This episode celebrates the diverse Middle Eastern flavors that are part of the Midwestern culinary landscape. Meet Zehorit Heilicher (https://www.instagram.com/mideast_to_midwest/?hl=en) , a Yemenite raised in Israel who is now a Minnesota based culinary instructor behind the website mideasttomidwest.com (https://www.mideasttomidwest.com/) . And, get a taste of Galit (https://www.galitrestaurant.com/) , a Middle Eastern fine dining restaurant in Chicago. I will talk with their co-owner and chef, James Beard Award winner Zach Engel (https://www.instagram.com/zjengel/?hl=en) .
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hey everybody I’m Nick Leighton and I’m Leah Bama and we’re the hosts of Were You Raised by Wolves each week we try to make the world a Kinder nicer Place well that’s the idea at least I mean we try have you ever wondered what to do if you’re ghosted or what to do when a friend asks you to borrow money or the proper way to eat Cheetos you know the big questions so please find Where You Raised by Wolves wherever you listen [Music] you’re listening to Heritage Radio [Music] network hrn is food radio supported by you learn more at heritag R network.org this episode is brought to you by the second annual Catskill Cuisine Festival visit Catskill cuisine.com to learn more and buy [Music] tickets this is cpri Cafaro host of each your Heartland out on the next episode we are celebrating the diverse Middle Eastern flavors that are part of the midwestern culinary landscape meet zit heilinger a yemenite raised in Israel who is now a Minnesota based culinary instructor behind the website mid East to Midwest and get a taste of galit a middle eastern fine dining restaurant in Chicago I’ll talk to their co-owner and Chef Zach angle zor we’re excited to have you on the program thank you thanks for having me so where are you where are you based now uh Minneapolis uh for the past 36 years oh fantastic so you you’ve been based in the Twin Cities for a long time but um you grew up in Israel is that correct that’s correct I was born and raised in Israel and um ended up um moving to Minneapolis in the mid uh late 80s so you ended up coming to Minneapolis St Paul 36 years ago you grew up in Israel but um if I recall correctly you um are Yemen as well correct that’s correct my my parents um came to Israel in 1949 uh from s and um I uh was raised in a very Multicultural neighborhood um we had our cluster of family members who were from Yemen and we had all around us people from uh Morocco and Romania and Iran and Iraq and um from Russia um Holocaust Survivors North Africans um so it was a very diverse Community to grow up in and uh you know everything that was celebrated through food and music and traditions was shared throughout the neighborhood so I feel very fortunate to have been exposed to so much richness of culture absolutely I there’s there’s no um replacement for something like that I mean you you it’s such a a unique environment to be able to live in uh and you know be able to share uh such a variety of different types of of uh cultural Traditions uh like you said food music uh and I can imagine that that really had informed you know your experience not only growing up but maybe even coming to uh the the Twin Cities to Minneapolis St Paul um and recognizing the value that food has when it comes to um bringing cultures and communities together yes I I’m really fascinated by how you know history everything from let’s say the spice trade and um um you know World Trends really shaped of the food that we eat and we take for granted and um um how food actually Fosters communication and closeness and intimacy and you know I think when you invite someone into your home and you share with them food that is close to your heart or is um rooted in your culture and and share that part of yourself that opens up a lot of doors for conversation that otherwise would not be open absolutely uh I I couldn’t agree more and you know i’ I’ve spoken to a lot of different organizations and individuals and uh in many walks alive uh life over the years doing this show now for almost 4 years believe it or not and um you know when I I’ve spoken to folks particularly um you know I I am just recalling some conversations I I had with um women who’ come over from uh Afghanistan Syria Iraq um you and and also parts of East Africa uh like Atria and Ethiopia and um in communities in the midwest uh you know resettling and um using food as this way to communic um and share about their culture um in their new home um and so I’ve always found it very powerful um and and in your own experience uh what kind of foods you you mentioned um you know when you share food um that’s close to your heart um maybe give us some examples of some kind you know any kind of food that you know you really feel is important to you um and and really is expressive of of you know your community and your culture well um that’s that’s a really interesting question because um in a way um you know as a y Jew uh yemenite Jews developed a lot of um customs and Foods around Shabbat since they were living in a Muslim Community and um we have um a slew of um um types of breads that actually bake overnight for Shabbat that have become so popular in Israel that you can find them in the freezer sections in Israel so I’m I’m going to give the example of jnun which um my kids Jun and Kuban there those are two types of breads that basically you make on a Friday you place in the oven overnight and you eat it on Saturday morning um and that’s sort of to comply with the Jewish um tradition of not working on Shabbat on the Sabbath so so you don’t have to make food and um that bread is this the jaon is this delicate um almost rolled up uh if you can imagine like a cigar but literally like a tobacco cigar but made out of thin dough that’s rolled up and baked overnight until it’s really browned and caramelly and with some eggs that are roasted on that low temperature overnight as well and you eat it in the morning with um grated tomato and hog which is a yemenite um hot sauce um and along with the eggs and it’s just this and you drizzle over it um s which is a