15 minute read
Rising Culinary Creators
Rising Culinary Creators
Young Food Artisans on the Northshore
By Mimi Greenwood Knight
A successful food artisan needs more than the right ingredients. They need passion, innovation, curiosity, commitment and perhaps a little recklessness. True food artistry is about celebration. It’s about honoring, exploring, creating and an innate desire to give and share. The Northshore is home to some gifted food artisans, some with familial culinary roots and others blazing their own gustatorial trail. Here are five who have our mouths watering.
Matt Giraldi
Matt Giraldi is a living example of the adage, “Love what you do and you’ll never work a day in your life.” Take a stroll into the impressive cheese department at Acquistapace's Covington Supermarket, ask Giraldi to recommend a good, sharp cheddar, and you’re likely to walk away with a lot more than an excellent cheese selection. The earnest young foodie's unquenchable smile is lagniappe.
“Cheese is the oldest processed food in the world,” he said. "Thousands of years ago in the Middle East, they had milk from goats, cows and sheep, and they’d travel from the top of a mountain for one season, back down again for the next, then back up again. They’d bring their milk along in crocks, up and down the mountain. The milk would curdle on the journey, but they’d eat it anyway. That was the origin of cheese.”
There’s no doubt Giraldi gleaned his own earliest culinary lessons watching his mother and grandmother cooking with his great, great grandmother’s Cajun recipes. “My grandmother was from Golden Meadow and didn’t speak English until she was in her 20s,” he said. By the time he was in middle school, Giraldi had joined them in the kitchen and even had the foresight to write down those treasured family recipes, which he’ll be able to pass along to his own baby daughter when the time comes.
His education and early employment didn’t follow a culinary path, though. After completing a general studies degree from Southeastern Louisiana University, he earned a second degree in emergency medicine from South Louisiana Community College and worked for a time as an EMT. He didn’t really find his groove until he accepted a job in the deli at Acquistapace's. Owner Eric Acquistapace noted his enthusiasm and aptitude and took him under his wing.
Acquistapace took Giraldi along to cheese conferences and loaned him books on cheese. He also asked Giraldi to accompany him to catering events. Acquistapace eventually stepped away from the cheese department, leaving Giraldi holding the reins. Giraldi has his own library of cheese books now, which he estimates at 30 to 40 volumes. “There are hundreds of thousands of cheeses in the world,” he said. “I learn something new every day, but there’s still so much more to know.”
Giraldi runs the Acquistapace cheese department with proprietary pride, and fortunately for his customers, his enthusiasm for his wares hasn’t waned. “Cheese is one of those things, whether you like it or you don’t, you have to respect it,” Giraldi said. "And I find there’s usually something for everybody to love.”
Matt Giraldi’s Perfect Cheese Tray
“The ‘perfect’ cheese tray is subjective. It’s really all about what you like. But here’s what I like to include. There are five major cheese types, so your tray should include one each of:
• A Cheddar
• A Blue Cheese
• An Aged Gouda
• A Soft Cheese (Such as a Brie or a Triple Cream)
• A Goat Cheese or Dessert Cheese
Next you’ll want your accouterments:
• Some type of fruit. I recommend grapes because the acidity of the fruit buts the fat from the cheese and works as a palate cleanser on your tongue. Grapes also aren't wet like some fruits.
• A dried fruit. I like mission figs or apricots.
• Marcona Almonds
• Caramelized Pecans
Rebecca Garner
Rebecca Garner is many things. She’s a performer. She’s a musician. She’s a tattoo artist. And she’s a talented and innovative mixologist. “Becca has an incredible palate,” said Christopher Walker, Garner’s boss at Cypress Bar at the Southern Hotel. “More than that, she goes home from work and spends her free time studying her craft. I’ve never seen anyone as dedicated as she is. She loves the craft. She loves our customers—and they love her.”
Garner came to bartending with a background in cooking, and she said that plays into what she does. “It’s all about understanding the flavors and experimenting with how they work together,” she said. “I came to Cypress Bar as a bar back and Christopher took me in as his mentee. He started teaching me everything and he’s a great teacher. The more I got into it, the more I wanted to know. I go home most nights and listen to podcasts and watch videos so I can keep expanding my knowledge.”
Garner also understands the performative aspects of her job and is a joy to watch as she muddles, mixes, shakes, strains, pours, sprinkles, strains, grinds and garnishes, all while engaging with her customer and presenting them her creation with a modest smile. She’s also got that uncanny knack for remembering a customer’s order, even if they’ve only visited once. She’s undaunted by unusual requests, her favorite being, “Surprise me!”
