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New talent mixes with 10 years of tradition in Cottonwood’s kitchen |
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Written by Paul Raymore
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Thursday, 20 March 2008 |
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In the tumultuous pressure cooker that is a high-end restaurant kitchen, chef turnover is just a fact of life. So when you come across a restaurant that has been able to hold onto a chef — who isn’t also the owner of the joint — for 10 years, something rare must be going on.
Such is the case at Truckee’s Cottonwood Restaurant, where Executive Chef David Smith is celebrating his 10th year in the kitchen with the addition of a talented duo — Sous Chef, Justin Murrah, and Line Cook, Ryan Smith.
The Tahoe World’s Paul Raymore sat down with Smith and Murrah recently to get a sense of what the new blood in Cottonwood’s kitchen will bring to the restaurant’s menu, and what 10 years at one restaurant means to a chef.
 • On turnover in the kitchen:
“It’s definitely different up here because you don’t have the number of restaurants. You can only work your way around so long. You see people do it: They come up here and in three years they’ve worked at every place in town and then they have to leave because there’s no where else to work.” - David Smith
• On what 10 years in one kitchen is like:
“I love a lot of things actually. Mike and Jan are great to work for — it’s nice to work for people versus a corporation. And they give me a ton of flexibility towards cooking and basically let me do whatever I want. So if we want to cook Indian food one day, we cook Indian food; we don’t have to have it OKed. And if we want to come in the next day and make barbecue, that’s cool too. Or if we want to have all those things on the menu next to each other... I just love that. Food and cooking in general are just so passionate. All of a sudden something will hit you and you’re like: Great, I want to do this today. And then the next day you’re flipping through a magazine at home and find something that you want to do. That’s just awesome. I’m sure there are some other places like that, but there aren’t a lot of them.” - David Smith
• On the creative side of cooking:
“ You might have a bad day, but you just walk in that kitchen, put your head down and start cooking, and change that aggression to love and push that out into the food.” - Justin Murrah
• On being a chef:
“It’s just nice to be inspired. I think that 50 percent of people in the world hate their jobs and they’re just miserable. I can’t imagine that. Everyone has moments — there are moments when you’re like, “I hate this business.” — but more often than not I’m pretty happy to be here, enjoy what I do and feel good at the end of the day. It’s not saving the world or something like that, but I’m trying to make people have a good time and have a good experience.” - David Smith
“It’s fun, and it’s a great business, but it’s hard sometimes. Thinking about everybody else you know that’s not in the business, and they’re coming home at 5:30 p.m. and cooking dinner, having a couple glasses of wine and relaxing. But in this business you get here around lunch time and don’t leave until after 10 p.m. And you get home and you’re still fired up from being so active all night, so you just sit there and tap your foot until like 3 a.m. and then it’s right back in here.” - Justin Murrah
“When you do 300 dinners in a night, even if it goes relatively smooth, it still works you. Literally, for 10 hours you don’t have a minute. In a perfect world you have five minutes before you open to walk outside and breath or have a cup of coffee, but that’s a luxury.” - David Smith
 • On how much of the business you learn in school versus working in a kitchen:
“I had a teacher in school who said, ‘Don’t get a notion that when you walk out of here you’re going to be the next big chef. School teaches you how to be a chef, it doesn’t teach you how to be a line cook,’ he said. ‘You’re going to have to bust your a** to get anywhere.’ And I think that at this point I’ve learned more in the actual kitchen than I ever could have at culinary school.
“There are some basic things like butchering that I had never done before... You definitely learn things like that. But it’s a whole lot different looking at a book in a laboratory-style kitchen and putting things together as somebody is telling you to as opposed to having 75 tickets hanging and people still walking in the door, chefs yelling at you, and everybody on the line is loud, it’s like 600 degrees, you’re running out of things... it’s a different world.” - Justin Murrah
“And along those same lines, you can give two people the same recipe and the same ingredients, and one guy will make something that’s crap, and the guy next to him will make something that’s out of this world. Just following something by the book isn’t necessarily going to get you there.” - David Smith
• On having fresh blood in the Cottonwood kitchen:
“I’ve been really happy to have Justin here just to have somebody to light a fire under me and be like, ‘Let’s do this.’ or ‘Let’s get this in.’ For the last few years, if I wasn’t coming up with the ideas, there wasn’t anybody coming up with them. Which is challenging to constantly have to come up with five specials a night.
“In the slow season, you get all sorts of time and energy and make great stuff, then nobody shows up to eat it. And then in the busy season you’re just so busy that a lot of times you go with what you know works — stuff in your repertoire.