yemenite clarified butter that is a butter roasted with um um toasted fener Greek seeds so that is very very specifically yeminite and I I have four children who are all grown and are away from home and when we all get together at our home the one thing that they ask for is a yite Shabbat breakfast and um it’s kind of a tradition we sit together and when I have um company over the weekend you know people who actually stay with me overnight um very often I will make that as a sort of as a gateway to to explain how yemenite food was actually influenced by Indian food cuz Yemen is the last port of the spice tray before you know Caravans would go through Saudi Arabia on Camel backs before the sweats Canal was open so yemenite Cuisine has a lot of different spices that normally people identify with Indian food like fenre and cardamom um Ginger those kind of spices um so it’s it’s kind of opens up a really interesting conversations about trade and migration and culture and influence and um so um I I really love to introduce people to um that slice of Yemen food and then I I love to talk about North African food and because I think sometimes people think of Jewish food um especially in the states in America people think of Jewish food as Gila fish matab Bal soup um bagels and cream cheese and lxs um and and not to say that is not identified with the the Jewish culture as well but that’s traditionally Jews who migrated to Europe This is not Jews who were expelled or migrated to North Africa Yemen India um Afghanistan uh bukara um all of those places that that that is a very very different kind of food culture yes yes absolutely and and I think you know You’ put this so eloquently uh you know how food uh is not only a gateway to open conversations but is a is a very unique tool to be able to uh capture uh you know aspects of migration immigration trade um and and tells a very you know specific story that you know I feel only food can do I mean you know what you just described as far as you know um why there is a a substantial Indian influence on uh yeny food um you know you wouldn’t have necessar I would I certainly wouldn’t have known um but it makes total sense and all of a sudden you know you’re realizing that that these flavors um end up in certain places for a very specific reason so you get you get a history lesson a geography lesson uh an agricultural lesson uh you know alongside that that greater cultural conversation yeah you know when I I was um when I moved moved here I was exposed to Mexican food and um you know I uh I love El pastor tacos and then I I researched it a little bit and then found out that it has actually a Greek influence it’s actually Greek immigrants to Mexico who developed that so it’s like you know it’s it’s very interesting to see how you know what a taco that we think of as very traditionally Mexican is actually a different cultures influence on Mexican food you know so I think you know when we look at the world and how we think about food I think it’s very important to tell the story you know like when I I teach cooking classes and when I teach a certain recipe I love to tell the you know sort of identify the DNA of a recipe and um and say well this originated this is actually a originally a Palestinian recipe and Israeli um Iraqis took it and added this and Israeli yemenis added that and now it’s become part of Israeli Cuisine and while the roots are let’s say Palestinians or Iraqi or um Russian now it’s um you know sort of morphed into something different and um I love to tell how when you enter an Israeli restaurant sort of kind of a workers restaurant um the one thing that you get without as just as you you sit down um the owners will just put in front of you a spread of um small plates like a MZ kind of thing and the small plates if you start identifying what’s on the small plates it’s like the Jewish diaspora on the table you a Russ a Russian egg salad you will have a Romanian corn salad you will have a Moroccan carrot salad you will have yemenites hog which is the spicy sauce you will have um um you know Iraqi um pepper salad all all of these things are representations of the different ethnic groups who ended up in Israel and and that that plate is to me it it’s it’s just like a map of Jewish communities from around the world and um I I find that fascinating you know absolutely uh and you know uh I mean again so so poignant and I think it shows when you have all those things on on the same plate how uh we can learn about one another and I think sometimes recognize that we have more in common uh than than maybe we realize um so I want to kind of just switch gears back to you know you you ended up coming to the United States um um moving to the Minneapolis St Paul area about 36 years ago um and obviously you came from this incredibly Rich culinary uh you know uh backstory for lack of a better term uh and you’re still making all of these incredible dishes but was was there a bit of a a a challenge trying to find some of the ingredients that you would need to make these authentic dishes in one way shape or form that you were trying to you know bring these flavors to the table uh in the United States uh you know I I’ve seen a huge change in availability of ingredients in the country since you know for the last 15 20 years but first you know a little bit of um confession you know when I moved here I I must admit that I took my culture and the food of my culture for granted you know it was available to me I I didn’t think twice of it I didn’t even like cooking you know and and then I moved here and all of a sudden the things that were available to me as a matter of course were completely absent not only absent people didn’t even know what I was talking about um the only spice that I could really uh Trust on finding was cardamom because it was part of the Swedish Norwegian bacing tradition you know and that’s a big part of the uh you know the Scandinavian influence is a big part of the uh culture of the Upper Midwest right right so people were very familiar with that but interestingly only in ground form you know people were not familiar if I showed someone the