SPRUNG
Talking simplicity with Spring's Shawn McClain
BUCKTOWN'S SPRING RESTAURANT is one of the most celebrated of the past year's openings. Seven months in, it's exceeded the expectations of partners Sue-Kim Drohomyrecky, Peter Drohomyrecky and 34-year-old chef Shawn McClain. After seven well-received years as chef/partner at Evanston's four-star Trio, McClain wanted to expand on what he knew as both manager and a chef, and to work with innovative cuisine in a more affordable setting. McClain believes in simplicity, and we talked on a snow-slushed Friday afternoon about all that is crisp and cool, and the meaning of three-star reviews.
PRIDE: Is there a school of Chicago cooking right now, with simplified cuisine emphasizing freshness and quality?
MCCLAIN: Yeah. Absolutely. I'm sure it's going on all over, but I think Chicago had a definite gap, a need for it. You had your high-end restaurants that started back with Charlie [Trotter]. Very high-line and very oriented around the presentation. Then you had your true, blue-collar solid Midwestern food on the other side. Blackbird is the pre-eminent example [of how] you can put out tremendous food with a lot of heart and a lot of style and not do it in a way that intimidates people, that it's very approachable.
PRIDE: You mean, the quality shows, but it isn't incomprehensible, it's not, "Oh this is good for you." You understand it in the first bite.
MCCLAIN: Yeah. [Blackbird] also incorporated a lot of the smaller markets and farms into the menu, things like that.
PRIDE: But it's also hand-in-hand, isn't it? More restaurants using local, specific produce means more farmers can subsist or succeed. Is that important to you?
MCCLAIN: Absolutely. I think as you get farther along in this business, you start to realize different things. In my case, as I get older and more mature in my cooking, the old adage of going back to the fundamentals, the basics, really grows more important. When you look at those fundamentals, you want a new purity is those products. You meet these farmers who have that same kind of passion about what they do—these products of the earth, like vegetables—it inspires you to support them. Just today I had an interview with a guy from Indiana who's part of the Green City Market, he's one of the farmers, he's smaller, but he wanted me to go through his seed catalog. He really wants to grow something that we can use. It's a great relationship.
PRIDE: There's that great romantic image of the chef going to the green market or the meat market at dawn, deciding the day's special—aha!—in that moment. But the seed catalogue, it's like you're getting to browse for what you'll have in twelve weeks—
MCCLAIN: —Sometimes forty weeks. We're talking all the way through to the fall. The old romantic, go-to-the-market and pick tonight's meal [image] is an idealism, and everybody would love for that to happen, but in reality, you serve a lot of people every day and you have to have some food available every day of the week. Mike Altenberg at Campagnola in Evanston is 100 percent organic and political-minded about it, which I have completely respect for, but that's a hard business decision to follow through. For me, it's finding a balance, doing as much as I can to support the smaller guy and independents.
PRIDE: The ideals sound great, but how do you deal with volume when you require these micro-produced ingredients? Is your turnover of meals higher than it was at Trio?
MCCLAIN: The volume here, we're doing three times the amount of sheer people, four times as many as at Trio. That changes the whole dynamic of everything down to preparation of single ingredients, to producing enough for keeping your menu. We did a lot of tasting menus there; we have yet to start that here. It's a learning process every day.
PRIDE: How long have you been open?
MCCLAIN: Seven months.
PRIDE: The kitchen didn't seem be-grimed and aged like a long-term kitchen, lived and cooked-in but walking in, my eye was drawn to how every corner seems to have something stuffed in it, different things above and around every station, as if things had found a place that at least one person knows why it's there.
MCCLAIN: Oh, I hope so. We're in a very tight spot back there. The geography of the space itself forced us to put the kitchen there. It has to be, has to be efficient. For an organization of a business, it also means better productivity and I like to be organized on top of that.
PRIDE: There's two kinds of acclaim. Folks writing about the hot new flavor, then the customers who come back. Which is more gratifying? What's the virtue of each? You have a successful business, that's a start, you get to keep your job, you get to keep working at your cuisine.
