FAT C I T Y
MAX’S KANSAS CITY
Remedy chef Max Watson
BY
was born to deliver.
JON AT H A N BENDER
ax Watson was running food long before he was eating it. “My mom was running food up and down stairs while she was pregnant with me,” Watson says of his mother, Leslie, who had no choice but to take him to work with her at Annie’s Santa Fe on the Plaza. “She said I got her so many tips. I’ve been in the business since before I was born.” Twenty-six years later, Watson is back running food — his food. Watson, the executive chef at Remedy Food + Drink, leans back from a table in the Waldo dining room and watches plates leave his kitchen on a recent Thursday. He can’t help but begin his story with his mother’s kitchen. “My mom had every intention of being a chef,” Watson says. “She attended the CIA [Culinary Institute of America] but didn’t graduate for fi nancial reasons. So when I was growing up, we would spend an entire Sunday morning making pâte à choux. She set the groundwork that it was OK to cook.” As a boy, Watson imagined coming home from a long day of work as a Navy SEAL or a fi refighter to make dinner. “I was 12 years old and I knew I didn’t want to be a chef,” Watson says. “I didn’t think I’d want to go to work and cook and then have to come home and cook. I didn’t want to lose how much fun I was having.” After graduating high school in 2004, Watson went to work for his uncle building homes in Kansas City. Then the recession hit, and work dried up. Mike McGonigle, a family friend, hired Watson to deliver meat to the local grocer’s restaurant clients. Watson realized that his 12-year-old self might have been wrong after seeing what the chefs did with his deliveries. So he called the number of the first restaurant he remembered. “I grew up by the old Room 39, and it was one of my mother’s favorite restaurants,” Watson says. “I called them up and told them I have no experience, that I’d never worked in a restaurant in my life. I said that I just wanted a job and I wanted to work there.” Five years later, Watson can still rattle off Room 39’s phone number from memory. He also remembers why chef and owner Ted Habiger hired him. “Ted told me I was a little ball of clay, that I had no bad habits and just wanted to learn the right way it’s done,” Watson says. But before things went right, they went very wrong. Watson burned an entire pot of soup his fi rst week. “I quickly learned the cost of ingredients,” Watson says. “And also the cost of profits, based on what the soup sold for.” Surrounded by budding and ambitious young chefs — Howard Hanna, Craig Howard and Patrick Ryan, among others — Watson excelled after his soup mishap. Within a year, he was working the grill line and calling out tickets. And his kitchen mates were pursuing their own culinary paths. 18
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From the cradle to the ladle: Watson “Some people want to work on the line, and that’s fi ne,” Watson says. “I discovered there that I wanted to have my own place.” In 2010, Watson left Room 39 to help launch Port Fonda with Ryan in a classic Airstream trailer in need of a serious overhaul. “I spent my days building out the trailer and my nights working at the Rieger,” Watson says. The Rieger Hotel Grill & Exchange — opened by fellow Room 39 alumnus Hanna — was the prep kitchen for Port Fonda, the Mexican restaurant parked in the Rieger’s Crossroads District parking lot on weekends. It was there that Watson became friendly with Andrew Heimberger, one of the Rieger’s prep cooks, who stayed afternoons to help him roll sausage for Port Fonda. “As an owner, I learned that you have a constant level of stress and worry,” Watson says. “I demanded perfection of myself and also saw what it was like to catch lightning in a bottle.”
NOVEMBER 29-DECEMBER 5, 2012
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When Port Fonda became a brick-andmortar restaurant this year, Watson decided that it was time to move on. In April, he became the executive chef of Kennedy’s. The bar and grill became Remedy in June, and Watson was free to design the menu. He added Heimberger as his chef de cuisine. “I wanted a small menu of things you couldn’t get anywhere else,” Watson says. “Andrew and I really enjoy reinventing things we love from our past. We do what we like and then use our knowledge to do it at the highest level we can.” Remedy’s stock is family-made — Watson’s cousin is a dishwasher and prep cook — in a kitchen where he hopes to grow his family. And now he’s the one bringing his mom to work. “Cream puffs were her dessert,” Watson says. “And now they’re on our menu.”
The Pitch sat down with Watson at Remedy recently to talk inspiration, ingredients and ice cream. The Pitch: What’s one food you hate? Watson: I don’t like black licorice. I just don’t. It’s the f lavor. I like fennel. I like anise. I was a fussy eater growing up, and now I’m not a big fan of oysters — they make my mouth itch. But now that I’m older, I try to eat everything. What’s one food you love? I really like vinegary stuff. That’s my favorite flavor, tart vinegar. A wine taster stopped by and was selling some 32-year aged sherry vinegar. That was the best I’ve ever had. I was drinking it from my tasting glass. It’s really such a heavy flavor on your tongue. I like spicy stuff, too. A friend of mine on Facebook asked, what if each of the fingers on your hand could dispense a different condiment. I picked ketchup, mustard, Sriracha, a Mexican-style hot sauce, and my favorite barbecue sauce.” What’s your favorite barbecue in town, and what are you ordering? My favorite barbecue sauce is between Oklahoma Joe’s and Gates. But I’ll eat at Oklahoma Joe’s. I don’t like the name — we’re not in Oklahoma — but they’re the best barbecue. I get the Z-Man with spicy slaw and fries. What’s your guilty pleasure? Ice cream. I’ll eat way too much ice cream in any sitting. I really like pie. I wish we had the facilities here to do more pies. What’s always in your kitchen? Vinegar. We always have eight to 10 different types of vinegar, and beans, Rancho Gordo beans, and bacon. Besides your own place, where do you like to eat? The Rieger. I eat there a lot. I usually don’t have the same dish twice. A lot of times, I’ll just get the special. I did have the catfish po’boy twice in a row and I was pretty happy with it. The meatballs are good at the Jacobson. My kids’ favorite is Winstead’s. We’ll get the chocolate skyscraper — everybody gets the chocolate skyscraper. If you could steal one recipe in town off any menu, which one would you steal? I wouldn’t. It’s just one of those things. You really don’t do that. That’s why you go there to eat. What’s one book that every chef should read? I think Rick Bayless’ first cookbook, One Plate at a Time. It was written so well, and he thinks about every detail. It’s really about his process, how he focuses on flavors and combinations and the execution of dishes. I met him once. My wife and I went to Chicago. We didn’t have a lot of money. I was
“I’ve been in the business since before I was born.”
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