Pod of a cardamom they didn’t know what it was you know so it was very interesting but I I’ve seen a tremendous change and I think um everything from um curiosity about other cultures and about other other foods and traditions um availability of ingredients um a very strong interest in um eating and grow and and um uh and cooking local and seasonal which I think is a tremendous tremendous move that is happening in the country and I I love to see that um and and I think in some regards moving to Minnesota which is such a cultural I mean agricultural state at first I was um a little bit stumped like how can this be such an agricultural State and and have so many things um unavailable um but over time a I learned how to Source things here and find my little ethnic grocers that carried some of the things that I needed um and then slowly that movement you know moved into the bigger supermarkets and to the farmers markets and um in Minnesota we have a wonderful wonderful M Community um who are a big part of our farmers markets and they provide such beautiful products um during the summer that uh you know I go to the farmers market I have my favorite few vendors that I have a relationship with and um everything from beautiful fresh herbs to beautiful fresh products and a lot of them are now growing without pesticides and um as organic as possible a lot of them cannot AFF certification but you know to the spirit of it yes yes that’s a different story yeah um so yes I do see a huge change and I applaud it you know uh and speaking of local just yesterday you know I love discovering um local Artisans that are um really raising the bar as far as quality of products and just yesterday I um discovered a locally produced uh vanilla extract and vanilla paste right here in Minnesota in the Twin Cities um oh incredible this company yeah this company called um the vanilla bean project and um Sarah and Andy kubak um just decided to be really uh Forward Thinking and they are um supporting women in um Madagascar in in in Papua New Guinea and uh are doing regenerative organic farming there and producing this beautiful beautiful vanilla extract and paste and I can’t wait to start using it you know local and supporting women and it’s just a beautiful project so um I love discovering that and highlighting that in my website as well um and encouraging people to support you know Artisans that are trying to do good in the work through in the world through the food industry absolutely so let’s talk actually a little bit about your um your website um and your your cooking classes and the works the work that you’ve done uh how did you decide that you were going to you know create this website and and share recipes and and you know stories around um you know your culinary activities and your travels as well well you know um my my husband U Matt is a very um um solid partner he I’m I’m a bit a bit like that you know like that dog in the Disney uh the the Disney movie like squirrel you know I’m like following the squirrels wherever they show up I’m very spontaneous and Matt my husband is very good at um helping me um uh process things and things things through very methodically and one of the things that I discovered as I was trying different things in the food industry um I was dabbling in teaching dabbling in catering dabbling in um I had a food line for a year where I produced to order um Middle Eastern items everything from Kus to eggplant to soups and and all of that and one of the things he encouraged me to do is to experiment with different aspects of the food industry and find what works well for me what really resonates for me um I’m an English Le major from the University of Tel Aviv and writing has always been part of my life and I found that um standing in the kitchen and producing for catering or for a food line um while I love the food I love the interaction with people much more so and it really energizes me to interact with people so I tried focusing on the cooking classes and that was a Fabulous Fit for me and then I started I wanted to share the recipes and the stories to a wider audience which is part of the reason I started the website um and I find the two complement one another because they both the in my cooking classes in the in in the website I try to combine food with storytelling um yes because I think every recipe has a story behind it and we um we relate differently to food food um you know food nourishes not just our bodies our souls as well if it’s prepared with love if we know you know this is a recipe from great grandma and she carried it in her pocket on the boat from you know from let’s say Ireland okay um that’s there there’s a meaning there there a comfort and a connection in the food that wouldn’t exist and um a friend of mine who’s a physician said to me at one point which I thought was so poignant he said we talk about food and we talk about calories but we forget that calories are energy they’re energy so the energy you put into making something the energy that you invest in feeling about the food and about presenting the food is the energy the person receiving it is going to get and that stayed with me for years and the thought of what am I you know what am I offering I’m not just offering food I’m offering a piece of myself and that’s that’s powerful when I do that when I do that and try to do that with um with love and openness and some vulnerability most of the time people react in the same way um and and that creates a um a relationship and and a bond that is very um very precious absolutely absolutely uh so you know give us some examples of um some of the cooking classes that you’ve done uh the type of things that you cover and who you welcome into these cooking classes so I’m very very fortunate that um several organizations here in town like the nordicware brand the nordicware teaching kitchen has welcomed me uh there’s a chain of uh kitchen stores here in the Twin Cities called of Crocus Hill that have beautiful teaching kitchens in their stores that I’ve been fortunate to teach so I and then of course in the Jewish community so I’ve been very fortunate to teach in The