WORDS Brent Rosen PHOTO SpringHouse, contributed
The idea came from my sister. We were talking at the bar at True, she working, me drinking, when she said “doesn’t Rob kind of look like the Capital One Vikings from the commercials?” Why don’t you make something up about that.” Interesting, I thought - a profile as historic fiction. I went home, poured a tall glass of Weller, and came up with the following:
“Rob McDaniel keeps a cluttered war room. Crumples of balled-up loose leaf strewn about the floor, the script so small you can barely make out words like “prosciutto,” “padron,” and “porchetta” among the folds. Dozens, maybe hundreds, of cookbooks: lining the bookshelves, stacked on the floor, some piled in a heap on the table, now used as a makeshift armrest. An apothecary cabinet bulged in a corner, its haphazard drawers of cumin, curry, coriander, cast jagged shadows in the low light coming through the room’s only window. In the middle of it all, a map. And over that map hulked McDaniel.
There, in the map, Montgomery, beckoning - the prize of the River Region. McDaniel plotted for days in his stronghold on Lake Martin; he strategized, worked through plan after plan in his mind. This would not be Rob’s first invasion. In February 2012, Rob invaded Kitchen Stadium, ready to do battle with the culinary worlds keenest warriors. McDaniel used his secret weapon - Alabama Peach Moonshine - to help Chris Hastings unseat Bobby Flay, the “King of Sausage.” That invasion was successful, but Rob knew not to rest on his laurels. Montgomery would produce unique challenges all its own.”
That’s as far as I got before realizing fiction is much harder than fact.
“Actually, that’s pretty accurate. Especially the part about the clutter. I like it” Rob told me, laughing, after I asked him to read those two paragraphs. Rob is an old friend, and someone I’ve written about at least a half dozen times for various publications and websites. I’ve interviewed him about the Front Porch Revival, Lambstock, winning Iron Chef, and opening Kowliga, as well as about various dishes served at SpringHouse, his restaurant on Lake Martin. I was hoping he’d hate the idea of Rob McDaniel, Food Invader - Rob bearded, in furs and horned helmet, ready to raid. I wanted him to get into “aw shucks” mode, turn a little red in the face, and tell me the Food Invader idea was cool, but too much. Unfortunately, He didn’t.
“Well, I’ll probably hurt myself if I try to extend that metaphor any further than a couple of hundred words, so maybe we need to turn this into a more traditional newspaper piece.” I admitted, not wanting to figure out another dozen clever puns, another hand-full of alliterative descriptions.
“No problem,” Rob told me, maybe a little disappointed, “where do you want to start.”
Realizing that all of my prior interviews concerned only Rob’s role in a particular event, I thought this interview could be different. More in depth. I realized I had no idea when he graduated college, where, or if, he attended culinary school, where he first worked in a kitchen. I told him “let’s begin at the beginning”.
• • •
Rob started working in kitchens while still at Auburn University. First at Ruby Tuesdays, then at Auburn’s chef incubator, Amsterdam Café. After his time at Amsterdam, he knew he wanted to be Chef, so Rob changed his major to hotel and restaurant management, and prepared himself for the graduate program at the Culinary Institute of America. Then, something unexpected happened -- The New England Culinary Institute (NECI) in Vermont offered him a spot in its program.
Rob left Alabama for New England, but only made it as far as the mountains of Tennessee before he panicked. “I got really nervous,” Rob said. Imagine Rob -- before any accolade, before any accomplishment, before he’d cooked with anyone of note -- doubled over on the side of the road, breathing hard, feeling smothered by the haze drifting down from the Smoky Mountains. What if I fail? What if I have to turn around and go back to Alabama with my tail between my legs? What if no one likes me? What if I make no friends? I’ve never been outside of the South, what am I doing going to Vermont? Don’t the girls there have hairy armpits? Do I even want to do this? If you haven’t been there before, you haven’t lived right, and that moment forced Rob to make a choice. Be comfortable, or be the best that he could be. Rob chose the latter.
