Victoria Shore Transcript
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Hi, everyone. You're listening to The Future Of Food Is You, a production of The Cherry Bombe Podcast Network. I'm your host,Abena Anim-Somuah. Each week I talk to emerging talents in the food world and they share what they're up to, as well as their dreams and predictions for what's ahead. As for me, I'm the founder of The Eden Place, a community that's all about gathering people intentionally around food. I love this new generation of chefs, bakers, and creatives making their way in the world of food, drink, media, and tech.
Today's guest is Victoria Shore. Victoria is the executive chef of Thompson Savannah, a luxury hotel located in the beautiful Georgia City where she's in charge of their four eatery options. That's two restaurants, a bakery, and a bar. We talk about Victoria's motivations for working in kitchens, how she collaborates with purveyors and farmers in designing her dishes, and how she inspires her team to help change the narrative of southern cooking.
Thank you to Kerrygold and Walmart for supporting today's show. Kerrygold is delicious, all natural butter and cheese made with milk from Irish grass-fed cows raised on small family run Irish dairy farms. Kerrygold's farming families passed their craft and knowledge from generation to generation. This traditional approach is the reason for the rich taste of Kerrygold. You can enjoy delicious sliced or shredded Kerrygold cheddar cheese available in mild or savory flavors at a retailer near you. There's also Kerrygold's classic salted butter perfect for slathering on some sourdough toast. Look for it in the gold wrapper. Find your nearest store at Kerrygoldusa.com.
Now, let's check in with today's guest. Victoria, thank you so much for joining us on The Future Of Food Is You podcast. Can you tell us about how you grew up and how did food show up in your childhood?
Victoria Shore:
Absolutely. I would say I had a pretty stereotypical suburban American upbringing, but definitely food has always been a huge part of that for me. My dad is a super talented, always exploring home chef. We're pulling cookbooks off the shelves and where are we going this weekend? Always just hanging out in the kitchen cooking with him. I have really fond memories of cooking with my mom's mother up in Michigan as well. That was the good and the bad side of... The highlight was the little boxes of Lucky Charms cereal that she would let me eat because I couldn't have them at home, and then also getting to work with her on her Linzer torte and just these really traditional recipes she had handwritten in her little notebook.
That was just family time for me, was making dinner, preparing dinner. Food centric, looking back on it, the sprinkling of sports and learning to play instruments and that normal stuff as well. But it was just for me, being with my family and connecting with them and with the neighbors and with my friends was always about food for me.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
No cultures in America shine brighter than the Midwest in the South when it comes to cooking in that hospitality. It seems like you got a little bit of that from your grandma in Michigan, and then growing up in Atlanta, which is an incredible food city with just so much diversity and culture.
Victoria Shore:
Yeah. Something I don't think I appreciated for a long time was how much there was in Atlanta, and then I had my revelation of finding Buford Highway and when my parents moved to the Duluth area and just the really huge Korean population over there. They've got Ethiopian restaurants and every stripe of Latino and just so many various cultures. I was fortunate enough to grow up and I had a lot of Indian friends, or Chinese friends in high school. I'd love to go over to their houses for projects and their moms were like, "What do you mean you eat spicy food?" They were so excited to just to feed me. I think my friends hated it because they liked having Americans over so they could have pasta, but I was like, "Nope."
Abena Anim-Somuah:
But you also grew up with a bit of a Lebanese background, if I'm not mistaken.
Victoria Shore:
Yeah. My dad's grandma was Lebanese. Her parents were both immigrants from Lebanon in the early 1900s. They ended up in Oklahoma City, which actually has a really robust Lebanese population out there. It's a great hub for Middle Eastern food. I wouldn't say culturally how much of it carried over. I think they all came at a time when it was exciting to be American and you wanted to move here to learn English to integrate, but the food is the part that really lingered and stayed. We're all going to get together and talk about football and play Mario Kart and roll Domus and make to Tabbouleh and hummus and Baba ghanoush. That's really like a flavor profile that's always stayed with me. I love eating that way, of just little bites and shares, and just a whole spread of food, and it's all colorful and fresh. That's something that kind of, no matter if I've been working in a Spanish restaurant, or an Italian restaurant, or a new chef driven southern restaurant, it's something that I try to stick to and keep going back and reaching for those flavor profiles.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
I want to talk to you about your career because you have such an impressive career. You didn't go to culinary school, you were a liberal arts major. What made you decide that you wanted to work in restaurants? Can you tell us about that first restaurant that you worked at?
