Small Town Chefs 2020: Alex Perry
Naturalist, experimental cuisine in Ocean Springs.
To our 2020 Small Town Chef Alex Perry, his path to the culinary arts was “an expensive shot in the dark” more than anything else. As a student at the University of South Alabama in Mobile, the Ocean Springs native studied epidemiology, a subject he found to be interesting in theory, but monotonous in practice. Upon graduating with a microbiology degree, Perry did what many people do when faced with a career they no longer wish to pursue: he went back to school, enrolling in a fifteen-month program at Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts in Miami. His rationale for such a drastic pivot? “Well, I don’t know that I hate cooking.” An expensive shot in the dark, indeed—but, like most of the risks Perry takes, it paid off. His tall, commanding stature and relaxed demeanor were well-suited for the organized chaos of the kitchen, where each dish presented a new challenge. Here, every day was different. Here, there was always more to learn.
With formal culinary training now in his repertoire, Perry’s next move was a return to familiar ground in Mobile. He spent seven years at the helm of NoJa, a Mediterranean restaurant downtown, learning the ropes and honing his craft, one mistake at a time. “It was a really good learning environment,” said Perry. “‘I’d say, alright, that’s terrible. Why is it terrible? What did I do?’ and then go back and correct it.”
When the time came that Perry was ready to open a restaurant of his own with his wife, Kumi Omori, moving back to his Mississippi hometown wasn’t the plan. The couple had been eyeing spaces in Charleston for a while, but the stakes—and bottom dollar required—felt too high in South Carolina’s culinary hotspot for the first-time restaurateurs. They had returned to Ocean Springs to regroup when the space on Washington Avenue became available. Perry figured if he was going to make another expensive shot in the dark, he’d be more likely to stick the landing in the place he grew up in. “When I thought about it, I was like, this is a good first step, it’s in a place where people know me,” Perry said. “Let’s try not to completely crash and burn.”
The couple opened Vestige in 2013 as a farm-to-table concept, sourcing ingredients from the farmer’s market and forming partnerships with area growers and vendors. Over the years, Perry gradually integrated more naturalistic elements of Japanese cuisine—inspired by Omori, who is from Japan—to Vestige’s evolving menu, which he viewed as an opportunity to offer a different perspective on “traditional” Southern cuisine. A vestige is a trace or remnant of that which is disappearing or no longer exists, the lingering thereafter. In his restaurant, Perry wanted to create an experience that would recall the memory again and again, far after the meal’s end.
"We are beholden to no dish. My counter argument is that if we're any good at what we do, the next thing you eat should be as good as that dish. We like to test the waters and see what we can get away with."
Nestled along the stretch of Interstate 10 between Biloxi and Pascagoula, Ocean Springs is a small artistic community with a culinary scene characterized by seafood-heavy Southern classics and Cajun and Creole offerings. Perry saw the chance to dig a little deeper. “What’s beyond that, you know, what’s more than that? What are the things growing around us that aren’t obvious?” He was interested in incorporating the land’s wild, underutilized bounty into his food, sourcing plants indigenous to the Gulf Coast region such as elderflower, elderberries, dewberries, wax myrtle, beautyberries, wild bay, swamp bay, sassafras, and Jackson vine. “People were beginning to get it, and the market for the food that we wanted to do existed, they just needed a place to come to, and that was us.
“It isn’t just the local farms and the local vendors, but the natural element that’s around,” said Perry. “It seemed like an interesting way to explore and serve food that’s not overtly Southern, but by every stretch of the imagination, sort of couldn’t be more Southern.”
The menu at Vestige is one grand, adaptive experiment, designed around what’s currently in season, what’s exciting or interesting to Perry and his team, and—most importantly—what’s delicious. The result is an ever-shifting fare that’s not explicitly Southern or Japanese, but somewhere in between. “We are beholden to no dish,” said Perry. “My counter argument is that if we’re any good at what we do, the next thing you eat should be as good as that dish. We like to test the waters and see what we can get away with.”
There’s not much Perry doesn’t manage to get away with, however—Vestige’s patrons are often receptive to even the most eclectic and zany of his dishes, an occurrence that, seven years in, continues to surprise him. One of Perry’s only dishes to flop in recent memory featured brown rice, an ingredient that was simply too ordinary for regulars who had come to expect unusual flavor amalgamations from Perry. “They’ll come back asking for octopus or beef tongue, but the brown rice was what crossed the line,” said Perry with a chuckle. They’re not the only ones—Perry’s unconventional methodology earned him national attention in 2019, when he was named a semifinalist for the James Beard Foundation’s Best Chef in the South award. The recognition was unexpected for the modest 39-year-old, who sees his success as the result of a trusting local populace and a lot of luck, though our Small Town Chefs judges know better. “I’m just making it up as I go along,” Perry said.
During the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Vestige’s multi-course menu has changed weekly. In mid-June, the tasting menu included courses of wok-fried octopus, grilled okra with hibiscus, chrysanthemum, marinated crawfish, and leg of lamb with peach-kosho, wood smoked pommes paillasson, and shishito peppers. Since collaborating with local farmers to supply their menu, Perry and his team also work with producers to distribute fresh flowers and vegetable boxes each week from Vestige, as well as homemade soup, bread, pickles, artisanal cheese, and desserts. All of the sauces and pickled vegetables from Vestige are made from scratch, an effort that allowed Perry to dust off his old microbiology knowledge and practice bygone fermenting techniques.
“You never stop learning,” mused Perry. “I’ve been doing this for fifteen years and I assume that I know nothing about food. There’s always something new, and that new thing could be something that’s two hundred years old. I love that. I really, really do.”
Vestige Restaurant
715 Washington Avenue
Ocean Springs, Mississippi