This decision each year gets harder and harder. There was not one bad person in the bunch so it made this years decision even harder. I look forward to welcoming this years 2 new stages in my Kitchen. Thank you all for applying I wish everyone all the best, I wish I could accept more there is just not enough room.

The 2 stages are:

Elias Seda from Washington D.C  The Mini Bar

Andrew Ticer from Memphis, TN  Hogs & Hominy

Both of there essays are below with there names at the top of each.

Elias Seda’s essay below:

When I was growing up all I wanted was to make people happy through the power of food.

There was nothing more satisfying than watching people’s delight in sampling one of my culinary creations.

Family gatherings were always a treat because I was able to watch all these great chefs work their magic in the kitchen. My attraction to cooking was due to the respect these family cooks earned, the knowledge they had acquired and the simplicity of their food. I was intrigued by the power they wielded over people through their cooking and it inspired me to pursue my culinary career with hopes that I could make people just as happy through my cooking.

After graduating from high school I took a year off from my studies because I had no idea what to do with my life. With that free time I reflected back on my time cooking with family and how I was at my happiest when I was working in the kitchen with them. So I decided to get a kitchen job, but I had no experience as a cook so I started at the bottom as a dishwasher. It didn’t matter that I was just washing dishes because I knew that as long as I found my way into a kitchen there would be an opportunity to learn something about food and cooking. The next step to continue to feed my passion for cooking was culinary school. It provided me with some of the beginning tools in becoming the best chef I could possibly be. Around this time I was introduced to my future chef and friend Omar Rodriguez. He provided me an opportunity to intern at Oyamel, a Jose Andres restaurant, in Washington, DC. I instantly fell in love with Oyamel and I wanted to learn everything about Mexican cuisine. My goal as an intern was to master what it took to be a great line cook and hopefully land myself a full time job at Oyamel. After three months I landed myself a full time job and within a year I had achieved my goal of learning all the stations on the line. Even with my success at Oyamel I still yearned to learn more about cooking and wanted to continue to master my craft.

So the following year I tried out for one of the coveted cook positions at Minibar. My hard work paid off and I was offered the opportunity be a part of Minibar’s culinary magic. The chefs at Minibar were doing things with food that I never thought possible. Not only did they teach me new techniques but they helped me develop my palate and provided me with a new perspective of what it meant to be a chef. Despite everything I’ve learned within the past two & half years I still keep things in perspective and I know I’m nowhere close to being the chef I want to be. I still consider myself a student of the culinary arts and this is why I would love the opportunity to be a part of the Head to Tail dinner.

My family is filled with many great chefs such as my mother, grandmother and tio Dave.

Andy Ticer’s essay is below:

Rooter to the tooter

After hearing that this year is the tenth anniversary of Incanto’s head to tail dinner, I was impressed.  It’s hard to believe that it started that long ago. My business partner Michael Hudman and I have followed Chris Cosentino since our first dining experience at Incanto six years ago.  It was the first dinner we had state side that recalled to our memories our time in Italy, and ever since it has had a lasting impact on our lives. The dinner has even inspired our own version of a head to tail dinner, our Swine and Wine dinner here in Memphis, in it’s fifth year this February.  Looking back at how our restaurant has evolved, it’s amazing the impact that Chris has had on us, and the domino effect it has had on our community.  Its awe inspiring that an idea from someone in San Francisco could affect our city across the country.

The relationships born with our farmers out of whole animal utilization and from our vegetable farmers in the surrounding south have helped to shape our restaurant and Michael and I as cooks.  Every week our farmers deliver a whole pig, three whole lamb, and a forequarter of beef to our restaurants’ back door. They all come from a proper farm not two hours from our restaurant. If you stop and do the math over the past five years, it’s fucking awesome to know that we have done these things when it’s not convenient, more expensive, but it’s the right way to operate a restaurant. We stay true to our roots and where the food comes from. We know what the animals eat, the farmers, and how the farms are managed. We use Newman Farm heritage Berkshire Pork and Dorper Lamb, Claybrooks Farm Beef, vegetables from Woodson Ridge, Hanna Organics, and Delta Sol. We pride ourselves on using locally farmed products, utilized wholly with little waste.

Breaking down the animals has become just as much a meditation to us as making fresh pasta.  We work with these animals, creating new and inventive ways to utilize it in its entirety, to respect the life that lies on our butcher block. Not only do we support our local farmers, but we also open the eyes of our customers. When we first put a pig cheek, a trotter, or a pastrami pig tongue on our menus, people wouldn’t dare order it. Now they demand it.  Through Chris’s example, not only are we better cooks, but our city has been educated, our farmers have been supported and we’ve contributed to the growing food movement in Memphis.