For Garner, bartending is all about understanding what someone needs, even if they don’t know themselves. “I’m here to take care of them, so they get not only good drinks but a good night,” she said. “It’s important to cater to their personality, get to know them, and build a relationship and connection. This job is all about people. A lot of our regulars are 75-plus and they love coming here and just hanging out.”
Working within the historic Southern Hotel, Garner’s clientele are a mix of regulars and visitors. “They call The Southern ‘the living room of Covington’ and my job is to make it feel like just that,” Garner said. “A lot of people stay here every time they come to Covington. So, even though we might only see them once a month, that’s 12 times a year. It makes them feel welcome when I see them and remember what they drink.”
As much as she enjoys the quiet, amicable moments with her regulars, Garner admits she also thrives on the chaos a wedding, corporate event or Mardi Gras parade brings.
So, what does a gifted and innovative bartender drink in her free time? Garner loves Amaro. “It’s an herbal liqueur from Italy that’s great at the end of a good meal,” she said. “I really like a Paper Plane, which includes bourbon, Aperol, Amaro and freshly squeezed lemon juice.”
Becca’s Pretty in Pink
Recipe by Rebecca Garner
.25 OZ BLACKBERRY SYRUP
.25 OZ LAVENDER SYRUP
.5 OZ FRESH LEMON JUICE
.25 OZ ST. GERMAIN LIQUEUR
1 OZ VODKA OF YOUR CHOICE
4 OZ DRY SPARKLING ROSÈ
2 SPRIGS OF ROSEMARY
Shake everything but the dry rosé with a lightly torched sprig of rosemary. Double strain into a flute glass, top with the rosè, and garnish with a fresh, lightly torched sprig of rosemary.
Kristen Krummel
Kristen Krummel was holding an icing bag before she held a pencil and decorating cakes before she could print her own name. In fact, a baking career might hace been a forgone conclusion for her. With parents who met while working at a bakery, Krummel says she often slept on a cot "up under the doughnuts" at the familt's Mandeville Bake Shop and entertained herself behind the counter during school holidays. She started working in the family business as soon as she could see over the counter and quickly because her daddy's right-hand girl.
At age 20 though, Krummel’s baking career hit a bump in the road when a doctor diagnosed her with gluten sensitivity and lactose intolerance. “I used to get sick no matter what I ate,” she said. “It didn’t matter how healthy it was. The doctor told me to eliminate all inflammatory foods. I gave up gluten and dairy and honestly felt better immediately.”
So, there she was surrounded by irresistible confections and it was “water, water everywhere but not a drop to eat.” She continued working with her dad but also started experimenting with his recipes on the side, substituting ingredients she could have for the ones she couldn’t. She had friends who were vegan and keto, so she played around with ingredient substitutions for them as well: rice flour for gluten-free brownies, coconut sugar for vegan birthday cake, monk fruit for keto cookies, sourcing only the best, wholefood ingredients. There was more than a little trial and error, and she said she had some of the happiest chickens in the parish, since they got to eat all her rejects.
Eventually, Krummel’s successes eclipsed her failures, and she got the nerve to try out her treats on the public. Landing a booth at the Covington Farmers Market under the name Kristen’s Healthy Krumms, she began selling cookies and brownies. Almost immediately, she got requests for special orders from her farmers market customers who were thrilled they could enjoy something completely decadent while staying within their food restrictions. “People were asking me to make custom cakes, asking whether I did king cakes,” she said. “I knew I could make them look gorgeous. It was the flavor and texture I was worried about. But those custom orders gave me a deadline, and I’d race home to figure it out.”
Figure it out she did. With each success, more custom orders came in, and Krummel was soon providing gluten-free, vegan and keto baked goods for two local restaurants as well as for her farmers market gig. Cakes are her true love and she was enlisted to create wedding cakes and groom’s cakes few would guess weren’t the traditional fare. She fell into a routine of getting up at 2 a.m. to work for her dad, finishing work at the bakery at 1 p.m., and setting immediately to work for herself, keeping up with her custom orders and baking enough for the restaurants and her farmers market clientele. You’ve never met anyone so happy to wake up at 2 a.m., to be doing what she loves and offering those same celebratory foods her dad has thrilled his customers with for decades, but with ingredients they can feel good about eating.
Austin Kirzner
Growing up in New Orleans’ Irish Channel, Austin Kirzner’s earliest memories are of cooking with his mother and grandmothers. When he had a friend over to play as a boy, it seemed only natural for him to whip up chicken tenders for them and, when his class studied Louisiana history, the young man brought redfish couvillion as his final project. “Those other kids looked at that whole fish in tomatoes and must have thought I was crazy,” he said.
