum. Or for another example, frogs legs seasoned like Nashville hot chicken with a salsa negra, scallion, and lime. Whitener cut his teeth for three years as the chef de cuisine for Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo’s restaurant Animal in Los Angeles before opening Here’s Looking At You with Lien Ta, who he met while she was serving as front-of-house manager at Animal.

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.