Norman Van Aken's Kitchen Conversations: Linton Hopkins

Norman Van Aken, a member of The Daily Meal Council, is a Florida-based chef-restaurateur (Norman's at the Ritz-Carlton in Orlando), cooking teacher, and author. His most recent book is a memoir, No Experience Necessary: The Culinary Odyssey of Chef Norman Van Aken. This is the second in a regular series of Kitchen Conversations — informal but revealing interchanges with key culinary figures — that Van Aken will be contributing to The Daily Meal. He also writes a regular series of Kitchen Meditations for us.

Born in Rochester, New York, and raised in Atlanta, chef Linton Hopkins had planned to be a doctor like his father, but, inspired by the food-rich household he grew up in, he found himself drawn more to cookbooks than to medical texts. Instead to medical school, he enrolled in The Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York. After graduation, he worked in New Orleans at the Windsor Court Hotel's Grill Room, then spent four years cooking at Jeff Tunks' DC Coast in Washington, D.C. In 2004, he returned home to Atlanta and, with his wife, Gina, as sommelier, opened Restaurant Eugene. After the restaurant had established a reputation as one of the best and most inventive exponents of contemporary Southern cuisine, Hopkins opened a gastropub, Holeman & Fitch, whose burger is widely considered one of the best in America.

Norman Van Aken: What is the very first thing you remember eating and enjoying?

Linton Hopkins: A lot of it is around family. Mom made grilled cheese sandwiches. Sometimes it was American cheese, sometimes it was Velveeta. It was cooked in butter. It was crispy-edged but a little runny with that orange-ish cheese. Also, eating true barbecue in Alabama, drinking a Coca-Cola, was extraordinary. I was probably 7 or 8 years old. It seemed like all of the stars were in alignment. It was not just eating a regular meal. It resonated as something more. The barbecue was all about the ribs, dipping some in the sauce, some not. Going back to try to recreate those memories is tough!

Are you the first chef in your family?
Yes. First one. My grandfather Eugene grew up on a farm. He was a chemist by trade. He cooked from scratch. I would spend a lot of my summers with him in Nashville. He is why I love country ham — and why Mountain Valley water is served in my restaurants. He always had ice-cold Mountain Valley water in his refrigerator.

When did you start cooking?
Mom was enamored with Julia Child. We would watch Julia Child together. I started helping out in the kitchen just because I liked it. I love eating! And if you love eating you should be in the kitchen. I was young when I started. It started with my love of hollandaise sauce, I'd say. I love hollandaise on my eggs. I thought eggs Benedict was one of God's greatest creations. Mom was not about to make me hollandaise, so she handed me Julia Child's cookbook when I was about 10 and I would make hollandaise. I learned also how to make homemade mayonnaise. My dad taught me to cook bacon. He taught me to make "sock sausage" from Tennessee. It's where they take country sausage and they shove it in a sock. He would sauté it up in a skillet. Dad also taught me to baste the eggs with ham, sausage, or bacon fat. It had crispy edges with a great runny yolk. I fell in love with making omelettes for the family when I was 11 or 12. Then I fell in love with making chicken Kiev. I made a total mess in the kitchen. Fried chicken with chive butter in the middle! What could be better than that!?

When did you realize that cooking was serious to you?
Cooking was part of my daily life. But I was pre-med and going in that direction. I saw with my father how much he loved medicine. I had summer jobs in the hospital and loved it. After graduation from college, I was about to go back to college and I saw a red book on a shelf about going to culinary school. I had a friend who was going and I was jealous. I was going my medical way but that book changed my life. I told my parents I did not want to go to medical school any longer and that I wanted to go to culinary school. My parents saw how intense I was about it and soon I was on my way. I really moved on it. Once I was there I was like a fish in water. I still can't believe my good fortune to be in this industry.

Where were you cooking when you first felt like you had attained the right to be called a chef?
I was under Jeff Tunks at D.C. Coast up in Washington, D.C. One night, the upper-echelon chefs were going out of town and I was left with the responsibility of running the kitchen, and that boosted my confidence. That was big moment! And once that moment happened I really started feeling confident about running the business. Before that time I was "Yes Chef!"...after that I got my confidence. I knew I could say, "I got this."

What was the first dish you made that you felt proud of?
It way probably when I was at the CIA in Hyde Park, at the Escoffier Room, and I made duck confit under the instruction of chef [Roland] Chenus. He had that huge French toque. He looked seven feet tall. To make a confit correctly, doing it right and then him finding satisfaction, gave me such a great confidence in my cooking. I had talked with him awhile about how I was practicing at home. Being with this culinary leader was amazing.

Do you feel the cooking life caused you to sacrifice having a "normal" life?
No. I learned quickly from my father how to "punch in and out on who you are." I needed a profession to help me feel free and true to who I was.