Victoria Shore:
Yeah, I very distinctly remember sitting in our apartment towards the end of senior year of college and we're all desperately trying to finish our theses or papers or wrap up those last few courses and start doing resumes and all that. Just two in the morning, my friend had just dropped by with the giant spread of to-go Korean barbecue and we're eating Gobi and I'm just like, "I don't know what I want to do with my life. I have no plan. I don't want to go be an intern or an actuary or whatever." All these just very boring and dry sounding job descriptions on the UGA Career Center website that I'm looking at. I was like, "Well, the one thing I've been consistently passionate about my entire life, my whole time in college has been... I've been driving home to go cook dinner with my parents, or I'm having my friends over to my dorm to explode my french fry fryer all over the counter."
It always had to do with food. Even if we're going out for a walk, I'm like, "Okay, who's packing the picnic? I'm going to go get supplies." I think coming out of that liberal arts degree, I'm like, "Well, I can write, so maybe I need to try and find a job with Bon Appetite, or write cookbooks, or something that is in my comfort zone of writing and reading and being a good student, but is related to food." And then looking at all of those applications, they're like, "Well, you need to have two years of kitchen experience." Like, "Okay, great, I'll just go... Well, I've cooked at home." Yeah, I was like, "I'll just start applying to..." I found the website goodfoodjobs.com, which I hope is still out there because it did right by me. I don't know, I haven't looked in a while, and just started applying for everything I could.
I heard back from the Squire Tarbox Inn that was looking for a culinary farm intern, which I was like, "Oh, this is perfect. I get to go learn organic gardening and do a little bit of cooking and a little bit of cleaning, a little bit of everything." So I packed everything up and I moved to Maine for six months. It was amazing. They had some rescue goats and we had some chickens. It was the first time I got to go get a freshly laid egg out of the barn in the morning. I don't know why it was shocking that it was warm, but it was just like... We're in America, we're so used to-
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Eggs come in the fridge. That's where they're made.
Victoria Shore:
... eggs being fridge temperature, and then to pick it up in its body temperature and still covered in feathers, it was just like, "This is incredible."
The family there was super generous and they really took care of me and took me in and I got that sense of the industry being... It was like a family. We were spending all that time together. We'd eat our meals together. I loved it. When my time there was coming to an end, I was thinking about what my next step was. I was like, maybe catering or something because I like having dinner parties, so I started looking at homemade catering in Athens, who I'd met Mimi, the chef there when I was doing the Taste of Athens events while I was still in school. I thought it would just make more sense as a culture fit to me coming into a kitchen with no experience and no culinary background. I just emailed her relentlessly until I moved-
Abena Anim-Somuah:
That's awesome.
Victoria Shore:
... back to Athens and just showed up and was like, "I would like a job." She brought me in. I showed up around Christmas season, so I think they were like, "Here's Jo. Jo's making a lot of cookies today. Why don't you help her out?" Then I just started doing all of the pastry stuff there. I was young and I knew nothing about how kitchens worked. I'd go home and read a cookbook and be like, "I can make croissants, so we're just going to have croissants for our sandwiches today." I was giving myself bruises trying to roll out sheets and sheets and sheets of croissants.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
It's hard work for such a delicate pastry.
Victoria Shore:
Yeah, but it was great. She gave me the freedom to do what I wanted. She had a young and growing business where it was all possible. I was there for a little over a year. I met Shae Rehmel, who was my mentor in life and everything. She's amazing.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
At that particular first restaurant that you worked at in Maine, what was it like going into that professional kitchen for the first time? Was there a sense of intimidation? Did you feel comfortable? How were you processing all that? But you also were working on a farm at the same time.
Victoria Shore:
Yeah, it's a really tiny inn they've got, maybe 12 rooms. I was living literally in a barn the first month that I was there. I think they've since sold it, but it was a retired couple. He used to be a big executive chef running Rockefeller Center restaurants in New York City. This old Swiss guy and his wife had bought the place as a retirement project and I was working for their daughter, who had a lot of professional kitchen experience. Getting into it I was nervous and intimidated because I didn't know what I was getting into, but once I was there, it was Laura and her father just hanging out in the kitchen. It had a family dynamic that I was super familiar with from cooking with my dad. I would say it was a good transitional kitchen because it was just kind of that family unit and myself and one other intern and a couple of guys who were there doing housekeeping and dishes.
