Chef Kelley McCann
Free rein for the former Galatoire's chef at Kalurah Street Grill
Kelley McCann had a fair view of the restaurant kitchen in his summers spent elbow-deep washing dishes and schoolday afternoons gorging on maraschino cherries at the Baton Rouge bar where his mom worked. But he didn’t see himself at the stove until Galatoire’s Bistro, where then-22-year-old McCann bussed tables, hired a chef just seven years his senior. “Until then, I didn’t realize you could have a career as a chef and be successful,” said McCann. He took to shadowing Chef Brian Landry and his successors, mastering Galatoire’s historic New Orleans recipes and building his own flavor profile all the while. Five years after assuming the position of executive chef, McCann has left Galatoire’s to make a mark all his own. We sat down at his new Kalurah Street Grill, tucked under the Perkins Road Overpass, to talk about international flavors, indispensable sous chefs, rare cuts of beef, and the trust he hopes to win from Baton Rouge. Find excerpts below.
On his culinary education:
Galatoire’s was essentially my core education. I wanted to go to culinary school, and he [Brian Landry, former executive chef at Galatoire’s Bistro] was just like, “Let me just save you thousands of dollars right now. I’ll pay you and teach you how to do all of this.” I took that to heart. I spent eleven years at Galatoire’s, so I got to learn under two or three different chefs. If restaurants have stood the test of time for a hundred-ten-plus years, the things they’re doing are working. I tell this to my young cooks now: I’m going to teach you the correct way to do a lot of things. But that doesn’t mean the way you’re going to do it in the future is wrong. You wanna take these base, core recipes, and then you find ways to make them your own. Essentially, that’s what cooking is, in a creative sense.
I never have issues when a cook comes to me and tells me they have a position somewhere else. I’m like, “That’s awesome.” That’s a great thing. It makes me feel like I’m doing my job right. Especially since that’s how I learned to cook, without going to culinary school. These days a lot of these guys have the advantage of going to culinary school and getting a really good core education. Now it’s my job to teach them how to create a flavor personality and profile.
On building his own flavor profile:
Galatoire’s is French Creole, that’s the genre they’re associated with. When I did have the opportunity with wine and beer dinner menus, I decided to go completely off the beaten path because those were my best times to do it. I thought [the cuisine of] Spain would be a nice, easy transition to let me start doing something different. From then on, I’d bring in lamb and tzatziki. I put all that stuff in my pocket and let it develop.
[You might like: Chef Donald Link on the backlash of taking over La Boulangerie and clarity found post-Katrina.]
On developing his menu:
Really what it is, it’s having the heart to put a dish out there and get honest criticism about it. Then coming back to the drawing board and finding out what works. I was lucky enough to have months of R&D for this restaurant [Kalurah Street Grill]. Every Thursday night, we’d have fifteen people over at one of our owners’ houses, and I’d serve five dishes from the menu. We’d explain to them, “You’re a part of this now. We want honest feedback. We don’t need schmoozing. You’re the people that we’re trying to impress.” We got really great, honest feedback. I take that to heart, we make adjustments, and go from there. I guess that’s really what the business is. It’s adapt, make adjustments, really find the best way to go about it.
On the ingredient he’s obsessed with:
My ribeye spinalis is coming out really great. It’s not a common cut of meat, but it’s part of your ribeye. The actual cut itself is not very attractive. The spinalis is the fat cap of the ribeye; it disconnects from the ribeye as a whole. A cowboy ribeye would have the fat cap. A cowgirl would not. Essentially the cut of meat has the tenderness of filet, but the fat marbleization of a ribeye. And it lays like a flank steak.
We got really great, honest feedback. I take that to heart, we make adjustments, and go from there. I guess that’s really what the business is. It’s adapt, make adjustments, really find the best way to go about it.
What we do is we pound it out, season the inside, then roll it into a roulade, cryo-vac it, and then in eight hours it’s a solid piece of meat. Then we cut tournedos so it’s a lot more presentable. Now it’s accessible. Otherwise no one’s using it, because there’s no nice way to plate it, to be honest with you. But now that we’re taking the time to do the work in advance, now it’s accessible to people. Hopefully the spinalis market skyrockets and the price goes down soon. We’ll see.
On building his team:
I have two sous chefs: Derek Roth and Thien Nguyen. Derek’s going to be heading up our housemade pasta department. He’s already making sage pappardelle for our shortrib. He’s going to be making our raviolis in house. And to start, we’re going to do a pasta dish of the week. We’ll do one really good one, with hand-pulled noodles. Eventually we’d like to have a pasta section on our menu. All housemade pastas.
Thien and I’ve worked together the past three years at the Masters. The Masters is twelve days of 4 am to 8 o’clock at night. There was a day when he was cooking and his hand was inflamed. I was like, “Oh, my God, what’s wrong with your hand?” He said, “Oh you know, I’ve been shaking this pot for the last four days, twelve hours a day.” That speaks volumes to his personality. He’s not afraid to push through it. They’ve both been invaluable in opening this restaurant.
My pastry chef, Kaila Mogg-Stone, put together a great menu. Already she’s provided desserts that are just phenomenal. Sometimes it’s easy to get caught up and have your head down on the cutting board cooking, when in all actuality my job is much more than that. Having a dedicated pastry chef is a huge weight off my shoulders because I don’t have to worry about doing it myself.
On winning over Baton Rouge:
Earning the trust of Baton Rouge is something that I’m going to have to do. Galatoire’s was a great springboard for that; but now that I’m cooking my own food all the time—for me, it’s great. I’m crazy about it. Yesterday I was rolling ribeye spinalis and I was just like, “I’m so happy more than twenty people are going to be able to eat this.”
I like to think I’m a good mix between a little hipster and a little professional. I like to think we can dip into both crowds. Making this place casual and accessible to everybody is one of the ways we’ll do that. You’ll walk around, you’ll see my friend the house manager, and he’s not in a three-piece suit. He’s in a jacket and a button down. Same with myself. I think this is a place for everybody—not only special occasions. I think with the front of the house we’ve put together—they are just brimming with personality. Almost too much at the beginning. It was like, “All right, guys, let’s slow down. Let’s do this and then we can all be ourselves in a minute.”