What was the closest you came to quitting the business and finding something saner?
I never felt that tension. I felt like I was always getting away with something! If you are a cook or a chef in New Orleans you are "the man." Everyone is talking about food and the history of food. Walking along with your chef's whites on you had the rush of pride. What that white jacket was and what that toque meant was amazing!

Who is the most important cookbook author in your estimation? Why?
Jane Grigson was very important to me, due to the charcuterie, and due to the history of England. I am of English heritage and I wanted to tap into that with my food. Larousse Gastronomique was also a huge book for me. I bought the newer editions as they came along. Mine are grease-stained now. The spine is gone.

Who is the most important chef of the past 100 years? Why?
For me, Fernand Point [late proprietor of the legendary La Pyramide in Vienne]. Part of it is because of his relationship with his wife, Mado, and with his team running the restaurant. There is something so romantic about that. His quotes are just legendary. "As far as cuisine is concerned, one must read everything, see everything, hear everything, try everything, observe everything, in order to retain, in the end, just a little bit!" His work is truly timeless. He worked on recipes for years! Frankly that is how I am with Gina [Hopkins' wife and business partner]. It can be painful when she critiques something I've made. But it's truthful. I feel a kinship with Point. I feel there is an integrity with him. You can trace most great French chefs to him. He had humor, integrity, he enjoyed lunching with his chef friends.

Who is the most mischievous chef you have ever known?
No one I have known personally jumps to mind. But Marco Pierre White changed the rules in a very profound way. He was the rock-and-roll bad guy, a pirate, with a swagger. He exemplifies what a lot of folks think of us as chefs. Gaunt. Smoking cigarettes. But he was a small town boy who made good in London. I still read White Heat [White's 1990 cookbook-cum-memoir]. Amazing insight. Amazing call to quality, albeit in his bad-ass way. Ferran Adrià is another one in his way.

If you could go out for drinks and dinner with any '"food person," living or dead, who would it be and why?
Lucullus [the ancient Roman politician and gastronome] would have been fun to dine with. I have used that phrase about dining alone [when his chef served him a single dish one night because he had no guests, Lucullus supposedly said "Today Lucullus dines with Lucullus!"]. Dining alone means it is the greatest evening. I have been intrigued by the Roman ethos. Julia Child would be another. Fun and irreverent at the same time. James Beard would be in that same category. Jeremiah Tower would be another. I love the thinkers about food. The ones whose thoughts alone make them amazing.

What food or ingredient do you adore?
I wrote an "ode to butter!" I love butter. I wrote a love letter to it. It is in The Hungry Ear: Poems of Food and Drink, edited by Kevin Young. It goes back to my early love of hollandaise. I love butter in a hot French steel pan bubbling away. Butter emulsifies on its own. You can coax butter along. You can torture it. You can rub it on corn with cilantro and lime. Butter is it! Making butter is great. I love the moment when butter just happens. It's like a snap! ... and it is important.

What food or ingredient will never enter your body again?
I'm a pretty big omnivore. But that fermented maggot crusted cheese [Sardinian casu marzu] I had... It was so ammoniated! It has that same gooey run as Velveeta when I think about it.

Where in the world would you like to dine now and why?
I'd love to go to Jiro in Tokyo while Jiro is still alive. I want to be with a man that cares so much, a true craftsman with the highest level of integrity. It is not about the fatty tuna for Jiro. It is about the lean tuna. His standards and method are the one. I love Japanese food. I have the book Japanese Food: A Simple Art and I love it. It is the purity of that cuisine that I'm trying to continually find. The pickles, the fermentation, the seasonality, the regionality. Jiro is the protector of that tradition of simplicity and ancient cuisine. To be able to sit there would be great. Arpège in Paris would be another, as it relates to the vegetable world. I've been there twice now. But the one I haven't been to and want to go try? Jiro would be the one.

Do you feel that culinary schools are preparing young folks for lives as chefs?
In one way, yes. In one way, no. The CIA has some great teachers. If you are an active student you can get a lot out of it. I was an older student when I went and I was ready. But the idea that people are going to come out of a school and be a sous-chef is ridiculous. This is a fragile business. Are they ready to come out of there and basically make near minimum wage? I graduated and got a job making $6.50 an hour! I was able to make it work in New Orleans, but in a town like New York City, you could never make it economically. It makes the graduates gun for sous-chef money. But I think that if you don't stay a cook long enough, you will never make a great sous-chef or chef. The myth about getting ready and getting a TV show is crippling. It's too much about looks and things like that.