Wider um a to a wider audience non-jews and Jews as well um and I love that um you know I can walk into a cooking class not knowing who is going to be in the class and I can have someone from um Syria come up to me after class and talk about the similarities and some of the things that I have offered in their childhood memories um and I think as someone from Israel I probably would never have a chance to talk to somebody from Syria in that way you know there’s something about breaking those boundaries that the food allows us to do which I love um so I try and offer um on one hand um I I call it Mediterranean SL Middle Eastern uh contemporary Cuisine so I um while my food is rooted in classical Middle Eastern and I do teach like classical Middle Eastern appetizers and and um Entre Etc I love to take some of those spices some of those um flavors and create something new so for example just last week I taught a class called um it is Easy Being Green you know that is Kermit song you know yes of course yeah I have a soft spot for Kermit you know I mean who doesn’t green frog in the midst of chaos right yes um and I created a a basically a green menu that focused on um a green dip that was made with um peas and mint and artichoke hearts based on Aden susman’s cookbook um Shabbat and then I created my own um dish where I took the traditional Israeli schnitzel and made a green tapad sauce for it and served it on top of jasmine rice that was folded into uh saute uh Power baby greens that made the green rice the rice green and then we had for dessert we had a pistachio rosew waterer um Cardamom cake so the green throughout and the flavors were Middle Eastern and Mediterranean but the putting them together was contemporary MH that sounds that sounds incredible I mean and you really get creative with with those uh ingredients and um you know how do how do folks react when you when you bring these kind of uh you know different flavors together uh I think uh one of the things um I guess the thread that goes through some of the is surprise you know people very you know people tend to be um a little reluctant to try new things and I tease them in class I tried to create this sort of fun um camaraderie a sense of community in the class you know no stupid questions you know um everybody’s welcome to talk and in interact with me while I’m cooking and and chatting um and people sometimes are so surprised surprised that such simple ingredients that you see on the shelf and you don’t think twice about can create so much flavor and so much texture um and and I love to surprise people that way um and I think people um think that you need to work really hard to create vibrant flavors and I love to teach a few techniques and how to combine um things that have been simmering for a while with something fresh or a little bit Citrus or you know a fresh herb um at the end and how everything just kind of pops and comes to life and just um um giving people um I guess some tips and some tricks um to have up their sleeves so they don’t feel like cooking is a is a chore and to bring back the joy and the enjoyment and I say you don’t have to cook for yourself every day but maybe make a promise to yourself you’ll cook for yourself once a week start with that yeah and and put the music on if you’re into wine pour yourself a glass of wine relax into it um and just enjoy the process as much as sitting down to eat it and before you sit down to eat it make sure that you have a nice play setting that you have a you know um an aesthetic environment to enjoy the food that you worked to produce for yourself and just as a way of um you know getting in incorporating food and preparing it into your self-care routine um I think that’s really important yeah there’s a lot of healing that can be done uh you know and a lot of mindfulness that can be done in the kitchen as well slowing down and and really you know connecting and grounding yourself I love that I I think it’s so valuable for folks and um you know it’s a great way to reconnect with with yourself and and connect with with others around you as well taking that time absolutely and I think as a society we all we are all feeling the absence of that you know we’re all suffering from the absence of that sure no no question about that um so so tell me a little bit about what you know your future plans are I mean you’ve done so many different types of things I know you know you from the cooking classes to sharing recipes to as you said previously you know doing things like catering and I know you’ve also done you know some contributing writing as well for um Publications like edible Minnesota you know what do you see uh as your mission going forward with the work that you’re doing related to food and culture you know there I I have some um Big Dreams and they are all anchored um in a cookbook that I’m uh very slowly working on and hoping that 2024 will be the magical year of putting the cookbook together and hopefully in 25 putting it out there um and uh the I guess the goal for me is to you know this may sound really bombastic but uh um to to try and Foster um um you know closeness between people um a sense of uh Community for people to build communities even if it’s a community uh of communities you know um I I think I see the people who come into my class and in the beginning of the class they’re strangers by the end of the class they’re exchanging phone numbers you know um and Es especially participation classes where I try to really have people interact among themselves and uh you know they will come to me and say well we don’t know how to do that and I say well you’re in charge okay what do you think you know what do you think you know pointing fingers at them and say okay talk to one another you know do you think he did this well how would you that do that differently how can you assist this person um basically to to just um um you know I I think to some degree as a culture we have um [Music] um pursued individualism to such a degree that we lost a sense of community and we need to find an a balance between the two um you know as someone who has four kids that I encourage their