Incanto and Chris have had a lasting presence that inspire us to push ourselves, become more creative, and they motivate us to do our best work. One way that Michael and I believe that we can continue to grow as cooks and chefs is to constantly learn. We will never know everything there is to know in this business. It’s part of why I love to cook as much as I do.  There is always someone working harder, and learning more that pushes us to continue to try and be the best we can. It’s so important to us that our cooks know and respect continuing their own education in the kitchen, and we try to lead by example. I would love the opportunity to cook the tenth anniversary dinner. It doesn’t matter if you have ten restaurants or zero, there is always room to learn and to keep yourself grounded and humble, and I believe that I could learn new and better ways to think about full animal utilization from someone for whom I have a great amount of respect.

It would be my extreme pleasure to participate in the tenth annual dinner. I know that what I would learn would further my abilities as a cook and as a contributor to the support of our farming community. Thank you for considering my essay.

Sincerely,

Andrew N. Ticer
Hog & Hominy

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There is an endless number of words I can use to describe my week at what might very well be the most interesting restaurant in the country, Incanto.  I hope to use a few of them to both reflect on my time at the restaurant, as well as give all future applicants a better idea of what the experience may entail if they are fortunate enough to be selected.  Before I begin though I would like to say thank you to Chef Chris, Chef Manny, and the entire Incanto crew for inviting me into your world for a few short days, and that I am incredibly grateful for both the experience and our time together.  You were all unbelievably gracious hosts as well as phenomenal cooks and I consider it a privilege to have been a part of the team even if only for a week.  Thank you for that.  Now onto the experience.

First off I must say the stage was intense.  I’m not going to lie and say that there weren’t points where I did not feel as though I was in over my head.  Flying across the country to an unfamiliar city, to work in an unfamiliar kitchen, doing unfamiliar food was certainly more difficult than I had imagined it would be.  It is a tremendous amount of pressure entering a kitchen and representing not only yourself, but all of the people you have worked for over the years.  My first two days I could barely hold my knife straight.  It took me until service the first night of the dinner before I was able to finally get out of my head and just cook.  This was all exacerbated by the fact Incanto is a vigorous place to work.  There are no throw away items on the menu at Incanto.  All of the food is executed at a tremendously high level and as Chef wrote on his blog to describe the experience: “there is a shit ton of detailed work to be done.”  This was certainly the case.  I may have flown 6 hours from New York to northern California, but this was in no way a vacation.  There were sinks of tripe to be cleaned, thousands of fava beans to be shelled, and gallons of consommé to be clarified.  My fellow stage Italo and I were there 15 hours a day, and there was constantly something to be done.  This is by no means a complaint, but rather the reality.

For those future applicants, if you are reading this and are concerned about taking your vacation days and spending crazy amounts of money to fly out to California to work harder than you probably do at your normal job don’t be.  As a restaurant, Incanto is an inspirational place to work even if only for a few days.  I don’t know if there are any other restaurants in the world where food is looked at and viewed the way it is there.  Yes the nose to tail cooking is the main draw but there are so many great things going on in the Incanto kitchen.  The restaurant makes almost everything imaginable in house.  There are the basics like preserves and jams and pickles, but there is so much more.  They dehydrate and grind their own spices and chiles.  Make their own bread.  Their own garum.  Salt and cure egg yolks.  I swear to god there was a fish drying from the ceiling.  Also everything at the restaurant gets used.  Almost nothing is thrown out.  Herb stems go into confit oil. Confit oil gets used to cook with.  Incanto is a model for sustainability.  Every ingredient is treated with the utmost respect from the most expensive protein down to a single stem of mint.  Nearly every product there offers one hundred percent yield.   It is through these practices that even with using almost exclusively sustainable and organic products the restaurant is able to operate with a ridiculously low food cost.  It is amazing to witness and something all cooks and chefs should not only learn how to do, but strive every day to do better.

