Food: Catching Up With La Condesa's Jesse Herman
To start with, for people who are less familiar, you are in the New York area. What attracted you to opening your first restaurant here in Austin?
I had a number of family members of mine from Manhattan that had moved down to Austin and I'd been wanting to visit for a while. And so, about four or five years ago I went down for the first time to visit them. And I mean, I drove into Austin from Dallas and literally when I got off I-35, I knew this was the place that I wanted to spend more time and I just really fell in love with it. And so, fortunately, my background is in nightlife and in bars from other cities, and sometimes there's the opportunity to do things in places and it gives you a reason to spend more time there. So, I saw the opportunity to open a restaurant in Austin. That was almost a reason for me to be able to spend more time there. So, now I spend about half my time in Austin.
Did you already know (chef) Rene Ortiz when you were considering this or did that come about later?
I knew Rene before, and another friend of Rene's who I was working with. And they were both working with us on developing restaurant concepts that we wanted to open. And we decided we wanted to do the La Condesa concept in Austin. And, Rene at one point had approached me and said, "you know, what if I actually became the executive chef for this concept?" And I jumped at that opportunity. One of the things that really worked was that Rene is originally from the area. He grew up in San Antonio. Really, the first kitchens he worked in other than San Antonio were in Austin. But he’s been, in New York and London and Sydney for the last fifteen years. So, it was a great opportunity for him. Rene sort of wanted to go back home. He's got a young family and wanted to raise the kids where he grew up.
And so, then, the other piece of the puzzle there is Laura Sawicki, your pastry chef. Did Rene talk Laura into coming along with him?
Yeah, he did. Actually, right before we opened, Rene was working with Laura in New York. They both lived in Brooklyn. And they have this sort of tight brother-sister relationship and he said to me: "I wanna bring this pastry chef whom I have been working with to teach a pastry chef down here how to make some things that she was doing. I think it would really compliment the food that we're gonna have." And so we brought her down and she never went back.
The restaurant has been very successful. But when you first opened, there was a lot of chatter amongst foodies about, can you take another Mexican restaurant concept and have that work here with the litany of choices available. Now that it is a year later, are you happy with the concept's execution and how it all played out? Was it tough to get traction at first given the fact that there is so much competition in Austin for Mexican food even though it isn't exactly what you do?
I've never even really thought about it that way. And I guess in hindsight there's two ways you could look at it. I think that you could look at it from a customer's perspective of there obviously being a lot of Mexican restaurants in Austin. Or you could look at from a restaurateur's perspective, which is that we knew the kind of food we were gonna be doing and we knew how to differentiate it from what else there was in the market. And I think that we firmly believed from the beginning, if you create a great product people will be interested. That truth exists in many different businesses. There's many, many different types of Mexican food. Even since we've opened, a number of different Mexican concepts have opened up whether it's a trailer, or a different style of service, or different types of food. Everything from the El Naranjo trailer to T-N-T and Garrido's. And there's room for all of these things. But sometimes when you put it in perspective and say, OK, opening a Mexican restaurant in Austin! It could seem like a risky bet, but it's really been great so far. I couldn't imagine going anywhere else.
La Condesa has been invited to do a James Beard dinner this summer in New York - how did that come about?
They approached us to do that - I think that they had some people who came down to the restaurant during SXSW, partially because we were nominated for the James Beard award for "best new restaurant" and that happened back in February, so that definitely brought us some name recognition for people who were working at the foundation and they invited us up to do James Beard in New York. It is sold out now! There are a lot of other events that they we are doing: Outstanding In The Field is in October in Austin, which is going to be a great event.
We have other events planned that are going to be fun. We love doing events in La Condesa, like the Sustainable Chef's Series, a charity event that we created, and other things the Urban Roots community lunch and, we just believe in that as a cornerstone of our business. We exist at street level in a city, and should become a part of the fabric of the community, and get involved in the causes that we believe in whether that is sustainable food or even just pumpkin carving for kids! It's just an important part of our business, so that's something that's fun for us and fun for our staff and at the end of the day, it's fun for the customers to have opportunities like going to do an urban roof lunch.
The SFC Sustainable Chef Series events are still relatively new, but they have been really popular and both have sold out. Was that something that came out of Rene's use of the the farmers market and wanting to contribute back to that particular mission?