No one was screaming or yelling at me or telling me I was doing stuff wrong. It was just like I would come in and be like, "I want to mess around with bread today," or, "Show me how to cook a filet or a rack of lamb." Laura had all these really fun forward-thinking ideas if she wanted to work with a holistic herb garden, and we're going to make our own tea blends, and how can we cook healthful food that's delicious. And then her father was like, "Why would we not put five pounds of butter and cream in this mushroom sauce?"
Abena Anim-Somuah:
He's Swiss, that's what they're used to.
Victoria Shore:
Traditional Swiss food. I got a little bit of hyper traditional, classically trained, scrubbed the copper pots every morning, and then also on the other hand, this very whimsical female energy and we're going to put holy basil in all the food because it does these things for your circulation and it's great for you. And then them just arguing about it.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
You come back South, you work for Mimi Mama, who's the chef and owner of Homemade, but now it seems like you're heading in this direction of pastry. Why was that super compelling to you?
Victoria Shore:
My dad did not do a lot of pastry, so my role in our home production kitchen was always making the pie crusts and doing the cookies and the sweets. That was something that I felt I had more experience with and a little more ability to come in and say, "I know what I'm doing," versus stepping onto a hotline and I didn't know what order fire meant, or 86, or upfront, or any of that. I'm just... Someone told me one day to get crackers up front and I'm running these crackers up to the front counter of the restaurant and they're like, "What are you doing?" I was like, "You said up front." They're like, "That means right now."
It was definitely a learning curve to that side of things where if someone was like, "I need you to whip this batter and make these cookies," I'm like, "Okay, I got you. Pastry."
That's all I did at Homemade. I felt like I had outgrown... Because again, I was young and I knew nothing. I was like, "I am bigger than this. I'm ready to move on to new things." Deepest apologies, Mimi, if you're listening, I am sure I still have many, many things to learn from you. My young me was foolish.
At that point, I cold emailed this restaurant group in Atlanta, Castellucci Hospitality, some place that they had a restaurant in our neighborhood where I was growing up and my parents loved going there and loved Mr. and Mrs C, the owners, were just this very typical northeastern Italian buoyant, passionate about food. They wanted you to be there, super outgoing and just a happy place to be.
My dad had been talking to Mrs. C about how I was looking for something new. I just cold emailed the owner of this, I think at that point, three or four restaurant group and was like, "I'm super interested in this new place that you've got opening. I really want to be a pastry chef. I would love to come work with your team." They were like, "Great, you're hired."
Abena Anim-Somuah:
That's awesome.
Victoria Shore:
I drove up to Atlanta, had a 15 minute interview, and then I was moving.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
That's impressive. Were you working for one particular restaurant, or were you working for all three of the restaurants at the same time?
Victoria Shore:
I wanted to work at Cooks and Soldiers. That was their new restaurant they had opening. I don't know why I've had this lifelong fascination, that I think I inherited from my father, about Basque cuisine. It was a Basque restaurant, so I was like, I really wanted to work there. It was the most fine dining, the one that had the pastry program down in West Midtown in Atlanta, so in the center of everything.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Did you head up the program while you were there?
Victoria Shore:
No, I was actually hired as the pastry assistant, because I was... I'm like, "I'm learning. This is my first real restaurant." I just wanted to work with the pastry chef. I was doing production mostly. We had a chocolate tart on a cornmeal graham cracker crust that was insane. That was my favorite thing ever. And Basque cakes, of course, with it being a Basque restaurant.
After I'd been there for maybe a month, they were kind of like, "Oh, well we don't actually have a full-time pastry assistant position, but we like you, so do you want to try garde manger?" I was like, "I guess so. I just moved from Athens into Atlanta and I'm finding a place to live. I need a job." I got on the hotline and I never looked back. I got that adrenaline rush of being in service. It was a super busy, super successful restaurant. We're doing 300, 400 cover nights and it...
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Wow.