MCCLAIN: That's an interesting question. Because there's an image of myself, and I've opened the restaurant with Sue and Peter, it's a shared partnership. We had very modest expectations. Our plan and our goals were for the business to be profitable, to create an environment for our employees that we'd all enjoy. Restaurant communities have a lot of family-oriented things around the business. It's taken off quite a bit and a lot of the focus is on me. I'm not real comfortable with that. But what I enjoy about that part is what it does for the staff. It makes the staff very proud of the restaurant, and they're proud to say they work here. Not because people are writing [about us], but that helps. It helps people who are learning the business. On the other hand, which is much more important to me, we're learning our first business. We are succeeding thus far. And it's very early in the scheme of things, but that, to me, takes the pressure off day to day so that we can put more emphasis on creating an environment where people want to work. That's always been our goal. It's never been money, it's never been fame and acclaim and all that stuff. But in this day and age, in the restaurant business, you open a restaurant and you need public relations. It's unbelievable. It's really important how you market to get your name out there.
PRIDE: I'm always gratified to linger around a restaurant bar during the National Restaurant show and see all the chefs schmoozing, the booze in front of them, and after the round of Chef Paul this is Chef Dave from Cleveland, this is Chef John from Kansas City, it gets down to talking about meals. Just food. Nothing about the business, the press.
MCCLAIN: Yep. Yep. Yeah. It's, y'know, it can be glamorized by the Food Network, but the true people doing the craft are just that, craftsmen who are interested in what they're doing, passionate about what they're doing and they try to do something different, and make their own niche. We thrive so much on our contemporaries. We get so much information from each other. It's very hard to stand alone and take credit because there's so much that you take from people and you borrow. You make it your own, but...
PRIDE: Then you're back up again the next day at some god-awful hour doing it all again. Another day taking the heat.
MCCLAIN: That's good, though. That's the good part of it. If it was just a matter of just coming in and cooking? That would be a nice day. It's all the other stuff that gets thrown in that kind of takes your day for a ride. Being an owner for the first time, a principal owner, all that other stuff comes in quite a bit!
PRIDE: The desserts are your own. Isn't that unusual for a chef to take on? Looking over the menu, it seems like you're worked flavor complements through the entire meal. Why is that important to you?
MCCLAIN: Since I've been in Chicago and formulating my own style, say, in the last five to ten years, I noticed a lot of restaurants with outstanding food, across the board great service, and then really putting the last emphasis on dessert. Creativity-wise, they went by old standards, which are fine, some of the classics are great. But I felt like a lot of people were just like, "Aw, it's just dessert."
PRIDE: We've got some chocolate, we've got some berries—
MCCLAIN: Right, right. It is challenging in that way to create something different, but you have so much room to do things with flavors, whether they're savory flavors or dessert. Chefs I've worked for and with put a lot of effort into creating interesting things out of savory food, but I just couldn't figure out why they didn't spend the same amount of time on their desserts. I thought, when I do have my own restaurant, I want to make the desserts different. I want to try different things. Another thing I don't see on a lot of menus, is our desserts are printed on the regular menu. So you get a chance to see them, which I think—
PRIDE: As a diner, you get to consider how it all fits together instead of, this is an afterthought.
MCCLAIN: Exactly. You go to a restaurant, "Are you ready for dessert, or would you like dessert," I wish I had known, that sounds good, I wish I had known. Different menus are presented for dessert, but [we give] you a chance to have a sneak peek. It fits the overall theme of the experience from start to finish.
PRIDE: You used the phrase "mature cooking." Define that. And where are you headed?
MCCLAIN: I went through a time where I worked for chefs, in the late eighties, early nineties, who were more about presentation, more about the Wow effect. There was that whole eye candy, sensory overload that first started. The focus was much more on presentation. As I grew up and took some more time in the cooking, I think your priorities change back to the simplicity of flavors. Now I just look for: how can I make this as simple as possible, still present well, have some color contrasts and maybe I use a different kind of plate with a different kind of food, but I want the food to be the focus. I want to look at the individual ingredients now. Say instead of buying carrots from a high-line producer, [buying] mass-produced carrots which are genetically altered, which a lot of vegetables are, which are fine, they look great but they don't taste like they should. These are vegetables I've grown up on. But I'd like to get back and understand what food can taste like.