The die was cast for Kirzner. He would be a chef. Little did he realize the dues he’d pay to get there. After studying hospitality management at University of Southern Mississippi, he completed a culinary arts degree at Delgado Community College while working “front of the house” at restaurants around the French Quarter.
His uncle pulled some strings and got him a production job at Commander’s Palace. Kirzner found himself at work at 6 every morning where he sweltered away in a 10X4 room, cutting vegetables, making stocks and earning minimum wage. “It was a job they used to weed people out. I stuck with it for six months and only made it out because someone didn’t show up for work one day,” he said.
didn’t reopen for almost three years,” he said. But all that grunt work finally paid off when he was hired as a sous chef at Ralph Brennan’s Red Fish Grill in the Quarter. He worked his way to become the restaurant’s executive chef in only three years. Kirzner soon became a popular feature on local television news channels’ morning shows where he cooked up New Orleans classics for viewers.
Kirzner was working at Commander’s during the day, waiting tables at a second restaurant at night, and still working toward his culinary degree when Hurricane Katrina hit. “Commander’s
Meanwhile, Kirzner and his wife, Katie, had three kids in less than two years and moved from Lakeview to the Northshore. As the kids started school and Kirzner missed t-ball games and school programs, all those years working in the Quarter began to lose their appeal. When his brother-in-law, Jimbo Geisler, invited him to join him at his popular Covey Rise Lodge and Farms in Husser, La., it didn’t take much arm twisting.
Geisler and his partners had already established a name for themselves with their 600-acre hunting retreat and 50-acre vegetable farm, which provides produce to New Orleans’ finest restaurants as well as community-supported agriculture (CSA) boxes to home cooks on the North and Southshores. Now with Kirzner onboard, they could expand their already popular farmto-table dinners and position themselves to open The Venue at Covey Rise for private events and weddings.
The beauty of Kirzner’s farm-to-table dinners is that you can literally look out the window and see the fields where your food was grown. Before each course, Kirzner appears with mouthwatering descriptions of the dish he’s prepared, fare such as deviled Louisiana crawfish croquette followed by an heirloom tomato and burrata salad with fennel soubise, blue crab and cauliflower bisque, grilled Gulf cobia with bacon-braised greens, and brûléed fig trifle for dessert.
The culinary bent is continuing in the Kirzner home as nineyear-old son Charlie can often be found in the kitchen whipping up his own culinary creations and begging his dad to let him wait tables at The Venue. “The servers hate it because Charlie gets more tips than they do,” Kirzner said.
Noah McLain
February 2020 was an ill-fated time to start a business, but 20-year-old Noah McLain didn’t know that. Still a student at Southeastern Louisiana University working on his marketing degree, he invested in a craft coffee cart and was eager to begin doing pop-ups around the Northshore. He chose the name Cherrybomb Coffee and was raring to go. That’s when the world shut down. Fortunately for McLain, what began as a setback eventually became a bit of an advantage. Once people were ready to gather again, having a business they could enjoy outside and six feet apart was a perk. McLain and his coffee cart started showing up “wherever there were people,” and the reception was encouraging.
Still in school and working part time at other people’s coffee shops, Mclain was teaching himself the nuances of coffee roasting and experimenting with innovations. He juggled his schedule to fit in as many pop-ups as he could. It wasn’t long before he started getting requests for private bookings. He took his cart to weddings, parties and corporate events. He invested in a trailer just big enough for a single barista but able to deliver a full espresso bar, frozen, iced and hot coffees, hot chocolate, and cold brew on tap. Now, he could send the cart one way and the trailer another. Instead of the uncertainty of pop-ups, he had the assurance of paying gigs. By late 2021, McLain was accepting bookings to the south and the west, from New Orleans to Baton Rouge. He attended grand openings, employee and customer appreciation events, corporate team building, and more and more weddings.
One of those events allowed him to take his next leap of faith. The owners of H2O Salon were so impressed with this young entrepreneur that they invited him to open a brick-and mortar location inside their salon on Lotus Drive in Mandeville. “It took a year and a half before I could stop working for other people and make a living off my business,” McLain said. “I still work 70 hours a week and have a team of seven baristas working between the shop and catering events.”
Mclain recently signed a lease on a second Cherrybomb Coffee location in Madisonville, but he’s got one more thing on his to-do list. He wants to create a supportive network of coffee companies on the Northshore. “I’d like to be the one to create a cooperative culture within the coffee industry,” he said. “There’s no reason we can’t all work together and help each other succeed.”
