On the newest episode of “What’s Eric Consuming,” chef Shawn Gawle joined CultureMap editor Eric Sandler to debate Camaraderie, his new restaurant within the Heights. It’s the primary solo mission for the chef, who’s greatest identified domestically for his time as the manager pastry chef for Goodnight Hospitality (March, Rosie Cannonball, and so on.).
The dialog begins with Gawle explaining how time spent working in his father’s Boston-area deli impressed him to pursue a profession in cooking. Ultimately, he labored at a few of America’s most acclaimed eating places, together with three-star Michelin institutions corresponding to L20 in Chicago (two stars) and two, three-star eating places in San Francisco, Saison and Quince.
Lured by Goodnight Hospitality companion June Rodil to Houston, he labored alongside chef Felipe Riccio to develop the menus for Rosie Cannonball, March, and Montrose Cheese & Wine. After 4 years with the corporate, the time had come to make a change from pastry to savory and open his first solo restaurant.
“I like cooking, whether or not it’s with sugar or salt, flour or pastries. Regardless of the ingredient is, I just like the method and the cooking and getting my arms in it. And likewise sharing it with folks,” Gawle says about being each a savory and pastry chef.
Camaraderie has an uncommon format. In the primary eating room, Gawle is serving a three-course, $75 prix-fixe menu that’s constructed round shared, principally vegetable-based appetizers with a alternative of 4 entrees and a few desserts. Within the bar and lounge, the restaurant serves an a la carte menu of snacks and entrees. For Gawle, serving each bridges the hole between the tasting menu eating places the place he’s spent a lot of his profession and the extra informal eating places he likes eating at when he’s not working.
“I’m attempting to think about eating places a little bit otherwise. How can I consider the restaurant the place I can do related high quality and expertise however with a value level that’s extra approachable and the time spent within the restaurant, too,” he says.
“The meals fashion, I don’t assume visitors need to dine for three-plus hours, of in the event that they do, it’s yearly. I need folks to come back extra typically than that. We can provide folks a full expertise in an hour or an hour-and-a-half and have that very same Michelin-quality meals however very approachable.”
Take heed to the total interview to listen to Gawle talk about creating the salt-baked celery root that earned a shout out from former Chronicle critic Alison Cook dinner in her recently-launched e-newsletter. He additionally shares how Austin’s acclaimed restaurant Birdie’s impressed a few of Camaraderie’s route relating to wages and work-life steadiness.
In one other current episode, Sandler and co-host Mary Clarkson visited Chardon, the brand new French restaurant within the Thompson Resort. They discovered quite a bit to love about chef E.J. Miller’s menu, together with Dover sole served tableside, Miller’s artistic makes use of for Texas wagyu beef, and a principally French wine listing overseen by sommelier Renato Bringas.