[Newcity, 7 February 2003]
BUCKTOWN'S SPRING RESTAURANT is one of the most celebrated of the past year's openings. Seven months in, it's exceeded the expectations of partners Sue-Kim Drohomyrecky, Peter Drohomyrecky and 34-year-old chef Shawn McClain. After seven well-received years as chef/partner at Evanston's four-star Trio, McClain wanted to expand on what he knew as both manager and a chef, and to work with innovative cuisine in a more affordable setting. McClain believes in simplicity, and we talked on a snow-slushed Friday afternoon about all that is crisp and cool, and the meaning of three-star reviews.
PRIDE: Is there a school of Chicago cooking right now, with simplified cuisine emphasizing freshness and quality?
MCCLAIN: Yeah. Absolutely. I'm sure it's going on all over, but I think Chicago had a definite gap, a need for it. You had your high-end restaurants that started back with Charlie [Trotter]. Very high-line and very oriented around the presentation. Then you had your true, blue-collar solid Midwestern food on the other side. Blackbird is the pre-eminent example [of how] you can put out tremendous food with a lot of heart and a lot of style and not do it in a way that intimidates people, that it's very approachable.
PRIDE: You mean, the quality shows, but it isn't incomprehensible, it's not, "Oh this is good for you." You understand it in the first bite.
MCCLAIN: Yeah. [Blackbird] also incorporated a lot of the smaller markets and farms into the menu, things like that.
PRIDE: But it's also hand-in-hand, isn't it? More restaurants using local, specific produce means more farmers can subsist or succeed. Is that important to you?
MCCLAIN: Absolutely. I think as you get farther along in this business, you start to realize different things. In my case, as I get older and more mature in my cooking, the old adage of going back to the fundamentals, the basics, really grows more important. When you look at those fundamentals, you want a new purity is those products. You meet these farmers who have that same kind of passion about what they do—these products of the earth, like vegetables—it inspires you to support them. Just today I had an interview with a guy from Indiana who's part of the Green City Market, he's one of the farmers, he's smaller, but he wanted me to go through his seed catalog. He really wants to grow something that we can use. It's a great relationship.
PRIDE: There's that great romantic image of the chef going to the green market or the meat market at dawn, deciding the day's special—aha!—in that moment. But the seed catalogue, it's like you're getting to browse for what you'll have in twelve weeks—
MCCLAIN: —Sometimes forty weeks. We're talking all the way through to the fall. The old romantic, go-to-the-market and pick tonight's meal [image] is an idealism, and everybody would love for that to happen, but in reality, you serve a lot of people every day and you have to have some food available every day of the week. Mike Altenberg at Campagnola in Evanston is 100 percent organic and political-minded about it, which I have completely respect for, but that's a hard business decision to follow through. For me, it's finding a balance, doing as much as I can to support the smaller guy and independents.
PRIDE: The ideals sound great, but how do you deal with volume when you require these micro-produced ingredients? Is your turnover of meals higher than it was at Trio?
MCCLAIN: The volume here, we're doing three times the amount of sheer people, four times as many as at Trio. That changes the whole dynamic of everything down to preparation of single ingredients, to producing enough for keeping your menu. We did a lot of tasting menus there; we have yet to start that here. It's a learning process every day.
PRIDE: How long have you been open?
MCCLAIN: Seven months.
PRIDE: The kitchen didn't seem be-grimed and aged like a long-term kitchen, lived and cooked-in but walking in, my eye was drawn to how every corner seems to have something stuffed in it, different things above and around every station, as if things had found a place that at least one person knows why it's there.
MCCLAIN: Oh, I hope so. We're in a very tight spot back there. The geography of the space itself forced us to put the kitchen there. It has to be, has to be efficient. For an organization of a business, it also means better productivity and I like to be organized on top of that.
PRIDE: There's two kinds of acclaim. Folks writing about the hot new flavor, then the customers who come back. Which is more gratifying? What's the virtue of each? You have a successful business, that's a start, you get to keep your job, you get to keep working at your cuisine.