Victoria Shore:
Yeah, it was exhilarating. I was like, "Well, this is great. Why would I want to be in the back by myself making cakes when I can be part of the team and the service?" Really the customer facing in the action side of things. I was learning garde manger, and then I was learning saute, and then I was grilling kilogram steaks on a wood fire grill and climbing up in the grill at the end of the night to clean it out and four pound hole snapper. I loved it. It was fun. I got there at a really lucky time. We had a great team. It was really special.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Can you tell our audience what a garde manger is for those of us who are not versed in restaurant lingo?
Victoria Shore:
Yeah. garde manger, I think historically was probably the most complicated station because you're the guardian of the food, the keeper of the food, and you're the one making all of the pates and tureens, and taking everyone else's trim and making it something delicious that you can make money out of. Nowadays, it's normally you're frying stuff, you're making salads. It's your appetizer station, if you will, especially in that restaurant. We were doing the cold apps and the hot apps and the dessert. It's kind of in this weird situation if it gets looked down upon a lot of times because you're not handling the steak and grilling stuff, but I think it's... That's the person that's touching your plates at the beginning at the meal, the plates at the end of the meal, and kind of everywhere in between. That's a high volume, but lower intensity, I guess.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
After you are at the Castellucci Restaurant group, you have a few stints before you end up at the Thompson Savannah group, which we'll talk about later. As you're getting more used to the hotline, how are you thinking about what you want to do in restaurants, what you're excited about? What was the environment like in those kitchens as you were working there?
Victoria Shore:
I think mostly I just wanted to learn. I've never been that person with a five year plan. I am always just looking for the next something that someone is willing to teach me, whether it's the next station, or moving on to the next restaurant. I did several openings with CHG, which I really enjoyed because I'm very much the make a list and check all the boxes kind of person. Doing openings where you have all that time to organize and optimize and then just check, check, check, check, check. I wanted to be a Sous chef. I wanted to get up to a management position where I felt like I could just be there all the time and have time to work on projects and do all that. I wouldn't say I had a vision that I was trying to get to. I was just always there for the next step. I was fortunate enough to have managers and team members that really believed in me and believed that I was ready to do those things. I just keep getting into situations that I take that leap of faith in myself and that they know what they're doing when they say I'm ready for it.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Let's take a quick break and we'll be right back.
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Now, back to our guest. Congratulations on your new role. You are the executive chef at Thompson Savannah. That's so impressive. All the hard work has paid off. How did you end up getting the role?
Victoria Shore:
Kind of a long story of funny incidents, and again, people just believing in me. I was originally called to the Thompson Hotel to be the executive Sous chef for Whitney Otawka, who was going to be the opening executive chef there. She's a friend of my really dear friend, Lyric Lewin. Lyric had tried to connect us several times on projects. This was the one that just sort of timed out when I was ready to leave Atlanta and to do something new.
I'd moved down here and then Whitney decided that probably hotels were not the right move for her. She wanted to pursue some other projects, so they brought in a friend, acquaintance of hers, Rob Newton. He and I worked together really well and really closely for the next year, year and a half, getting the hotel open, getting through those awkward fledgling phase of what are these concepts and who's going to come eat here and what do we want to do with the project?
It was awesome to have that opportunity of getting my hands into the nuts and bolts of running in a hotel, which is my first hotel property, and what that looked like while also having Rob there, which is super creative and very driven with the vision. He's there to be that guiding light and to have the direction to it, and then I'm there to make sure it's all happening.
Rob has since moved on. He's our creative director at Fleeting still, so he's still involved and get to continue to work with him, which is awesome. We had a conversation when he decided he wanted to leave and move on to that new role that he's like, "I think you're ready for this. I think if you want it, this is your job." I don't know what I was thinking. I was just kind of like, "Yeah, okay, let's do it."
Then there's... It's a hotel, so there's hoops and things to go through. Eventually I was finally official that I was the executive chef of the property. I don't know. I'm super excited to see where this goes. I've got a great team there. My focus in this transition period has just been really taking care of the people that I have with me and making sure that they're happy and that I'm listening to them and that we're working together to keep putting out a great product and then figure out what my voice looks like and what I want to do with these restaurants and with these outlets.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
That's really awesome. You have four concepts at the restaurant.