independence and they’re all far away from home and living a full life I’m all for that but I think we need to find ways to create communities for ourselves that support us and and food is a vehicle for that you know it creates community and I I’d like to do my part in um helping people eat healthier create Community for themselves find ways to um connect with their roots and their culture and um provide uh you know create a richness of life and I I know it sounds really big and bombastic but I guess baby steps is the way to look at it I I I certainly I don’t think that it’s too big of of a dream I think that it makes a lot of sense I mean you know food is powerful as we’ve been discussing through our entire conversation um you know food can uh can be that you know Storyteller and can be that anchor to bring people together thank you for taking the time and we look forward to um hearing what you do next this is eat your Heartland out with me Capri Cafaro after the break I’ll be welcoming our next guest Chef Zachary Engel the co-owner and operator at galit a middle eastern restaurant in [Music] Chicago gather your friends and family at the second annual Catskill Cuisine Festival presented by the Sullivan Catskills visitors Association bethwood Center for the Arts and Resorts World Cat skills mark your calendars for a flavor packed weekend from May 10th to May 12th experience the Fusion of phenomenal food and electrifying entertainment rub shoulders with your favorite Food Network personalities including Andrew Zimmer Michael Simon Scott connet Marcus Samuelson Jeffrey zakaran Anne barell Melba Wilson and distinguished International chefs by label Farms kick off the festivities with Friday’s stared golf tournament and evening reception Saturday heats up with free tastings thrilling live demos music and family activities culminating with a gourmet dinner hosted by celebrity chefs and on Sunday celebrate Mother’s Day with a special celebrity curated brunch tickets for this celebration are selling like hot cakes visit Catskill cuisine.com to grab your P for this Unforgettable weekend in the picturesque cat skills see you there welcome back to each your Heartland out I’m your host Capri Cafaro this show is all about how the diverse flavors of middle e e Cuisine are part of the midwestern culinary landscape earlier in the program I spoke with culinary instructor and founder of the website mid East to midwest.com zarit hinker now I want to bring in our next guest Zachary angle Zachary is a James Beard award-winning chef and one of the co-owners and operators of galit a gourmet middle eastern restaurant in Chicago that makes a point to use seasonal ingredients grown and produced in the Midwest Jeff Zack thank you you for joining e your Heartland out thanks for having me I am just um so impressed with galit and I have to say I am disappointed that I have not been there yet I don’t often get out to Chicago even though I am in Ohio um Native and reside here in North Eastern Ohio so I guess I need to get on I80 and start traveling west yeah I mean I made that drive a couple of times and it’s not fun I don’t blame you for not getting to Chicago more often well it’s going to have to happens seems like it be closer than is right yeah you know people I think do but it’s really it’s it’s it’s a minute but you know what I it sounds like it’s it’s very worth it to get um you know the kind of a fresh and creative food these Middle Eastern flavors that you are offering at galit so um let’s start out tell us a bit about because you have a pretty um you know extensive background as a chef um you know receiving a number of James Beard Awards I know that you’ve you know been um you know you’ve worked in in kitchens in every place from Philadelphia to Tel Aviv uh and even and up in in the Napa region in Sonoma County uh what brought you um you know to to Chicago to this concept and uh joining forces with your uh your partner in this business um Andreas yeah so I mean after like after cooking in a bunch of places working for a bunch of chefs learning a lot I landed did um back in New Orleans where I went to college uh at Tain um and hooked up uh with my first chef Al Shia and um he hired me as opening chef at Shia which was kind of where my career really jettisoned off um and then it got to a point where he had a couple of restaurants I was a culinary director and I wanted more um for myself for my and New Orleans is sort of a it’s a great town but it’s a small town there was not enough room for me and Alon to operate uh and so the obvious thing was for me to look around and Chicago’s sort of like a decision I made um based off of like what was best for my family uh we had our youngest daughter Margalit was like 6 months old at the time and my wife her mom’s from South so she has some Midwest Roots uh we had a lot of friends here I really liked visiting here I really I really dug sort of the hospitality and warmth of the Midwest yeah and then um my business partner Andre he was working uh as a senior account for one-off Hospitality uh of Blackbeard Publican a fame um and then he was Moonlighting as a Mater D um like sort of host manager at nicoia one of the restaurants and we reconnected uh when he came to visit New Orleans once to go to Saints game and when I decided I was going to come to Chicago I knew I need a business partner and his front of the house style and his expertise in the business side of it also was a really good match um I think on paper we’re a really great fit uh we’re also like the two most stubborn people in the world so it’s uh you know like we’ve never worked together before so it was a very smart partnership um he was a former accountant at deoe for many years um and also went to tulan at the same time as me oh wow um and so uh when I was like Hey I’m going to move to Chicago I think I’m going to open a restaurant do you want to do it he was like he was like uh let me call you back he was like sorry I was actually at work and uh Donnie media was talking to me so I was like maybe not GNA answer answer you at the moment but yes I’d love to to do that and so we just kind of Dove right in um