10 minute read
» Nicholas Jirasek
Culinary Director
Briefly introduce yourself, for those who aren’t familiar with you. I am Nicholas Arnold Oloroso Jirasek, the Culinary Director here at Ox-Bow. I usually go by my last name, Jirasek, which, much to my parents’ chagrin, I pronounce “like the park,” or “like the quintet.” Born and raised on the western border of Chicago in Oak Park, I have a very nontraditional career path that has led me to a lifelong journey in teaching and exploring the intersection of food and art.
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From operating as Director of Food and Beverage on the 94th floor of the John Hancock Center to opening my own niche, art-centric catering company, Guerrilla Smiles; from consulting on full-service cultural center Los Del Patio in Panama City, Panama, to being a personal chef to artist Tony Fitzpatrick; from being on the cover
of Chicago Reader with the viral creation “Goth Bread” to opening Theaster Gates’s first foray into the restaurant business, Currency Exchange Café; from reimagining how a Goop-lauded coffee shop makes great food accessible to a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood to evolving sustainable labor models in the midst of a pandemic as Culinary Director of a Logan Square restaurant group, my approach has stayed the same: build community from a place of love.
The Culinary Director position is new to Ox-Bow, and you have been in this role for about a year now; could you describe what the vision/ philosophy is for the kitchen?
“Be beyond the kitchen.”
In the paraphrased words of beloved Ox-Bow Board Member Bill Padnos: “Ox-Bow has been making good food since its inception, but it has been making really great food for the last twenty to twenty-five years.”
It is a tremendous undertaking to make three delicious, home-cooked meals every day for our ever-changing populace here on campus. As one of my colleagues put it, “we plan, stage, and execute a mini-event every time we serve food.” I don’t want to reinvent the wheel here that all the great chefs, cooks, and artists before me painstakingly built in providing signature service that earned Ox-Bow’s kitchen the moniker “the restaurant in the woods.” I want to empower this iteration of the kitchen to have a conversation through food and service that beckons back to the life-changing experience that every person who has walked on these hallowed grounds has felt, and think about how we build a broader conversation that invites even more folks to have a seat at the table with a voice that is heard. Rethink how we value and structure our efforts to serve our community from the inside out. Historical and weighty position titles like “Chef” and “Dish Lizard” have been discarded to more accurately reflect the holistic approach of care I desire for us to have as Ox-Bow’s “Hospitality Managers” and “Hospitality Teammates.” How does the way we structure our labor affect the process of us creating and caring for ourselves and for others?
Refocus the way we source and purchase our supplies and ingredients. All it takes is a stroll down the grocery aisle to see just how high the price of food has become. That same inflation at the checkout counter is oftentimes magnified at the wholesale level. Big-box grocers are able to absorb cost increases on things like flour and milk and defer it elsewhere to avoid sticker shock for shoppers. Like all things Ox-Bow, we have to roll up our sleeves and think creatively to evolve with the environment. By diversifying the small purveyors we source local product from, and negotiating with the big distributors where we get staple goods, we are able to not only get more bang for our buck, but also enter into the ecosystem as a partner with our purveyors. How can we be better representatives of our time and place, better stewards for our land and people?
Embrace our artistry. The act of preparing, cooking, and serving food is oftentimes limited to a rigorous craft. Even more so, the conversation of where food and art intersect is often prohibitively reserved for fine dining. I want to challenge our cooking to always be in conversation with our surroundings, with our visiting artists, with our emotions, with the Glass Studio, with the Ox-Flock, with that song we are playing on repeat, with the toast bar, with that painting I can’t stop thinking about. Collaborating with our cohorts on campus, popping up at our friends’ restaurants, inviting our neighbors over for a barbecue: the opportunity is endless, and it is our conversation to open. By responding to the things we experience in a comestible way, we are inviting others, just as the smell of sizzling onions and garlic in a pan whets our appetite and unleashes our memory. How do we make food that represents OxBow from a personal level that also identifies with all those that have been and will be?
What brought you to Ox-Bow’s kitchen, aka “the restaurant in the woods”? For someone who doesn’t believe in destiny (aside from Princess Nokia), it is hard for me not to just say destiny. That of course means that I saw a re-shared job post on Instagram for a Culinary Director at Ox-Bow School of Art & Artists’
Residency in the midst of a global pandemic. I had to read the position description thrice because I thought it had been specifically written for me.
I have essentially spent my entire life building a reputation and a community in my beloved Chicago. Opportunities provided themselves through years of hard work and a community of professionals eager to build exciting food and beverage concepts, together, for a growing and changing urban populace.
I hadn’t written a résumé in a decade, much less a cover letter. At that time, I spent my days fervently pivoting food concepts to keep restaurants afloat and workers safe yet gainfully employed. I spent my nights trying to gather all my thoughts and life’s experience into writing something I hoped would express to my now colleagues how much all of my life has led me to Ox-Bow.