Victoria Shore:
We've got the two full-time restaurants, Fleeting, which we do breakfast and dinner, and then Bar Julian, which is lunch, dinner and late night on the weekends, which is something Savannah definitely needs is some more choices for the late night options that aren't downtown in bars on Congress Street. Than we have a seasonal outlet at the pool. This year we're doing kind of Italian, inspired by my recent trip to Venice and just how much we loved being there when it was hot and sweaty and nasty, but we're like, you know, a plate of prosciutto and a glass of cold wine seems amazing. I was like, "Well, that sounds like the pool in Savannah, where it is 90 degrees and very humid." This year we're doing Italian Mezze snack sandwiches there at the pool. Then we have the lobby bar as well, where we're kind of an extension of Fleeting, but a little more casual, approachable.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
I want to hear more about the state of southern cuisine and fine dining. I feel like in the last few years people always think, "Oh, the place is for fine dining are New York and Chicago and Los Angeles," but the South has really started to blossom when it comes to those incorporating the seasonal vegetables, incorporating fine dining techniques to create these really rich and robust menu. I would love to hear how you are thinking about that as a chef perspective and how you're incorporating that into all the different outlets that you have at Thompson Savannah.
Victoria Shore:
Yeah, absolutely. We are super fortunate with the produce that we're able to get down here. Like you said, it's just... You can grow anything almost year round in Savannah. We're almost to that tropical bit of... We get citrus here, which is something I've never had the pleasure of being able to work with local citrus before. That's been super cool.
I've just been really trying to get to know all the farmers down here. I go to the market every week and talk to Brendan at Gannon and talk to Richard, who grows our chickens and the eggs that I use at home. It's the same product that I use at the restaurant. That's what I want the future of Southern food and food to be, is where I can go to a restaurant and get food that was grown here that I can also go to the Farmer's market and that's what I'm eating at home too, because I think restaurants are just in such a strange limbo, really, since Covid of what is the role of a restaurant in society? What are we doing to make them sustainable, ecologically economically mental health-wise for the people working in them?
I think we're just in a really cool opportunity right now of the supply chain is upside down, so now local produce maybe is more affordable than something that was grown in Arizona and had to get shipped around and water supplies out West. I try to do some reading and really be aware of what products I'm using. In the end, it's a better product for us as well. The chickens are one thing that I've been super passionate about since I moved down here. Normally not something anyone gets that excited about in a restaurant, but because we're able to get these chickens from lovely Richard Coward at Bootleg Farms, they're the best chickens I've ever had in my life. I'm so excited and fortunate that we are able to serve them at the restaurant.
Every time someone's like, "Man, that's the best chicken I've ever had in a restaurant," I'm like, "Yeah, and I didn't really do it. It was Richard at the farm who grew delicious, tasty chickens." I'm just able to curate the best of what I can find here in the South and present it to people. That's really special. That's where I think my job, and I hope the other chefs around as well, is to just be able to curate that experience for people of the bounty of what all the hard work everyone else is doing here.
In the South too, I think we've been super fortunate with this latest wave of immigration to the United States where we have so many different cultures here too, that it can be Southern, but it doesn't have to be crab cakes and fried chicken. It can be tofu soup from Korea, or Ethiopian stews. There's so much more flavor and diversity here than I ever thought. It's amazing. I have a super diverse team at the hotel right now. I've got a girl working with me who's from China. I've got some ladies who make pizza for me up at Bar Juliann who are from Nicaragua. It's getting to talk to them about their food and their culture and what makes them excited and why are you here in a restaurant in Savannah is super special for me.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
When it comes to menu development and recipe development, what is your process? How are you thinking about what flavors to incorporate per the seasons? How do you think about turning those into dishes that can work at scale and work in restaurants in such an efficient way?
Victoria Shore:
Yeah, that's always the challenge. I think the first thing is going back to the farmers and talking to them like, "Hey, what do you have growing? What can we expect in the next months, two months, three months?" I wish I could say I had that much time to be thinking ahead most of the time, but sometimes it's, "Oh crap, this is the availability list this week, so what are we going to do?" It's different for every restaurant. For Bar Julian, I let myself play a lot with those Mediterranean flavors. It's a little more static. I want it to be an experience that people can come back. Always going to have hummus, always going to have a pepperoni pizza. And then we'll have a rotating seasonal pizza where it's always a white pie so that we can focus on the seasonal vegetables. I'm doing a charred spring onion one right now that I'm super in love, with some basil pesto on top. It's really, really tasty.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
It sounds delicious.