From a food philosophy standpoint, that's a cause that we've always supported where on the weekends, we get our food from the farmer's market and a lot of vendors there are our normal day-to-day vendors anyway. It partially grew out of the fact that we were supporting Sustainable Food Center by participating a lot in their events anyway, and we liked the opportunity to create our own event. It was also created to foster a little bit more of a connection for a local chef community in Austin. When we first opened, we just didn't feel like there was enough of a chef community with collaboration. So we wanted to create an event that didn't just support that cause and was fun for the people who will be coming to experience it. It is also fun for the chefs to get to participate. We had great food photographer shot the events at the scene, and those photos are about to come out. So half of the event is what the customers and the people who come get to see, and the other half is really the chefs in the restaurant and everybody all in the same kitchen working together. That doesn't really happen, even at a lot of the charity events since everybody is in separate stations. So it was also to create a little bit more closeness in the chef community. That was one of the major reasons that we tried to develop the event, and it could serve all those purposes. The second one sold out, and next one is going to be in November. We kind of like the size, though we thought about growing it because of the demand. But we think it is cool to have party with no more than a hundred people. If anything, we'll do it more, but we like it and you know, for what people have been paying, it's a great value to interact directly with the chefs and the farmers. So we are really happy.
Austin has really grown up in terms of food culture in the past few years. Is there anything in particular that you're pleased to see developing in terms of food culture or anything that you look at as a particularly positive point of progress?
I mean, I couldn't agree more. It's amazing what has happened in Austin in just the last couple of years. And all cities change and are very dynamic. But the growth that we've seen in the food culture, I mean on all levels, from the media or the bloggers to the growth of the phenomena of food trailers to all the different types of restaurants that are open...and perhaps the most important thing being that better chefs are moving to Austin. Restaurateurs are bringing great new concepts. It's all great to see. And I really believe that Austin is on the cusp of being recognized nationally, you know, as a great food city along the lines of the way that Portland has been recognized. And one of the real strengths I think Austin has compared to some of these other cities that are recognized as such is that Austin also has a food legacy. It has a food legacy for barbecue and Tex-Mex. And other cities don't necessarily have that. So I think people are starting to recognize Austin as a great food city. People who are born and raised in Austin are starting to get involved in great projects. And more industry people are coming to Austin. You're seeing better talent in the kitchens. These people eventually mature and open their own places. And so, you're really starting to see that happening everywhere with food, with the cocktail culture. And I think it's just great for Austin. It's great for all the restaurants. And it's great for the city.
You may not want to give away the game here, but are there restaurant concepts that you still feel are missing in a big way from the food scene in Austin?
There are tons of concepts missing from Austin! I mean there are so many things. And we would definitely like to do more restaurants in Austin. At the same time, we'd like to do more restaurants outside of Austin. We would like do things similar to La Condesa focusing on the same type of food because we still think that there's so much more that we can do. It's a familiar cuisine to people all over the country. I think what we're doing is not too much of a stretch for people in other cities to be interested in. I can say, as someone who's spent half my time in New York, there's very little Mexican food in New York City and even less good Mexican food. So, I think that there are a lot of opportunities. Austin can be a little bit seasonal sometimes, and having worked in other cities, there are other places where the opportunities may be greater. But from a lifestyle standpoint, I think Austin is an amazing city for new restaurant concepts and there's so many opportunities to do new things. We definitely have talked about it and looked at a number of spaces. I don't know if I want to divulge specifically the things we're thinking of. But there are a couple of things that we are very specifically thinking about for Austin. And that's one of things that I like about Austin, too, is I think that there is so much opportunity. And that's one of the great things about the city. It's not just in the restaurant scene. I think that there is a lot of opportunity in Austin in general. It's a great place to do business.
Finally, when you're in Austin, I'm sure you're at La Condesa much of the time. But do you have a favorite friendly competitor that you like to dine at, something that you particularly admire here in town?
I don't see restaurants as competitors. I think they're all complementary. The more great restaurants that we have, the more people are going out to eat or come to visit Austin. But, really, if I'm out of town and I come back, the first thing that I do is go to the Trailer Park Torchy's for the Baja Shrimp tacos.
La Condesa is open daily for dinner and for brunch, lunch, and dinner on Saturday and Sunday. They are located at 400A West 2nd Street and can be reached at 512-499-0300.