Now speaking of learning.  This brings me to what I feel is the word that best describes my stage at Incanto – educational.  There is so much to learn at this restaurant, and everyone there is more than willing to teach.  From cooking spleen, to making pasta out of pig skin, dehydrating and puffing beef tendons, and even making panna cotta out of foie gras you will learn a lot.  I know I certainly did.  The chefs at Incanto make it a point that when you work there you are actively learning.  Education often seems like the number one priority.  This extends even beyond food and cooking.  It may mean taking ten minutes out of the busiest day to watch a video about a Japanese man making coffee for tsunami survivors, or taking twenty minutes out of the day to go down the street to browse the cookbook Mecca that is Omnivore Books.  It was a constant theme running through the restaurant that even though we were busy and there was work to be done, we should always be learning something.  Even our day off included lunch with Harold McGee and a trip to the market to check out the different products you won’t find just anywhere.

Perhaps the most important thing I took away from my stage at Incanto though was the memories of a once in a lifetime experience, and if you are reading this still wondering what to expect if you are selected for the stage I offer you this information.  You will have the opportunity to work side by side with an unbelievably brilliant and knowledgeable chef, and a team of cooks as talented as you are likely to encounter anywhere in the country.  You will make extraordinary friends.  You will cook great food and also eat exceptionally well.  And you will work.  Hard.  And when it is over you will want to do it again and again.  Once again I’m incredibly thankful for this experience, and I encourage anyone who is a serious cook to apply.  If you are reading this and have already been accepted I offer you my congratulations and this parting advice.  Work hard.  Work clean.  Cook with confidence.  Have fun.  And mostly importantly even if you’ve done something a million times before,  always read your labels and double/triple check your math.

Thank you Incanto crew and good luck to all applicants.  I look forward to the opportunity to work with you in the future.

Sincerely,
Adam R. Wile
Brooklyn, New York

The post Adams head to tail 2012 experience appeared first on Offalgood.

A few days into my stage Manny asked me if I was having fun, and I answered him in the only way I could truly sum up how I was feeling. I said “This restaurant is like Disneyland for cooks!” It is truly a cooks dream. A beautiful kitchen, a friendly crew, and all of the fun products a cook could ever ask for. The produce is amazing, the offal beyond fresh, and working never felt like work. Chris told me, “We’re all just here to have fun.” I have honestly never had more fun in a kitchen while working so hard. The hours start early and end late, but by the end of the week it all seemed too have gone by too quickly. And what you take with you at the end cannot be learned in any book.

Anyone who considers themselves a chef, or even a cook, needs to experience Incanto first hand. They epitomize what it is to truly cook, to let a product be and not to manipulate it. Just coax it along and help it shine. And any cooks who are thinking about applying for next year’s dinner, DO IT! To not send them your essay would be doing yourself a great injustice.

My time at Incanto was second to none. I have never learned so much in such a short time. And not just recipes and techniques but what it truly is to be a cook. We as cooks have a job, which is prepare food. Pretty obvious there. But what most seem to forget about is that we have a duty to honor the products we are using. Take nothing for granted. I have never seen a kitchen that respects food as much as Incanto. And with zero pretention may I add. When you have pulled mint from the ground essentially you have killed it just as much as when you knock a hog on the head. Now you owe it to that piece of mint and that hog that they were not killed in vain, and that none of it will go to waste. And Incanto was an amazing example of this philosophy.

I honestly had the time of my life and I can’t begin to thank Chef and the rest of the crew enough for the amazing opportunity to work and learn alongside them. I look forward to next year’s head to tail and my next trip to Incanto.

Thank you

-Italo

The post Italo’s head to tail 2012 experience appeared first on Offalgood.

I first fell in love with offal at thirteen. I come from a very large and very old world Sicilian family. And every year, for generations now, all of the men in the family get together for what they call “tripe-fest.” It’s been a family tradition since my grandfather was a child, and when they moved to America they’ve kept the tradition alive. All of us meet at one of the uncles’ houses and everyone brings something. Whether it is a case of wine, a box of cigars, or some homemade lemoncello, everyone contributes. It’s a day for drinking and eating and catching up with family u may only see once a year.

And the meal is an all offal feast. Three kinds of tripe, headcheese, grilled beef heart and pork liver skewers, chicken and duck liver mousse, brains, sweetbreads, kidneys wrapped in caul fat, all sorts of sausages and a few simple salads. But the day I fell in love with offal it wasn’t my uncles tripe, which is still the best I’ve been able to find anywhere, but it was a simply braised pigs trotter that stopped me dead in my tracks. It was nothing more than a foot simmered in a basic tomato sauce, but this was it! There was practically no meat to be found anywhere on that foot and I didn’t miss it at all. The skin was so tender, which held in all of the delicious gelatin and cartilage and all the lovely bits that are hidden in a trotter. All the old timers thought it was great. The first year I had been invited and I’m sitting behind a pile of picked over bones. I must have had half a dozen or so.