Shortly after arriving in Vermont, Rob realized his fears were unfounded. The people were great, he made lasting friendships and enjoyed his time in Vermont immensely. NECI taught him the skills of a chef, the techniques he would rely on for the rest of his career. He also learned he was a good cook, at least as good as his classmates. Upon graduation, confidence built, Rob left Vermont for Birmingham ready to show everyone back home his hard-learned culinary skills.
After returning to Birmingham, Rob spent time cooking under Chris Hastings at Hot and Hot Fish Club, and then several years at Jim N’ Nicks before Russell Lands brought him to SpringHouse. SpringHouse features an open kitchen, allowing guests to watch Rob and his team at work. The first thing you’ll notice: Rob’s calmness, his near serenity in the kitchen. Activity whirls around him, chefs performing the complicated dance of prep, to stove, to finishing, but all the activity purposeful. There is economy in the kitchen Rob runs, no wasted movements, no extra processes, no unnecessary steps. Part of that is experience, but the rest is personality. He has the look of a raider, but the temperament of a yogi.
• • •
I asked Rob why he agreed to participate in the Food Invasion at EAT South’s Hampstead Farm at the end of October, and his answer bordered on riddle. “Alabama is in the moment,” he told me. Puzzled, I asked, “um… could you maybe elaborate a bit on that?” Rob further explained, “we are at a moment where we are on the fence. We can keep going as a food state, continuing to climb upward, or we can roll back down the hill into a rut.” For years, Alabama food had two names, Frank Stitt and Chris Hastings, and those two carved out a path leading people outside of Alabama to see our food scene as more than barefoot people eating boiled vegetables. Rob believes that as a younger chef with a growing profile, it is his job to keep clearing the path forward, to continue the work of Frank and Chris, making sure that their hard-won achievements aren’t swept under the rug, forgotten.
This need to keep clearing the path, to keep pushing the boundaries of Alabama food forward makes Rob EAT South’s perfect partner for the Food Invasion. Rob already challenges himself to make certain the ingredients he uses are the finest and freshest available. While everything can’t be local -- for instance there isn’t a local producer of duck, or rabbit, or chicken -- Rob makes sure to use local, seasonal produce as frequently as he can. Rob buys vegetables direct from small farmers, and he picks figs and pears right from the trees of folks who live around Alexander City. Rob’s foraged for mushrooms in the woods and used hand-picked edible flowers in dishes at SpringHouse. The EAT South dinner will make Rob’s ingredient quest easy: every vegetable served at the dinner will come right from the farm.
I asked about the menu, and Rob coyly referred to it as a variant on “Surf and Turf.” What, I asked, do you mean by variant? While Rob remained evasive, it sounds like the “Surf” portion of the dinner will be Gulf seafood. As far as “Turf,” think things that grow in turf, and not animals that graze on turf. Rob wants there to be some mystery to the dinner, so anything more concrete about the menu became an off-limit topic. Rob would say he intends to do much of the cooking on open coals in a pit dug close to the dining area, and that the entire idea of cooking without a kitchen presented an excellent opportunity to explore other, rustic cooking methods. Rob says he looks forward to cooking for Montgomery out under the stars, and those fortunate enough to have a seat at the table should prepare for a night of expanded expectations and culinary truth and beauty.
• • •
On the day I interviewed Rob he had just returned from Charleston, where he cooked in a “Young Guns” dinner fundraiser for the Southern Foodways Alliance. The dinner had been silent-auctioned at Blackberry Farms during “Taste of the South,” and the winning bid was somewhere pretty close to the federal poverty line. At the seated dinner for around 70 people, Mike Lata and Sean Brock -- two luminaries on the national food scene -- served Rob’s food. “It was pretty awesome” Rob undersold. He’d come a long way from Ruby Tuesdays.
Photo: KBK Photography