From my cover letter: The clear challenges of the past year have further prompted creatives to examine our ways of being, our methods of knowing, our place in time, and even likely questioning our very existence in the face of this global pandemic and social injustice. The overriding truth that has remained constant in this unprecedented time, and throughout my life as an artist and professional Culinary Director is clear: we are nothing without community. I am here not only to share the finite lessons of cooking I have learned on my journey through food, but more so to connect the infinite language of sharing food together as people. My goal with Ox-Bow is to continue to build a broader community of learning through food, and with this cultural exchange create a larger discourse in which all have a seat at the table with a mind and body full, and a voice that is heard.
As Culinary Director, you have been collaborating with local businesses and guest chefs. Could you speak about why this is important to you, Ox-Bow, and the region? Back in 2010, two of my best friends and I opened up a DIY gallery in Chicago’s Ukrainian Village. I was feeling unattached to the service of folks at my then corporate job at the John Hancock Center. Taking note of how folks always gathered around the cheese platter and Two-Buck Chuck at art openings, I wanted to take the opportunity to utilize the food and beverage offerings to be in the conversation. The idea was simple: respond to the process, the aesthetics or thematics of the art in a comestible way. If it was black-and-white photography, make black and white food. If the artist was drawing upon their childhood, make the Mie Goreng they ate every day. If the photographer took obscured photos of Americana, make deconstructed Big Mac spring rolls. Having a wealth of artists here at Ox-Bow, their ideas, their process, their energy should be as much of a catalyst for the food we make as the dietary needs of our campus and the seasonal produce we can procure.
Partnering with local brands, farms, and restaurants is integral for us as members of the West Michigan food and beverage ecosystem. It’s how we build our foundation as not just a “restaurant in the woods,” but a great connector of producers, makers, and consumers in the region. As much as Ox-Bow is known for its artistic prowess, we have the ability and opportunity to affect and interact with our culinary peers. The relationship is reciprocal: food and art, art and food.
The Ox-Bow kitchen has a long history of traditions—cookies for lunch, giant bowls of guacamole. Are there new traditions you plan to introduce to our community? I would love for Ox-Bow’s kitchen to be known for its hospitality, its diversity, our collaborations, for its intention in care and service. I’d love it if it wasn’t one thing that anyone could quite put their finger on; a seemingly imperceptible feeling of comfort and enjoyment.
That being said, I love snacks. The toast bar has offered all-day-and-night DIY sustenance to our community for a long time. What happens if we add a popcorn machine to the toast bar? What happens when we provide coconut-crusted shrimp at the midnight of a “Shrimp Meltdown” party or Goth Bread at “Goth Prom”?
How do your Chicago roots blend into the West Michigan food and beverage industry? Hog Butcher for the World, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler; Stormy, husky, brawling, . . . These are the words of Carl Sandburg in his love poem to Chicago back in 1914. In 2022, these same, poignant words are perhaps better descriptors of the Midwest at large. Our hogs butchered on BlueStar highway; our tools forged in Warren; our wheat sown in Caledonia, freighted from Holland. I want to blend Chicago’s great diversity, its “stinky onion,” its Malörted history, the pulse of its Alinea’d progress with the Saugatuck sensibility, freshground Petoskey perseverance, and a heaping tablespoon of #PureMichigan.
Is there anything you are excited about for 2022? I’m very excited about our tuck shop/convenience store on campus. Not all of our participants on campus have cars or easy transportation into town to purchase basic toiletries, drinks, snacks, or other necessary comforts. Not only will we be able to provide this service to our community through our tuck shop, but also highlight local artisanal makers of things like handmade bar soap, art zines, beeswax candles, plant-based dyes, and shots of fresh-roasted, single-origin espresso.
Favorite toast? A duo of sprouted Ezekiel bread with a generous spread of butter and Marmite/sunflower butter with a little sprinkle of sea salt.
If you happen to be on campus, stop by the kitchen to say ‘hello’ to our Culinary Director, Nicholas Jirasek (he goes by Jirasek).
NEWS
THE RESIDENT ARTIST by Virtue Cider
Our neighbors are special to us. Ox-Bow School of Art was established in 1910 and is situated in Saugatuck, Michigan, just up the road from Virtue Farm. It continues its mission of connecting artists to a network of creative resources, people, and ideas. The campus is an energizing natural environment with a rich artistic history.
We’re supporting Ox-Bow with a cider called The Resident Artist. The Resident Artist pays homage to Ox-Bow’s residency program that encourages artists from all walks of life to exchange ideas, share meals, and make art together. Twentyfive percent of all bottle sales will directly benefit Ox-Bow School of Art.
The Resident Artist is a hard cider made like wine with Michigan apples and cherries and is 7.9% ABV (alcohol by volume). From the first sip, intense cherry, red apple, and dried fruit hits your palate.
Scan the QR code to purchase The Resident Artist