MCCLAIN: That's an interesting question. Because there's an image of myself, and I've opened the restaurant with Sue and Peter, it's a shared partnership. We had very modest expectations. Our plan and our goals were for the business to be profitable, to create an environment for our employees that we'd all enjoy. Restaurant communities have a lot of family-oriented things around the business. It's taken off quite a bit and a lot of the focus is on me. I'm not real comfortable with that. But what I enjoy about that part is what it does for the staff. It makes the staff very proud of the restaurant, and they're proud to say they work here. Not because people are writing [about us], but that helps. It helps people who are learning the business. On the other hand, which is much more important to me, we're learning our first business. We are succeeding thus far. And it's very early in the scheme of things, but that, to me, takes the pressure off day to day so that we can put more emphasis on creating an environment where people want to work. That's always been our goal. It's never been money, it's never been fame and acclaim and all that stuff. But in this day and age, in the restaurant business, you open a restaurant and you need public relations. It's unbelievable. It's really important how you market to get your name out there.
PRIDE: I'm always gratified to linger around a restaurant bar during the National Restaurant show and see all the chefs schmoozing, the booze in front of them, and after the round of Chef Paul this is Chef Dave from Cleveland, this is Chef John from Kansas City, it gets down to talking about meals. Just food. Nothing about the business, the press.
MCCLAIN: Yep. Yep. Yeah. It's, y'know, it can be glamorized by the Food Network, but the true people doing the craft are just that, craftsmen who are interested in what they're doing, passionate about what they're doing and they try to do something different, and make their own niche. We thrive so much on our contemporaries. We get so much information from each other. It's very hard to stand alone and take credit because there's so much that you take from people and you borrow. You make it your own, but...
PRIDE: Then you're back up again the next day at some god-awful hour doing it all again. Another day taking the heat.
MCCLAIN: That's good, though. That's the good part of it. If it was just a matter of just coming in and cooking? That would be a nice day. It's all the other stuff that gets thrown in that kind of takes your day for a ride. Being an owner for the first time, a principal owner, all that other stuff comes in quite a bit!
PRIDE: The desserts are your own. Isn't that unusual for a chef to take on? Looking over the menu, it seems like you're worked flavor complements through the entire meal. Why is that important to you?
MCCLAIN: Since I've been in Chicago and formulating my own style, say, in the last five to ten years, I noticed a lot of restaurants with outstanding food, across the board great service, and then really putting the last emphasis on dessert. Creativity-wise, they went by old standards, which are fine, some of the classics are great. But I felt like a lot of people were just like, "Aw, it's just dessert."
PRIDE: We've got some chocolate, we've got some berries—
MCCLAIN: Right, right. It is challenging in that way to create something different, but you have so much room to do things with flavors, whether they're savory flavors or dessert. Chefs I've worked for and with put a lot of effort into creating interesting things out of savory food, but I just couldn't figure out why they didn't spend the same amount of time on their desserts. I thought, when I do have my own restaurant, I want to make the desserts different. I want to try different things. Another thing I don't see on a lot of menus, is our desserts are printed on the regular menu. So you get a chance to see them, which I think—
PRIDE: As a diner, you get to consider how it all fits together instead of, this is an afterthought.
MCCLAIN: Exactly. You go to a restaurant, "Are you ready for dessert, or would you like dessert," I wish I had known, that sounds good, I wish I had known. Different menus are presented for dessert, but [we give] you a chance to have a sneak peek. It fits the overall theme of the experience from start to finish.
PRIDE: You used the phrase "mature cooking." Define that. And where are you headed?
MCCLAIN: I went through a time where I worked for chefs, in the late eighties, early nineties, who were more about presentation, more about the Wow effect. There was that whole eye candy, sensory overload that first started. The focus was much more on presentation. As I grew up and took some more time in the cooking, I think your priorities change back to the simplicity of flavors. Now I just look for: how can I make this as simple as possible, still present well, have some color contrasts and maybe I use a different kind of plate with a different kind of food, but I want the food to be the focus. I want to look at the individual ingredients now. Say instead of buying carrots from a high-line producer, [buying] mass-produced carrots which are genetically altered, which a lot of vegetables are, which are fine, they look great but they don't taste like they should. These are vegetables I've grown up on. But I'd like to get back and understand what food can taste like.
[Newcity, 7 February 2003]
