Fun with Food

The walking tacos are served in, naturally, a ceramic hand. A child’s lunchbox houses another creation, and a dinosaur is placed on the table—just for fun. As chef Mason Hereford goes head-to-head (or perhaps nose to tail as they are challenged to use a lamb), with chef Curtis Stone on Netflix’s “Iron Chef, Quest for an Iron Legend,” he brings his love of creative serving ware to the table and elevates the fun factor of this match while giving Stone a worthy challenger.

At Hereford’s restaurant Turkey and the Wolf in New Orleans, which he describes as an enthusiastically casual spot, the food is served on vintage Disney, Power Rangers, and Ronald McDonald plates purchased from eBay, and diners sit on chairs and at tables his mom found at yard sales. The menu, which has only around 10 items, features mostly sandwiches that align with no particular theme other than creations he and his team think taste good, including hog’s head cheese tacos with shredded iceberg and American cheese and a collard green sandwich that tastes like a Reuben, among the selections.

Hereford moved to New Orleans in 2008 and opened Turkey and the Wolf in 2016. Bon Appétit magazine named his sandwich shop “America’s Best New Restaurant” of 2017. Food & Wine and GQ called it one of the most important restaurants of the decade, and Guy Fieri featured it on his Food Network show “Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives” in 2018. Hereford’s debut cookbook, titled “Turkey and the Wolf: Flavor Trippin’ in New Orleans,” which was published in summer 2022, is a New York Times Bestseller.

He didn’t have designs on being a chef. “Right after college, I moved down to New Orleans, which I knew practically on arrival would be my forever home, and realized pretty quickly that I wasn’t going to be using my art history degree,” he writes in the intro of “Turkey and the Wolf.” His first job was as a door guy at Fat Harry’s bar, where a few months later he became a cook, learning to make burgers and cheese fries, and eventually became a bartender, which was the top financial level there.

“It was there, among the deep fryers and endless shots of Grand Marnier, where I became entranced by the alchemy of cooking, by how a little mustard wash, flour, and bird meat could enter a vat of bubbling oil and emerge as chicken fingers,” he writes. During slow times, the manager taught him how to cook the “cool stuff” that was not on the menu, such as soft-shell crabs and barbecue shrimp pistolettes. “At some point I realized, cash tips be damned, I wanted to cook.” on a McDonald’s burger). The only way I knew how to turn that sandwich into something worth eating was to load it with saltand-vinegar potato chips,” he writes. “Never would’ve guessed that some 20 years later, my version of that bologna sandwich would be featured in magazines, on food TV shows, and, most important, in a mayonnaise commercial.”

After a year at Fat Harry’s, he worked as a line cook at Coquette, a bistro that made inventive Southern food with local meat and produce. He worked there about six years and became the chef de cuisine, having learned techniques to take modest ingredients such as fried chicken or catfish, and dress it up, or dress down usually more “fancysounding” items like veal sweetbreads or beef tartare.

Creative freedom, youthful enthusiasm, and a great circle of talented coworker friends kept him going those years despite 80-hour workweeks. Then, in August 2016, he opened Turkey and the Wolf. The “Turkey” in the restaurant’s name is what his father called him and his siblings when they were acting up.

In addition to those “doctored up” sandwiches of his youth, he took inspiration from other sources. Every week for a decade, he ordered a sandwich called The Jefferson at another store, which was turkey, cheddar, and cranberry food that was somewhere in between. She made an amazing dish of chicken with evaporated milk and apple juice concentrate, he recalls, melted American cheese on broccoli served with frozen fish sticks, and used Rice Krispies as a crust for baked chicken thighs. For a special occasion, she made a “killer” chicken curry with peas. His mom’s burnt tomatoes were what he describes as a kind of magical casserole made from sliced, flour-dredged, pan-fried tomatoes that are sprinkled with sugar and baked. She still makes them for Thanksgiving every year, and they are a star of the table—and also featured in his cookbook.

Turkey and the Wolf restaurant had not yet been open a year when it was featured on a number of “best of” lists and became so busy they would go through the next day’s prep so quickly they would need to close early to avoid prepping late into the night. Then things got back to a more normal level.

It must have been used with some affection as his cookbook dedication is “To the late Robert Hereford, my old man and my best friend.” The “Wolf” comes from “the howls that went up from the kitchen at Coquette after we sent out the night’s final dish,” he says.