That is the danger, with mass media focusing on our guild in these surface ways. It's like with music. Where is the Duane Allman, who, arguably was not the prettiest guy to look at? Johnny Winter, you know. They are dirty and they are damaged and they bleed everything they are into that craft to make it an art. Guys like that would not make it in this media age. They weren't pretty, not unless you looked at their hands. Then you would you see their beauty. Schools need to teach more about heart. Maybe the schools should be harder to get into? They keep making the schools bigger. Maybe they should make them smaller. Harder to get into, with higher standards. Maybe there needs to be an "elite" culinary program developed. One that really holds the knife to the truth, so that when you come out, you are really a cook. There needs to be a true apprenticeship program where you have to pass through stages successfully until you are allowed to go to the next stage. Look at what Thomas Keller does at his restaurants. He really puts his chefs through the ringer. Patrick O'Connell does it too. Charlie Trotter did it. School should help open the doors. To be a doctor means you can see a patient alone in a room. A chef should be a person who can run a brigade in a professional kitchen. And do all of the things that mean you can, justifiably, put your name on that menu. And that means everything to support that menu. You have to be able to do it all. Wash dishes. You need to know how to be a saucier. You need to be able to talk the language of a butcher, the food procurement guy, do inventory. All of it.

What part of your body has taken the biggest beating over the years in the kitchens?
My hips more than anything, from the bending and my stance being wrong. I'm with a personal trainer now to correct things and to reenergize my lower body.

Music in the kitchen or no? If yes, who's on your playlist?
Non-music kitchen here at Restaurant Eugene. Chef Fernand Metz at CIA taught me that we need to listen to the food as it cooks. We need to use all of our senses to engage in the work. Susan Spicer told me how she listens to the sound of knives in the kitchen, and how she can tell if they are sharp or not. I love using sound evaluation as a technique and measure to see what is going right and what's wrong. Now, on the other hand, at Holeman & Finch, which is more about rock and roll, I love to hear Led Zeppelin weave its way into the kitchen while we're banging out a lot of orders. But I love the quiet "monastic" kitchen too, so I guess I go back and forth on this one. I am absolutely against anyone wearing headphones. I love jamming with the Allman Brothers. I love music. I adore music, all kinds, all genres — except death metal, which I don't have an appreciation of.

What famous guests have you enjoyed cooking for the most?
Geddy Lee from the group Rush. That was a big deal for me. When you came in, Norman, that was big! I wanted to be back there cooking for you. When Emeril came in to Holeman & Finch when we were about one year old, that was a big deal. Since I was of New Orleans, it was really a big deal to me because Emeril led the way. He came out of the Brennan restaurants and built a tremendous team. Making everything from scratch, making very traditional American food. Thomas Keller came in, but it was my day off. I think he had a plate of cheese with a friend of his. I missed him. Clint Eastwood was big. He was a major hero of mine. When I cooked in D.C. it was a lot of politicians. I loved it when Jimmy Carter came in with his wife Rosalyn.

Which guests, famous or otherwise, will not be welcome back and what did they do to get "fired"?
It bothers me that some guests won't dine at the restaurant unless they know I am cooking on the line that night. They will approach me at like a farmers market and say, "I know when you are on the line, and when it's not you." And that really bothers me. I know our team. And I know how great they are. Do we have to die at the stove? Part of being a chef is to build a brigade and a legacy. You should be able to go to any of the great restaurants and it should still be great. Being a chef is more like being a conductor of an orchestra... not like being a solo guitarist. He or she is the composer. That is why I like an artist like Michelangelo. He built a team. He didn't draw every line. It's like film. You can't be every actor, and the writer, and the producer and the director. We still must be true to our families beyond being the bread winners for them. I don't ascribe to the dysfunctionality of "everything is second to cuisine." Life is more important than cuisine. I will fight for having a good, healthy relationship with my children and with my wife. I have devoted my life to food and to the integrity of teaching cooks. It is really a childish view to insist that everything is second to the cuisine. I think that life is more important than that.

What's your favorite food movie of all time?
Hmm. Golly... The one food movie I watched the most is Babette's Feast. I love that movie on so many levels. I love the story of what is sacred in life. I love the aristocratic general. The story of lost-ness. The story of regret. Everything was washed away. How the town was saved by a meal. Everything was made from scratch for that meal. She was making the turtle soup. She was generous with the caviar. The General can't believe this is happening. That is a transformative movie.

Is "molecular" or "modernist" cuisine something you feel has made food better? Is it misunderstood? Is it a real thing?
I think it has confused some people. I think when it's treated with depth and understanding it has added something. But just like the word fusion, it can be something people like or don't like without truly understanding its core. I think we also need to be careful as to what a food additive is, and ask why we are emulating a giant food system that does things to our food that are not necessary. But manipulation is at the heart of cooking. I think looking at different roots and their uses is good and smart, looking at different starches. That is an amazing part of this kind of cooking — but it can be misused and seem gimmicky and cheap. It is not fair to deride it any more than to deride "fusion cooking." Both are fair and good words.

