Q: Tell me about how you found your way into the kitchen. Did it begin when you were a kid hanging out in your parents’ Long Island bagel shops and bakeries? RICH SWEENEY: Yeah, my mom and stepdad had a bagel shop and bakery and a catering company on the south shore of Long Island. As a kid, I got to spend my summers making bagels on the East Coast, and let me tell you, waking up at four in the morning during summer vacation was not fun, but I made money. I grew up with food. I was around it constantly. Surprisingly, I was a skinny kid, and then I turned into a fat kid, and now I’m still a big fat kid. Never trust a skinny chef (laughs) ... I always loved to cook. I followed everyone around in the kitchen. I had an older sister, and we’d take turns cooking dinner. I even had this cookbook for kids that really wasn’t for kids and had crazy recipes like spiced chicken. When I made it, it was really over-spiced and maybe even burned, but it was fun to play in the kitchen and everyone else had to come home and eat it. I tried to get away from cooking at one point, but somehow always ended up going back to it. Q: How did you start your professional cooking career? RS: I got home from bartending one night, saw a commercial for culinary school, and thought, “Wow. That sounds really cool. I could do that.” So I went online, filled out all my paperwork, and they called me the next day. I knew how to do a lot, but I didn’t know all the technical stuff, so I went to school and fast-tracked ever since then. I’ve been cooking professionally for about seven years. Q: What is your favorite dish from childhood? RS: It’s a toss-up between Salisbury steak or meatloaf. Both my mom and dad made a similar dish of stuffed meatloaf with cheese, hardcooked eggs and salami – best Italian, savory meatloaf ever! I make my own version now, Meatloaf & Mashed on my menu. I’m such a meat and potatoes guy. Growing up on the South Shore of Long Island – tons of seafood there, but I’m not a huge seafood guy. I’m just more drawn towards meat and potatoes. It helps me keep my pear-shaped figure. Q: Is there anything you are afraid to cook? RS: I steer away from geoduck just because I’ve never worked with it. They just look absolutely frightening to me, like it’s going to attack you or lick you. It’s just this weird, grayish thing. I’m like, “Is it going to touch me back?” I just want to know. Otherwise, I’m pretty open to messing
around with lots of fun stuff. I also don’t really work much with offal, even though I know you can turn offal into something that’s not so awful (ha!), but really it’s just learning how to work with it. I constantly have my head in a cookbook, learning new things. Anything that I’ve ever been scared to play with or work with, I make myself work with it. Like baking. I hate baking, partly because I know I’m going to mess it up. It’s so precise: it’s measure it, level it, sift it, weigh it, don’t look at it the wrong way … so I’ve been really making myself bake a lot lately. I came up with this biscuit recipe recently and our baker made it and said it was pretty damn amazing. Q: How did you come up with the R-GANG Eatery concept? RS: I wanted to open my own place and had an idea of what I wanted to do, sort of. It wasn’t really until my stepdad found the space that my boyfriend Steve and I sat down and talked and knew we wanted it to be all about the locals, just for the people, a neighborhood restaurant. The people in the neighborhood would be our bread and butter and everything else would be gravy. See … fat kid coming out … always taking it back to biscuits and gravy. I conceptualized the name of my restaurant in the parking lot of Lowes and Costco. One day I was headed into Costco for some stuff and randomly looked up “The Little Rascals” on my phone. So, the first thing that popped up on Wikipedia was Our Gang, which was perfect. It was such a big part of my childhood. It just cracks me up. The whole concept behind it was, we want to bring your gang to become part of our gang. You become part of our gang … no Crypts or Bloods, just tots. We’re also mirroring the “Little Rascals” in our food. We have a really classy version of a play on the cafeteria tater tot; we stuff it with aged parmesan and black truffles. We try to keep everything under $25, because we want people to come in multiple times. We have people from the building across the street who come in two or three times per week. It’s great because we truly get to know them. We have such a great core clientele ... which gives me more motivation to change up the menu and keep giving them something new. Q: If someone has one chance to check out your restaurant, when should they come in and what would you recommend they order? RS: This neighborhood here on Fifth Avenue is
brunch central, so brunch is our busiest time. We also have all-night happy hour on Tuesday nights from 3 pm to close. We do $3, $4 and $5 drink specials (cocktails, beer and wine) and $4, $5 and $6 food specials. The food includes everything from our tater tots to brat sliders (buns made by our baker and the mini brats are homemade by a local company), mini tacos and all kinds of fun stuff. It’s not just bar food; it’s all just slightly smaller versions of our regular menu items. What should they order? Tots. If we offered it – but we don’t, sorry – they should do a taster of all of our tots, because you can’t do a full order of each. That would kill you, literally and figuratively. Part of it is that they’re made really well. It actually took us a year and a half to make the recipe just right. It’s a labor of love. You see it, and it looks like a tater tot from when you were a kid, but you might be surprised. They are tater tots for grownups. It looks like a tater tot on steroids, and then you bite into them and there is all different stuff going on on the inside. It’s all about what’s on the inside that counts, right? Awe, my tater tots are a metaphor for life. How did I not think of that before? I would also recommend our Captain Crunch French Toast for brunch or the Cowboy Benny (we now have a smaller version called the Cowgirl Benny). Q: Everything I have tasted here is amazing. I personally loved the Pacos. Pancakes served like a taco – are you kidding me? So fun to eat. Your restaurant was chosen as having the best tasting breakfast in San Diego in our last issue. Why do you think that is? RS: I think for best taste it’s really a testament to my cooks doing a great job at making sure every dish that goes out is cooked the way I want it cooked. The smallest things can make the biggest difference. It’s all about tasting and tasting. I buy cases of plastic spoons for my kitchen so they’ll taste everything that they’re making. I don’t like anything we do to be plain. I like everything to be fun and exciting. Throw some cheese and crab in the tater tots and all of a sudden it’s somethin’ different! Did I even answer your question? I like to talk. I had too much coffee today. Q: You’re a fantastic interview. I love your stories, so talk away! You keep referring to your kitchen staff as your kids. What is your relationship like with them? RS: I call them my kids, because I have to babysit them. When they want something, they come and ask me questions with those “daddy, please” eyes. Great practice for someday when I’m a parent,
| GO! 2013 Issue | 37