Victoria Shore:
Yeah, I'm super excited for it. The basil is almost back, the local stuff. We work with a gardener at the hotel as well, so we're fortunate to be able to grow most of our own basil and herbs there on site. It's always super, super fresh.
Fleeting is a little more composed. We get the chance to be creative and whimsical down there. For that one, I'd say it's super collaborative, is how I like to do menu development down there. I've got a strong team of Sous chefs and creatives. We'll have a meeting, "What's selling? What's not selling? Honestly, what are we tired of cooking?" Maybe it's great, but I don't want to cook that anymore. I'm tired of looking at onion sauce or whatever. We got to change it. Yeah, we'll kind of just go shopping in the walk-in cooler. What do we have in stock? What needs to go?
Sometimes the best menu dishes are happy accidents, or things that you just threw together because you had a ton of extra beats and so you boiled them in the extra tomato sauce leftover from making pizza sauce and it turned into a delicious condiment, and so now it's on the duck dish. It's spontaneous and collaborative, I would say is kind of how I like to do that.
The challenge is taking those things you make in that moment of spontaneity and then being like, "Okay, well now I need a recipe and we got to scale it up," and making sure that recipe that I then wrote makes sense to someone who's not me, which is something that I think Recess, one of the concepts I worked for in Atlanta, was great at teaching me how to write recipes and translate and make sure that everybody could understand and execute it because we were fast casual, super quick ticket times, but it was all very fresh, made from scratch dressings.
We cleaned all the lettuce, we cut all the chicken by hand. It was labor-intensive, but it was the labor of love. I was working with a less experienced crew there. It was a lot of people who weren't necessarily like, "I'm super passionate about food and this is my life." It was kind of, "I'm a mom, I've got kids, I need a paycheck. I kind of like to cook, so now I work in a restaurant." Dealing with a wide range of experience level there really helped me to grow as a leader, as a patient human being and as someone who can write recipes.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
I want to ask, when you think of your vision for Thompson Savannah and the mark you want to leave as the executive chef, how are you hoping that shines through in the dishes that you're creating? What sort of dishes will we be seeing in the next few years from you?
Victoria Shore:
First and foremost, I want the Thompson Savannah to be a good place to work. I want people to come in and enjoy the people they work with, the food that they're putting out, also the amount that they're getting paid. That's my primary goal. I think we're doing pretty well so far. I've personally never worked in a restaurant where I'm so happy to see everybody every day and there's no single person where I'm just like, "Man, I got to work with George today. Ugh. Okay, we'll get it over with."
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Sorry to George.
Victoria Shore:
Yeah. George is fictitious and completely not a real person. No feelings intended to anybody there. That will show through in the food. Happy people are going to make happy food. They're going to care more about what they're doing. I really want to make sure that they're meeting the farmers, they're meeting the producers, and they're not throwing away half a head of lettuce because they don't feel like cleaning it because they've met Brendan, or they've met Billy, or they've met the person who's put the hard work into growing that head of lettuce.
The kind of food that I make is more vegetable focused, do fresher, not so much meat sauces, but it's always quirky. I've found a lot of times I have a really hard time describing my cuisine or cramming it into a menu verbiage that makes sense because it's just like, "Oh, it sounded good in my head and it's tasty, but I don't know what to call it." I think quirky, creative, vegetable-forward, and inclusive. I really want to work with my team. If Sunny, my wonderful cook from China, wants to make scallion pancakes and we're going to do noodle dishes, then that's what I want to do because she's passionate about it. She's going to teach me about it. She's going to teach the rest of the team about it. We're all going to learn and grow together and hopefully be able to take those new experiences on somewhere else.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
When it comes to your leadership style and thinking about creating good environments for your staff, are there chefs that you've worked with or chefs that you look up to that have inspired you to think about how you create your philosophy in the kitchen?