I had the good fortune to be able to work in three amazing Michelin starred restaurants while living in New York. Now that I have moved out of the city I luckily found a position under a young chef as excited about food as I. The highlight of my week is when we get our pork delivery from Keegan Filion Farm. But the best part is not only the beautiful grass fed pork, beef, and poultry, but each week they bring us a box of mixed offal. They give it to us for free because none of their other clients want anything to do with them.

Each week it’s something different. Sometimes it’s a couple of pig heads, liver and tails. Other times it’s a case of 40 pigs feet and beef hearts. But each week we get to take these products and work them into specials for our restaurant or our Italian restaurant next door. Testa, guanciale, smoked hearts, liver sausage, all sorts of things that test us on a daily basis. And every now and then when I serve a one of my special I cant help but think about that simply braised trotter on a paper plate sitting on a picnic table all those years ago.

AdamR. Wile from Brooklyn, NY

Chef,

Although I am sure you will be reviewing a great deal of applications I am submitting this essay to make the case why I believe I should be chosen as one of the stages for this year’s Head to Tail dinner.  First I must say that growing up in Queens New York I have never visited Incanto.  This however has not stopped me from becoming a huge fan of the restaurant and the type of food you prepare.  I follow you closely on twitter and am often awed by the dishes and ideas you post.  I believe in the philosophy of using the whole animal, and as a cook have tried to work in restaurants that believe in that philosophy as well.  It is one of the main reasons I was drawn to the kitchens of Momofuku and Fatty ‘Cue.  Both these restaurants are at the forefront of the New York dining scene when it comes to sustainability, and both restaurants afforded me the opportunity to work with parts of the animal not often seen on menus.  Still when it comes to head to tail eating I can’t help but feel both of these restaurants could have gone further, moving beyond the more popular though still untraditional parts of the animal and showing people just how delicious all parts of it can be.

“That animal gave its life for you…  Don’t waste any,” I remember a cook at Momofuku saying to me as I was bone-ing out pork shoulders one afternoon.  I was very aware.  It reminded me of the lessons my uncle passed onto me as he was teaching me how to slaughter roosters at his farm in upstate New York when I was younger.  It’s something that has stuck with me ever since.  Animals which have given their lives must be treated with respect, and part of that respect is not wasting any useable piece of them.  To do so is to waste life.  There is a quote from Fergus Henderson I like to remember along the same lines; “Once you knock an animal on the head it is only polite to eat the whole animal.”  This seems simple and fair enough, but I believe in it deeply.  I feel what stops many people from acting on this idea, myself included, is a lack of knowledge.  There may be no better kitchen in the world right now to truly learn how to cook offal and innards than at Incanto.

Clearly as cooks and chefs our responsibility to sustainability goes beyond just the meat we cook with, but also the produce and the vegetables we use as well.  This idea led me to turn my tiny Queens backyard into a full on organic garden which my sous chef affectionately referred to as Wild Wile Farms.  Growing everything from my own Mizuna to Shishito peppers to French Breakfast radishes has given me a deeper respect for the work and time that goes into growing delicious fresh food and has furthered that same notion of “Don’t waste any.”  I know California and San Francisco in particular offer local and seasonal produce rivaled by very few places in the world.  It would be extraordinary to have the opportunity to be able to work with some of these products if I was selected.

With Fatty Cue Brooklyn recently shutting its doors for renovations I am in the unique position to be able to pack my bags and head to San Francisco for this incredible opportunity.  It would be an honor to be selected.  I feel as though I have so much to learn and would take this experience with me far beyond my cooking career.  Thank you for your consideration and best of luck with the decision making process.

Sincerely,
Adam Wile

The post 2012 Head 2 Tail stage winners!! appeared first on Offalgood.

This was so much fun, I hope they had as much fun as Aaron and I did. Who would have thought it would come down to that! Be sure to look to Zappos for our shoes, they cant be beat

The post Mozo vs Zappos cook off Finale appeared first on Offalgood.

Some how I got paired with the super forward thinking CEO of  Zappos in a cooking competition I don’t know how, but I am not going to complain Tony is a true visionary.

This was a fun event we did at Zappos headquarters in Las Vegas with the entire staff watching on.

There is another video with part 2 coming to see who win take the crown so keep watching.

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