and settled on this space in Lincoln Park and this is now like our neighborhood our home that’s wonderful that’s wonderful and both of you um you know decide have uh brought your experiences and your culinary taste I think to this galit concept which is you know very you know uh Middle Eastern driven in its uh in its dishes uh and in its ingredience I I understand that uh Andreas uh is you know has a Palestinian uh Heritage and you uh are Jewish and has spent a lot of time in Israel and how do how have those culinary experiences informed have you have developed the menu so Andre grew up on holidays um rolling grape leaves and making kibbe with his whole family is sort of like the thing that everyone does there’s actually a picture in the restaurant of multiple generations of women in his family from his mother’s side who are all the Palestinian side um rolling grape leaves and making Ki so it’s like definitely a part of our of our story he grew up with the food but the dude can’t really cook so I take where you yeah yeah um I also like I can’t uh run a reservation system so works out just fine for both of us yeah um and for me you know I really connected at a young age on my first trip to Israel with like the food and the experience and then I went back a couple more times a young adult and then I ended up um cooking there for a period of time and I’ve been studying it and learning about it and eating at restaurants and talking to chefs and it’s just kind of everything is consumed in my life by Middle Eastern food uh I just really love it um I spent time in Israel living with a yemenite Israeli family suburb outside of Tel Aviv and I learned all of their family recipes uh some of which landed on the opening menu ofite wow and um yeah I mean like it’s for us it’s we’re we’re telling this Narrative of food from the area but we’re also telling it in a way that’s familiar and convivial to the Midwest um like our use of seasonal Midwest produce um meat and poultry and fish as well as like grains and other products like all from the Midwest as much as we can and that makes people feel more accustomed to what we’re doing and see the connection or how you can make that connection um and then it’s it has so much to do with like sort of this Hospitality that exists when you walk into someone’s home in my experience like inviting being invited over for dinner or Shabbat dinner in someone’s home and there’s just just like tons of food on the table and people are passing bottles of wine and the conversation is light and there’s music playing and it’s Lively like that is the environment that we try and um imitate here git with with the dinner experience sort of like sit back and relax make a few choices but pretty much we’re just going to give you a lot of food and it’s going to be good that’s right so you have this really interesting you know kind of concept and approach that I can see could really be evocative of uh you know a hospitable warm home with it’s a four course meal as as it says here Choose Your Own Adventure uh and you know you have a number of different courses that you can select and and one you talked about using Midwestern um ingredients something that stood out here is walleye um you know which is very much the pride of the Great Lakes um how much time do you spend trying to develop the dishes and the flavors that you put on your menu seasonally um it’s an interesting question some things happen immediately like I’ll conceptualize something um usually towards the end of a season I’ll sit down and like evaluate the things that we typically change on the menu um we have some fixtures that we don’t really touch just because I think that that’s really important for a restaurant to have is to have like the go-tos that people come back for sure um and we’ll change we’ll change the things that need changing you know like sunchokes and apples are kind of done so that dish will change at some point um but I’ll have an idea and sometimes it works immediately uh right now I’m doing a spring menu change and I had a couple of just straight bombs I’ve had ones that I’ve like conceptualized and then started to do and then been like this isn’t this isn’t actually what I want to be doing with these ingredients um I try and spread it out based off of what I know the farmers are going to start popping off with pretty soon um so there’s an asparagus dish there’s something with aurai turnips um there’s rhubarb um there’s all sorts of different peas um uh potentially aroke so I kind of have a I’ve planned for the Last 5 Years like I’ve seen where the seasons end up and what starts coming up when around what time and so I can plan accordingly for you know a two-month period give or take right um and and and so you know like I said sometimes it just clicks sometimes I got to go back to the drawing board a few more times before I’m satisfied um sometimes the idea works but it just needs to get tweaked a little bit um and then I think that now with this four course menu um and like in 2022 we received our first Michelin star and so we’re not doing anything differently but I do feel like I have I have to make sure that I am pushing myself creatively and and providing an opportunity for the cooks to feel challenged with new techniques and flavors so that they are really capitalizing on the time that they spend here in the kitchen and they’re really like getting a grasp for how I’m cooking mhm um but a lot of this is things that have been built up over the last 10 years of creating dishes that are through the mid East Middle Eastern lens um all my five years in New Orleans at Chia and like all the things I created there they’re components that find their way constantly uh into dishes um that I always go back to because I’m like that’s super killer and we can apply it to this different ingredient as opposed to something that maybe it was a summer thing and now we’re going to apply it to a winter ingredient MH it’s interesting it occurs to me as I hear you you know describing all of this and talking about pushing yourself creatively and engaging the cooks to you know make sure they’re getting the most out of