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“Hmm, when you’re cutting bones, like with a chicken,” he said simply. My cooking partner was muralist Ellen RED STICK SPICE SHAKES HOME COOKS LOOSE FROM COMFORT Ogden, whose work Story and photos by Lucie Monk Carter you’ll be familiar with if you’ve visited a Baton Rouge business in the past five years. Her intricate illustrations and splashy way with color bring a customer five steps closer to what a brand wants to be. For the wall of Red Stick Spice’s adjacent SoGo Tea Bar, Milneck hired Ogden to paint the perfect quote from J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan, “Would you like an adventure now or shall we have our tea first?” Each pair of cooks had a portion of dinner to prepare: the couscous, the roasted carrots, the delicious cauliflower appetizer. Ogden and I whipped up three acidic components (quick pickled shallots and cucumbers, lemon-herb white beans, and chermoula sauce) to balance out the main dish, a salmon spiced with ras el hanout. We were cushioned by the kitchen staff as we shaved down shallots with a mandoline and tossed teaspoons of the shop’s spices into mixing bowls. “I’ll just add in a little more oil,” murmured Lili, leaning over my skillet as it heated for the salmon fillet. “Turn the lemon this way,” said Sammy. “Ah, you weren’t supposed to season the fish in the skillet,” said Lili, as columns of smoke rose from Anne Milneck’s Red Stick Spice has been a haven of artisanal food products in Baton Rouge the pan. for over a decade, and the concept continues to grow and evolve—with additional cooking classes and its recently-opened tea shop, SoGo. Do they make a dunce hat in chef-white? The good news is I was in the right place to climb my way back. e’re long past the ations off the wood laminate floor. statute of limitaSo when Red Stick Spice owner Anne In running her spice shop, Milneck has tions on my cook- Milneck invited me to attend a cook- never minded marketing her savoir in ing failures, so I’ll ing class at the culinary shop’s recently the kitchen. “I’d always lead with ‘I’m give you the worst of it in one giddy expanded teaching kitchen, I was more a chef…’ Essentially, you should just breath: I was laughed out of my par- eager to stand at a high-end stovetop come in here and know that you’re goents’ kitchen when I brought home with a bunch of adults than I was to get ing to make great food when you leave cabbage instead of lettuce; I’ve looked advice. Maybe if I finish my recipe early, here.” But when a customer whispered to for celery seed in the depths of the pro- I can mosey around and help others… duce fridge, dumped a cup of thyme in Our group that early April evening her, “I still make red beans and rice on a chowder, and sent the residents of my comprised area artists and artisans, all Mondays,” Milneck took a step down apartment building down the fire escape different ages and exhibiting various from the mountain. “She was embarwhile attempting corn fritters. Now levels of comfort with knives and gas rassed to say that to me, probably beas the mother of two under five, with ranges. “Is there ever a time you don’t cause of what she’d read about me. I twelve years of avid cooking under my want a sharp knife?” one guest asked the thought, ‘Well, this doesn’t work.’ “We believe in home cooks. We want flour-speckled belt, my more frequent chef-instructor, Matthew Stansbury, as to teach home cooks. Whether it’s in a humiliation is scraping my gourmet cre- he butchered the whole salmon.
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cooking class, or on the floor. I tell my staff that all the time: you’re going to hear the same question, but remember, it’s unique to that customer. We’re here to solve that problem. And we absolutely can.” In Red Stick Spice’s current location on Jefferson Highway between Government Street and Capital Heights, Milneck envisioned a kitchen where cooks could gather and form a community. “I’ve always wanted to be the Jenni Peters of cooking,” she said, referring to Peters, the owner of Varsity Sports who has made her brand synonymous with running in Baton Rouge, primarily with free group runs in which the joggers wear their Varsity Sports tees and hit the city streets. While cooking requires more gear and ingredients than your typical 5K, Milneck holds out hope that Red Stick Spice can become any cook’s destination—or at least a crucial stop on the way to their own stove. She was approved for a bank loan to expand her teaching kitchen and finally open the tea bar she’s planned for years on the day the governor shut down Louisiana in March 2020. Renovations went ahead. “But my husband (Greg Milneck, owner of DigitalFX) set up a camera rig in the kitchen.” Production companies could rent the space and hang their own cameras and lights. Milneck could take her cooking and cocktail lessons onto Zoom and keep in touch with a customer base who couldn’t come closer than curbside. “I have to give credit to the people in Baton Rouge. The calls and emails that we got … ‘If you would get flour, bread, toilet paper, and milk, we’d buy it from you.’” The teaching kitchen opened properly in October 2020. Milneck and her staff are the primary instructors, but she’s enjoyed expanding the catalog with authenticity in mind, whether it’s Chef Matthew’s sushi workshop—inspired by growing up in the kitchen with his Japanese grandmother—or Paramita Soha’s eye-widening walk through Indian street food. Cardiologist Satish Gadi shares his love of plant-based cuisine, while flamenco guitarist Jim Boitnott takes a break from his day job as an executive at Presonus to teach a masterclass in paella. “To watch the magic in the classroom … that’s what I want. Customers see that person as the one who has lived that food and lived that lifestyle. It’s a different experience.” Milneck has her core customers, women in their fifties or sixties that come to her with their culinary dilemmas; they rely on the spice blends and oils she’s sold for ten years, but trust her suggestions too. With the help of her marketing manager, Chelsey Blankenship, she chases the millennial market, “smart comparison shoppers with busy lives,” who can be reached by appealing to their children and stocking truffle-infused sauces first spied on Instagram.