“So it’s been really nice having Justin, and also [new line cook] Ryan [Smith], and having someone here to whom I can say, ‘This is what I have in mind. Go execute it for me.’” - David Smith
• On the seasonality of Tahoe:
“Luckily, we do a really good locals business. And the slow seasons, since I started working here, are getting less and less. Now we maybe have a month in the spring and a month in the fall. And when I first started working here it seemed like three months in the spring and three months in the fall. And I think the challenges of being slow are actually worse than being busy.” - David Smith
 • On Cottonwood’s food:
“Eclectic is a good word for what we do here. Any influence from anywhere is welcome. It’s pretty common to have something on the menu with Asian influence right next to something that’s classic Americana or French... which I think is exciting. Personally, in the last few years, I’ve gotten into using fresh and as local of ingredients as you can get around here.
“There’s an organic farm up north - Sierra Valley Farms - that we get stuff from. And there’s a farm out of Sacramento called Del Rio Farms that we’ve been getting stuff from. We’re just really trying to take advantage of California in the summer. There’s just so much going on.” - David Smith
“In my opinion, it’s the best state to be a chef in because it’s amazing some of the food you can get here. Especially in the summertime.” - Justin Murrah
“You can really be simple with good food. You don’t need to slather it with stuff because the food speaks for itself.” - David Smith
• On the future of Cottonwood:
“Personally I would like to see us remain as competitive as we always have been. And I think, as more and more stuff gets developed up here, we need to continue to excel and troubleshoot. With every day there’s something you need to continue to improve. And also really have your finger on the trends of what people want. The difference between what people want on a Tuesday in October when it’s all locals and a Tuesday during Christmas week are drastic. So really knowing our people and what they want is key...
“Up here you can’t exist without locals. They’re your word of mouth and they’re your bread and butter. In the off-season they keep you working. And it’s also the guy in the ski shop who’s in here once a week eating burgers who sees 100 people on a Friday night who are asking him where to go for dinner. So we really need to keep that in mind for everybody.” - David Smith
Cottonwood Sous Chef Justin Murrah bio:
Age: 28
Grew up in Texas.
Left Texas at age 18.
Went to college briefly to study Outdoor Recreation. Found himself in classrooms all day studying outdoor recreation instead of being outdoors recreating. Decided it wasn’t for him.
Went to North Carolina and worked as a river rafting guide for eight years.
Realized that he didn’t really have a career-type job.
Moved to San Francisco to enroll in the California Culinary Academy.
He had been cooking since age 16, but had never really though about doing it professionally until then: “Well, about the only things I knew how to do are guide rafts and cook. And I don’t want to be a raft guide for the rest of my life.”
While in school he worked for Rob Riescher, chef at Tablespoon Bistro in San Francisco, who taught him to appreciate bistro-style food.
Worked at the Fifth Floor and the Grand Café before jumping to Aqua in San Francisco along with chef Ron Boyd: “I walked through those doors and it was one of the most amazing places I’ve ever worked in terms of food, the drive [of the staff] and the overall professionalism of the establishment. It was super super hard work, and super super long hours, and super super bad pay.”
His girlfriend was moving back to the States from Italy and they decided to move to the Tahoe area, where she grew up.
He had a job before he even came up to Tahoe.
Worked there for seven days.
Realized it wasn’t the right job for him.
Next went to the West Shore Cafe in Homewood.
Loved the job but disliked his commute from Kings Beach every day.
Saw a listing for the Cottonwood job on Craig’s List.
Spoke with Cottonwood Executive Chef David Smith.
Got the job.
Here he is.
“I was mainly drawn to the place because Dave had been here for 10 years. So I was thinking that if he’s been here for 10 years then something’s definitely moving in the right direction. Especially coming out of the city because the chef turnover rate [in San Francisco] is every year and a half or two years somebody is leaving or moving or whatever.”
Cottonwood Executive Chef David Smith bio:
Started working in restaurants at age 16 - washing dishes and bussing tables - then worked his way up.
Started cooking at 17 or so.
Worked in a Mexican restaurant in upstate New York where his line was six microwaves. He was the bottom of the line. The chef would hand him something, he would put cheese on it and melt it. That was his whole job. “Unfortunately, it’s still open and the same people still own it. The food’s horrible, but my parents still go back there. They take me back there every time I go home.” However, he did learn some things about the restaurant business there that he still employs. “They were great owners.”
Went to college and majored in psychology/anthropology.
Moved to Tahoe to ski for a winter.
Took a job at Squaw teaching skiing.
Realized he could make more money cooking at night and just buying a pass.
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