their experience you know as a as a as a consumer as a diner you know and I I look at this menu and and maybe others that aren’t as familiar with mid Middle Eastern flavors Middle Eastern dishes to me this I mean you know it’s incredibly creative you know you could you could leave it as is and it would you know if someone is new to it um it is something that is you know really groundbreaking because these may be flavors you’ve never experienced before I mean I you know I may be showing some of my ignorance but I’m looking at at the the NZ menu and the Iraqi uh Kuba halab I have have no idea what that is can you tell me uh yeah that’s a cool one so that’s a dish that is a little bit off the beaten path um for a lot of people um kibbe is very I think more wellknown where it’s the bulgar and lamb uh shell for dumpling with the ground lamb cooked inside usually with pine nuts spices um and um that’s ubiquitous in the Levant region the KU alab is one that I’ve seen mostly from Iraqi Persian Iranian cooking um it’s a SA on Rice crust um so think like a Persian tadig but instead of it being in a pan it is a dumpling form and then inside we have a lamb coming from um katala Gro farm that we cook sort of like a uh Iraqi like bolog kind of oh interesting um and then it gets served with a uh sort of like a romesco almost with a like almond butter and golden raisins and Ras oh that sounds fantastic and so that’s that is a that to me is besides the sauce that to me is a very straightforward dish we’re not trying to do anything besides show you a very well thought out executed version of what someone who knows what Iraqi KUB alab is that they would be like that’s Kua there it’s indistinguishable from what I believe it to be versus some of our other is a little gets a little esoteric sometimes es give me an example of an esoteric dish um well like I was talking the sunchoke dish um so like I’ve also dabbled a little bit you know in some just different cooking techniques just to kind of keep it fresh for myself personally and because I like to I like to apply things that I that I read about or whatever into what we’re doing so this the um the sun chokes um those are um uh cured in miso so miso zuk um so we’re like burying it in miso for a day and then brushing all the Miso off roasting it in fenugreek apple cider syrup um from seedling farms in Michigan and then um it’s got uh shaved apples honey crisps um there is a carab molasses tahini on the bottom soort of like carab for people who aren’t that familiar it’s sort of like I like to tell the cooks it’s like the OG chocolate like caca beans were a thing carab was like what you used for sweet things um in the Middle East it still is very like ubiquitous ingredient and um I really like it for the chocolate kind of like tobacco notes that it has um and then there’s a when when they were in season we were using matsutake mushrooms just shaving them super thin raw right now we’re using uh danco grade shitake mushrooms that we sprinkle with a little matsutake powder on top um and this dish is like not really Middle Eastern you know like it like it isn’t in a lot of ways the idea of a rude vegetable in tahini no matter what it is like that to me is like the classic you know iini turnips tahini carrots and Tahini all of it is just it it’s just like the perfect snack um and this kind of pulls in a lot of different directions and the flavor profile is a little bit bizarre too you know apples and sunchokes work together sunchokes and mushrooms works together mushrooms and chocolate works together but does like chocolate really work with apples and sunchokes you know but the way the dish kind of pulls together is kind of fun because you get everything and like a little little blips on your palette throughout each bite um and that one’s just like a little bit I swung for the fences on that one and I was like this may not work at all and then it turns out it was great sometimes taking a risk really pays off and you’ve painted such an incredible picture sometimes it’s so hard to do when you’re doing you know straight audio and you’re talking about about food which is such a visual experience it’s a sensory experence you smell the taste uh you know the feel all of those things none of which we can do on radio and and in podcast form but you’ve you’ve really captured uh an an essence of something that sounds so incredibly unique uh what’s next for your work at galit um so galit um the food is sort of going to continue in this four course menu um where we’re cooking seasonally uh the way I Define it is it’s a Midwestern restaurant through a Mid Eastern Middle Eastern lens it’s kind of more of how I look at it because I’m so much Focus so much more focused on the ingredients we’re getting um than necessarily like trying to be true to form Middle Eastern yeah um like it doesn’t say galit authentic middle eastern restaurant on the door uh right like it just says gilete um and what we’ve been really focusing on lately a lot is our wine program also uh we have I would say the most extensive list of Middle Eastern wines of a top quality in the United States I really think that our wine program is very unique and our our the way we operate it we have a similar kind of Journey menu through the Middle East where we match different each of thees and some of them you can’t get anywhere else like no one else has bought it and we bought all of it there’s nothing else in the United States um wow it changes based off of our availability so sometimes we’re getting different things and then it goes away and then we won’t have it for three months and we have to put something else on um but it’s a really cool way for us to support uh the wineries in the Middle East that we work with a lot and help them to move more product through the United States which is a big thing like the more you move the more exposure you’re getting the bigger your business grows absolutely absolutely and I mean I had no idea I mean I had a vague idea that about Middle Eastern wines but you know not anything of any substance and so I definitely something else I I would want to try and take that Journey like you