Victoria Shore:
John Castellucci was my first executive chef at CHG. He is about my age, so it was really cool to get to see someone that I can connect with on that level being in a leadership role. I really respected and liked working with him because he was on the line with us. He was always there. I never saw him ask me or anyone else to do something that I didn't see him doing or that he wasn't willing to do. That's the first step is, A, just showing people that you respect them. I just really try to show up and be present for them. I think listening is super important. I won't say it's something I've always been great at, but I've put a lot of effort into trying to be better and slow down. Maybe I don't need to get these three prep projects done. It's more important that I talk to someone about why they're having a bad day, or what are you interested in today? Or tell me about your chickens. Maybe it doesn't seem like the most important thing at the moment, but in the long run, those people are what make the restaurant, not me getting something done. Really trying to slow down and focus more on the employees or my colleagues, my teammates, and making them feel comfortable and heard has been the biggest secret to management.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
I would love to hear more about what the spring and the summer looking like for you. Are there events happening? How are you thinking about incorporating seasonality at this time of the year?
Victoria Shore:
Yeah, it's really about to be peak produce time down here. We're still getting a lot of greens and beautiful lettuces. We're also about to start getting tomatoes and summer squash, and that gorgeous transition time when you have everything and it's not just, "Oh God, another eggplant. I can't." Which is definitely coming later in the summer. It's time for us to really start revamping the menus, focusing a lot on my personal favorite, salad, and what we can do to just really showcase those fresh, beautiful, crunchy, juicy flavors and just get really excited about the local produce.
We do have upcoming in May, our next Farmers and Distillers dinner, which is something we started doing, where we'll pick a beverage partner, we pick a farm partner, and we do an intimate tasting where people get to interact with the producers and have a prefixed menu. We did the last one with a Mescal company and a couple of our local produce farmers and our guy who brings us a pig once every other week.
Rob was freshly back from a trip to Mexico, so we did a Mexican style like Pozole and empanadas. It was fun for us to get to do something a little different and to really help highlight those makers. Everyone had a great time. We've got the next one coming up in May. We're working with Richard at Bootleg Farm. It'll be very chicken themed, but he also makes wonderful goat cheese. We've got a lot to work with there.
We're excited about our pool being reopened for the season. I'm super just ready to grab a spritz and a Mortadella sandwich and hang out at the pool. We have our bakery that opened the past year, Stevedore, and they're making great bread. The heart of any good sandwich is bread, so we're super fortunate to be able to have them.
Yeah, I just was talking yesterday at the event with some of the other local chefs who are interested in having Amigo do some pop-up dinners with Farm Hospitality Group, Late Air, which is a new natural wine bar in town. That's been an amazing addition to the Savannah food scene.
I'm most excited about growing all of these relationships and partnerships because Savannah's such a small town that those things are essential. Historically, food scene in Savannah has been very Paula Deen and traditional Southern, and so it's super exciting to see this new wave of people coming or people staying because it's affordable, or it's a cool place to be now. I don't really know exactly the reasons that are leading to this kind of renaissance that we're having, but it's amazing. I'm super happy to be part of that. That was part of the reason I took this job and moved down here, because it seemed like it was a growing scene where we had the chance to release, set the cultures, set the tone, and make a difference. I'm super excited to be doing all of these partner projects.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
I know you mentioned the reputation that Savannah's gone nationally is from, again, very traditional homegrown biscuits and gravy and fried chicken and fried catfish and all that fun stuff. How would you hope to see Savannah and working at Thompson Savannah add to the conversation of nationally acclaimed restaurants, and nationally acclaimed restaurants being in such small hosts and parts of the country?
Victoria Shore:
Yeah, I think it's awesome. In general, the national trend for maybe your second tier cities, Oklahoma City, St. Louis, random places that you would never have thought this is a food destination, really is starting to have this renaissance is amazing. I'm really happy and fortunate that we get to be part of that conversation.
There's still a place for traditional Southern food. Biscuits are great and they go great with everything, but maybe we put fried egg and kimchi on the biscuit instead of country ham, or... We like to buy the country ham from Benton's based in Tennessee. They age it for 24 months, so it ends up being like a prosciutto. I can use that on our pizzas at Bar Julian.
Kind of keeping in theme of the hard work that all the producers do here and the beautiful produce they grow, but turning it on its head a little bit so we can respect tradition but not be tied down by it. Because ultimately, anybody can look up a great recipe for shrimp and grits and cook that at home, or there's other restaurants in Savannah that have been doing that for years and years and years, and will continue to do that and honor those traditions. Our place in the conversation is to say, "We're going to do shrimp and grits, but we're going to serve it with chili crisp and the shrimp bar, like salt and pepper fried, and we're going to make sure we buy the best grits. Maybe you get just a little bit of them and not a huge bowl that you're going to go dive into," but the focus is more on the techniques and the quality of the ingredients.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
If we're talking again five to 10 years from now, where do you hope to see Savannah and Savannah's food culture on a national scale, a global scale, even a local scale of anything?