The tale of his journey to where he is today and his approach to food goes back to when he was a kid. “The story begins with a bad sandwich,” he writes. He grew up in the small town of Free Union in rural Virginia and says his formative food experiences were at “shabby, family-run country stores—part gas station, part convenience mart, and part takeout counter. They sold beer and gas, lures and ammo, chili-cheese dogs, and biscuits with white gravy.” Sometimes when they needed to grab a quick lunch, they would stop at one of these stores and his mom would get them bologna sandwiches. “I hated those bologna sandwiches,” he continues. “I hated the texture of flabby off-brand cased meat. I hated the yellow mustard (which I couldn’t stomach unless, for some reason, it was relish on a French roll, slathered with an herb mayo that showed up in his dreams and now in his cookbook. Childhood meals of Doritos, Jimmy Dean sausage biscuits, and Snickers washed down with a Mr. Pibb soda also played a role. But junk food wasn’t his only muse, he says. His paternal “fancy grandma,” who asked to be call Ann, was a great cook, exposing him to dishes such as duck fricassee and snapper with herbed lemon butter served at a table set with the proper flatware. His maternal grandmother was also named Anne, but always went by Grandmommy. Her recipes like cornpone, kraut dumplings, and hickory-nut loaf cake were dished up in a more casual atmosphere. And his mother cooked

Hereford also owns a breakfast restaurant in New Orleans called Molly’s Rise and Shine, which opened in 2019 and is named after his sister. He and his friends now have more manageable working hours than the 80-hour weeks, but he kept busy working on the cookbook. “I’m happy I got to write this book with my pal JJ [Goode] … And I’m grateful that when the opportunity came, the talented friends I met during a dozen years of working in kitchens together showed up to help me make the thing special.”

The book contains recipes for food that he loves, and that the home cook can reasonably make, including some favorites from Turkey and the Wolf and Molly’s, including The Collard Melt, his famous fried bologna sandwich, and a riff on a burger he enjoyed at the nowshuttered Yo Mama’s bar and grill in the French Quarter (see recipe at right). As much as his book is about good food, it’s also about giving you permission to relax a little, he says. “Fun is the most important thing.”

This he demonstrated during an appearance on the “Today” show last summer when the book was released, telling host Savannah Guthrie, as he made The Bologna sandwich, “The book is all about having a good time.”

Hereford is no doubt also inserting fun and a good time into his latest endeavor, Hungry Eyes, a third New Orleans restaurant he opened in April 2023. The 50-seat, full-service dinnerand-drinks restaurant is a departure from his sandwich shop and breakfast cafe, but with its ’80s theme, it is likely to serve up some “rad” vibes along with delicious food.

Not Yo Mama’s Peanut Butter-Bacon Burger

MAKES 1 AWESOME BURGER

It sounds like a gimmick, but in fact, it’s scientifically proven that joining savory beef fat, salty cured pork, and creamy peanut butter makes everything feel right. … if you want comfort, make this burger. –MASON HEREFORD

5 ounces ground beef, divided into 2 (2-inch) balls

1 teaspoon unsalted butter, divided

½ teaspoon (generous) Lawry’s Seasoned Salt, divided

1 Martin’s potato sandwich roll

2 bun-size pieces iceberg lettuce

Some thinly sliced red onion

Creamy peanut butter for serving

2 strips bacon, cooked however you like your bacon

Ketchup (there is only Heinz) for swiping

1. Set a medium cast-iron skillet over high heat until it’s pretty hot. While the skillet’s heating up, put a beef ball between two pieces of parchment or wax paper and evenly flatten it to make a 6-inch patty. Repeat with the other ball on separate parchment paper.

2. Add about ½ teaspoon of the butter to the pan and swirl it around. Lower the heat to medium, then add one of the patties and season the up-side liberally with Lawry’s (a generous ¼ teaspoon per patty).

3. Cook until the first side gets a little brown (you’re not looking for a crust here), 30 to 45 seconds. Flip the patty and cook about 45 seconds more. Move the patty to a plate and use a roll half to wipe up the buttery drippings, leaving it for a few seconds, so it gets a little toasty. Cook the other patty the same way (the butter, the Lawry’s), but this time, stack the patty on the other patty. Use the other roll half to sop up the drippings and let it get toasty, too.

4. Here’s how I build it, but no rules apply, as long as you get all the stu between the buns: On the bun bottom, add the lettuce leaf and some onion. Add the patty stack, then some peanut butter (I go large and use 3 tablespoons, but 2 tablespoons is probably more reasonable) and the bacon (break ’em up to fit on the burger). Swipe some ketchup on the top bun, cap the burger, and eat.