said that pairing yeah it’s a pretty special experience we’re very we’re very happy about it and then as far as the rest of I we’re working on another restaurant currently um and so uh hopefully that’ll be open by the end of the year and git is sort of in this great phase where the staff’s really killing it and I can from above create and and and dictate to people like what we’re doing with the food but I don’t necessarily need to be pushing it past where it is right now like we’re going to continue to do a consistent product and our main focus is going to be like building the business out and and diversifying our our portfolio and our customer base a little bit and your business model and I I I can’t let you go without touching upon this I mean your business model your corporate culture for lack of a better term is one that that seems to be very focused on its people and investing in the team um and making sure that folks are appropriately compensated and um respected in that way uh just just tell our listeners a little bit about you know what you do on that end yeah so I think the most recent change for us um is a we went to a service charge model um there’s a lot of changes going on in the uh political movements in Chicago that are kind of we’re trying to navigate that and and figure it out before uh everything changes very quickly on us so we moved to a service charge model and what that does is that allows us to also use some of the service charge income to compensate the cooks a little bit more um and so they get a percentage of food sales shared evenly among them which is really nice because we we do pay them really well and they get a lot of benefits but the pay disparity in fine dining doesn’t exist in the front of the house it exists in the back of the house like that’s where where people fall far behind um and so that’s really great to give them a little bit of something extra we have been doing uh HealthCare coverage for our employees since a month into US opening in 2019 uh we have a very good plan for a small business like the best that you can really get for a business with 150 employees um sure since the pandemic we have provided it in full to all of our non-tipped employees so back of the house employees and managers um we recently started a 401k for anyone that’s been with us for over a year um Inc which we have several people who have been with us for over five years now since we opened um and a lot of it starts with the very beginning when we do those interviews we explain to every person this is how this is going to go this is what we’re promising you how we’re going to operate these are the benefits this is the schedule these are the days that we’re closed etc etc we don’t tolerate any form of harassment discrimination we don’t have we have a we’re a dry house we don’t drink at all on duty um so like wine tastings everyone uses a spit cup and these are the sort of the expect for everyone like these are the rules you’ll follow and this is what we will do for everyone in return and it and it’s really this like civil contract that we have with the employees interesting and now that we’re five years in and we have multiple employees who have been here for you know over a year um and but there’s still like quite a few employees who have not the second you walk in the door here you you figure out the culture like it’s not Andre and I shouting it from the rooftops every single day the work has been done by putting in the effort to staying at it for the last five years and trying our best to stay true to what we are telling everyone we are going to do that’s incredibly inspiring and I think a lot of I mean it sounds like you are holding up a model that a lot of folks could really look to and learn from um and certainly you know I’m inspired by and I just I love to hear when the when team members are being treated equitably fairly and you know being respected for the hard work that they do that’s fantastic yeah I think that um for me it’s not this is not easy to do by any means but for me I think that um like I want to set up the Next Generation of people who operate and potentially own restaurants to see what’s feasible and and to understand that like it may take a lot of work and effort but we can’t Institute drastic change like this on a statutory level right like no one’s going to make a law that says like this is how you’re supposed to do blah blah blah because there’s always going to be people that don’t care that much in an industry and so if all these people leave here and they start to manage a restaurant Implement some of our things or they do their own thing at one point and and it’s a part of it then like that’s the most success that galed can have Beyond Awards accolades um you know how profitable we are I mean maybe not superseding like being open for for like 20 plus years that’ pretty be pretty great but like in general that’s probably number two is like when those those folks really take what we are creating here together and implementing it elsewhere that is a fantastic goal and a wonderful perspective to have um to invest in that future of the industry Chef Zack thank you so very much for sharing your story the story of galit and the mid the Middle Eastern flavors that are enhanced by those Midwestern ingredients thank you for joining the show you’re very welcome thanks for having me you’ve been listening to eaty Heartland out this episode was produced by me Capri Cafaro our audio Engineers are Liam Warner and Armen Spen theme music by Jason Shaw you can learn more about the show by visiting heritag rwork toorgle landout eaty Heartland out is powered by simplecast thanks for listening to Heritage Radio Network food radio supported by you keep in touch at heritag rwork SLS subscribe hey it’s Francis lamb host of The Splendid Table every week on our show we talk about food and cooking and the meanings of food and cooking we talk with the most interesting people in food about their techniques their culture and everything in between whether it’s about how Fried Chicken took over the world or how Instagram 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