Victoria Shore:
Yeah, I think Charleston is the image I hold up in my head when I think where is Savannah going. I think Charleston now has this great reputation as a food city. As a result of that, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. We have a hard time, weirdly sometimes getting fresh seafood in Savannah. We're right on the coast. They catch it all right here, but just the way the structure of distribution works, it all goes on a truck and it goes to Atlanta, or it goes to Jacksonville, and then it comes back to Savannah. Just creating the demand on the wholesale side to realign those distribution channels to make sure that we're getting the good stuff that we grow here and we're keeping it here, and then that people want to come down here not only for shrimp and grits, but to try the wonderful things that they're doing over at Common Threader, that Mashama's doing at the Gray, and to make it a culinary destination in its own right and not like a stopover between Charleston and Florida.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
We are huge manifests here on the podcast. Are there guests that you would love to come to Thompson, Savannah to try your food? People that you've admired in the food world for a while?
Victoria Shore:
Jeremy Fox and the Rustic Canyon family are people that I've followed with interest for a long time. I had the opportunity to get to go do a stage with them when we were doing the opening for this project. It was everything I hoped it would be an amazing and it was super inspirational. I'd be thrilled. Probably speechless.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Last question I have for you is, when you think of your role as a female chef, how are you hoping that your position helps pave the way for other women or other people to get into the kitchen, and enjoy working in professional kitchens?
Victoria Shore:
Yeah, I think setting a good example is number one. Two is just making sure that I am someone that other people want to work for, that they leave having had a good experience with me as a different face of running a kitchen, and doing my best to promote other people who maybe wouldn't have gotten a shot in a more traditional setting. I've been extremely fortunate to not have to have dealt with a lot of issues of sexism, or just bullying, or really any of that. I feel like I've always been really fortunate in the kitchens that I've worked in. I know that's not the case for everyone and I want to change that. I want to make sure that the kind of places that I'm creating and I'm influencing, everyone has a chance to do what they want to do.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
We're going to do our fun Future of Food is You tradition that we call the Future Flash Five. Are you ready?
Victoria Shore:
Yep.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
The future of farmer's markets.
Victoria Shore:
Dogs.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
The future of restaurants.
Victoria Shore:
Diversity.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
The future of hotels.
Victoria Shore:
Inclusive.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
The future of hospitality.
Victoria Shore:
Changing.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Finally, the future of professional kitchens.
Victoria Shore:
Healthier.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Amazing. Victoria, it was so great chatting with you. I have learned so much. I cannot wait to come visit you down in Georgia.
Victoria Shore:
Yes, please do.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
If we want to continue to support you, where are the best places to find you?
Victoria Shore:
You can find Fleeting at Fleeting Savannah on Instagram and Bar Julian as well. I'm personally there at VShore09. Yeah, just to come visit us in Savannah.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Amazing. Thanks so much. Before we go, our guest is going to leave a voicemail at the Future of Food Mailbox, just talking to themselves 10 years from now. You have reached The Future Of Food Is You mailbox. Please leave your message after the beep.
Victoria Shore:
Hi there, Victoria. We've been on such an incredible journey to this point. I know that 10 years ago when I stepped into my first kitchen, I had no idea where it would lead. I can't wait to hear where you've gone in the next 10. Up to now, it's been a fortunate series of events and friends putting their faith in me and you. I hope that you've been bold enough to take the next step to find and reach for a passion project. I hope you're listening to this message out in the garden with a good cup of coffee, getting excited about the day ahead and the work to be done. Most importantly, I hope you never know what you can't do, that you have surrounded yourself with good people and are always showing up for them and never stop exploring.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
That's it for today's show. Do you know someone who you think is the future of food? Tell us about them. Nominate them at the link in our show notes, or leave us a rating and review and tell me about them in the review. I can't wait to read more about them. Thanks to Kerrygold and Walmart for supporting the show. The Future Of Food Is You is a production of The Cherry Bombe Podcast Network. Thanks to the team at CityVox Studios, executive producers, Kerry Diamond and Catherine Baker, and associate producer, Jenna Sadhu. Catch you on the future flip.