If it all came down to the world knowing your life's work through a single dish, as we sometimes know an author through a single book, what would that dish be?
It would be our vegetable plate at Eugene. It is really the only dish that hasn't changed in structure since 10 years ago at our opening. It allows seasonality and variation and farms and techniques to come and go. I love how it's a teaching tool to the young chefs who come to work with us. It's the height of what I consider Southern cooking to be. True Southern cooking is not all about pork.

If you had not made it as a chef, and money were not an issue, what profession would you have chosen?
I think I'd want to own a small repertory movie theater that just got to play whatever. I'd love that. I love movies. I even looked at a movie theater, but Gina looked at me and said, "No way." I don't know how you make money in that business showing all the old movies. Maybe there are only five people on a Tuesday night. I mean, what's the take? Fifteen bucks? That would be tough. I'd love to do a film festival every month. Do a Rocky Horror Picture Show at midnight thing, a James Bond thing. I loved to go to the theater with my parents and see The Marx Brothers or the latest Woody Allen movie. My theater is where Babette's Feast would be playing.

Would you want your children to become chefs?
If they really wanted to do it, and loved it. There is so much creative freedom and it has brought so much joy to me. But only if they love it. I want them to have something they love as much as I do.

In the future what do you hope your legacy will be?
Being a "true chef" — to be an example to chefs that come after me of how to do it and how to do it right. I've worked hard for the integrity of good food. I'm not perfect in any way. But that I've walked the walk and true chefs are the kind of chefs I admired in my life. I'm trying to live up to all of you guys!

How can people who live and eat outside the South discern the differences between the cooking you do and that of, say, Sean Brock or Edward Lee?
Well, I mean, they are two good friends of mine. We all have a different take because we are all individuals. What shows is that we celebrate the differences within the American South. Southern cooking is not one way, it is multiple ways of enjoyment. There are an infinite number of ways and there are an infinite number of cooks from our pasts and now in our future. [pullquote:left]

How would you characterize the differences between you guys as cooks — You, Sean, and Ed?
That's a tough one. Ed is someone who came from outside the South and came in and became a master of the South. He came from New York and the Northeast. He had a strong sense of his own identity as a chef and the South transformed him. He followed his Korean roots and he found his way. Sean is someone who really became enamored with what he would say is molecular gastronomy when he started. He found his way. I wouldn't say Sean is a molecular chef really. Now he is a traditionalist. He is a young, thoughtful traditionalist. He cares where food is from. As a Southerner, I love the "scalability" of Southern food. I want to make Southern food possible wherever folks are. I really see a large part of my role as being one who gets good Southern food into hospitals, trains, planes, schools, and more. It is coming out of the Atlanta tradition. It was not really country cooking for me. My background was of food served on my Grandmother's china with silver. It was a love of French cooking. I felt in love with Julia Child's way. Southern kind of followed for me. I found that Frank Stitt was similar to me in that way.

What are your thoughts on "originality" in terms of cooking?
Well, it's funny. I took a history class in college and one of the classes was called "The Myth of Originality." I really think a lot about that. I think we do have an original voice. But like a filmmaker references other filmmakers, as a chef you are going to reference other chefs, because that is what we do in the creative process. You know Ferran Adrià's well-noted quote that says to be creative is to never copy. But even that statement was taken from Jacques Maximin. How do we continue to push forward with our cuisine? I told you this, but I am a huge fan of your sauce named mojo rojo. It's such a simple, great sauce. Now that is an influence. Did I invent mojo rojo? No. But am I going to play around with it and the ingredients in it? Yes. I'm going to make my versions. We should be better with every generation. We should get smarter. Our job is to continue to be who we are and learn and grow. Picasso was that way. Would Mozart have happened without Vivaldi? Would Beethoven have happened without Mozart? Absolutely not. They had to come up in a culture of these greats.

You fought and prevailed over some serious cancer issues. How did that change your priorities in the business we're in — the life we're in?
It was a real sense of you only live once, and you'd better live the life you say want to live now. I was in the chemo ward with people who did not make it. This life is about making things real, and finding love and building things of value and that sense of purpose. From a culinary standpoint, I am the same man with my kids as I am with my cooks. It has to be a good wholesome food. I am not interested in chemicals. It think we are messing around with an environmental condition that we really shouldn't be messing around with. I am not into the food additives. Just because that rat didn't get cancer in some 20-year study doesn't mean I'm putting into a dish. Cancer woke me up to these things. I want seasonality. We need to know our food. I'll still play around. I love Kraft American cheese... But a chef's number-one job is to know what is in his food.