What is the secret to making great toast?
Oh, you're just going to go in with the hard hitting questions.
I'm Dan Pashman from The Sporkful.
We like to say it's not for foodies, it's for eaters.
We use food to learn about culture, history, and science.
There was a time we looked into allegations of discrimination at Bon Appetit, or when I spent three years inventing a new pasta shape.
It's a complex noodle that you put together.
Every episode of The Sporkful, you're going to learn something, feel something, and laugh.
The Sporkful.
Get it wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey, it's Francis.
This week we're bringing you back to a live show we did last year in beautiful downtown Indianapolis.
Have a listen.
I'm Francis Lam, and this is The Splendid Table from APM.
In celebration of the 30th anniversary of The Splendid Table, this year we are taking the show on the road.
Over the course of the year, we'll be recording from seven cities all around the country.
We'll get to meet our listeners and get to talk to food heroes in their own towns.
And we were so excited to get it all kicked off with WFYI in Indianapolis.
I'd never been there before.
And honestly, the only thing I knew about its food scene was St.
Elmo, a steakhouse famous for a shrimp cocktail with like a thermonuclear amount of horseradish.
And I have to say, it was an experience to feel the back of my head vibrating with every bite.
But then I had dinner at a modern kind of diner called Borage that was so good.
I came back for lunch before flying out of town.
I also met two young bakers who are carrying on a dear mentor's legacy.
And I got to hang out with a husband and wife restaurateur team, passionate about cooking global food in a small town.
And before we get to all of those conversations, I'm excited to introduce you to the inimitable Martha Hoover, a former sex crimes prosecutor.
36 years ago, Martha took a turn and became a restaurateur.
Not an easy thing to do in a city that was known as the chain restaurant capital of the world.
Now the owner of 14 restaurants, including the beloved Cafe Patashou, which she calls a student union for adults.
We started the evening learning about her story and how she's seen the restaurant scene in Indianapolis go through dramatic change over the last three and a half decades.
Let's head to the stage, Claire.
Wow.
Okay.
I know it's not a competition.
Happy 30th.
But we've been around for 36 years.
I know.
You're a big sis.
You're a big sis.
Well, thank you so much.
Thank you so much for coming out here.
I know you're busy.
And thank you for taking us into your time machine.
Because I want to bring us back right now to 1989.
Actually, well, you opened 1989, so let's call it 1988.
1988.
Yeah.
Before you open and you're looking around, you're hungry for dinner.
What did you see at that time?
Truthfully, what I saw was nothing that I was comfortable eating myself or feeding my family.
It was a different form of food desert.
We speak about that today in terms of hunger and social food justice, but back then it was just a food desert where there was nothing but chain food.
And then, to complicate everything, those chain restaurants also existed not in neighborhoods, but in malls, because chain restaurants came about because of malls needing to fill their space.
So you had this great commoditization of, instead of independent retail stores, you had major chain retail stores.
But at the same time there was this remarkable thing happening on both of the coasts, especially in California, with California cuisine growing.
And I had the tremendous benefit of enjoying travel.
And I was able to go to France, where I saw food for the first time.
That I thought was the most remarkable things I'd ever seen and eaten before.
And then I had, when I was probably 23 or 24, had the opportunity to eat with Atlas Water.
So, you know, there were other things going on.
They just hadn't percolated back into the Midwest.
So how did you decide to open a restaurant?
I mean, it's one thing to be like oh man, I love that thing, I ate there, and I love that thing, I ate there.
And it's another thing to say, I think I'm going to open a place.
I was always a very food-driven person.
My parents were New Yorkers.
I lived in Texas for a lot of my youth.
And when we lived in Texas, the food scene there was equally as not developed as, And I was led to believe.
Obviously it's not true, but I was led to believe that the best foods in the world were served in and this came mostly from my parents New York Paris, France and San Francisco.
And I didn't understand, even as a young child, how we lived in this really lush farm agricultural state.
Historically, we've had the most gorgeous, really rich soil.
We had a lot of family farms back then.
And I didn't understand how we lived here but didn't get to have some of the good food that was being grown and produced.
It just didn't make sense to me.
And then as I started traveling, when I went to college and I started traveling and learning a little bit more about the world, I just thought I've got to have this in my own backyard.
I did not know when I opened up my first restaurant however, that I and you probably don't know this Francis, but I'd never worked in a restaurant.
We were talking about your working in restaurants.
Sounds like a great idea.
Yeah.
It was a great business plan to tell any banker that I'd never worked in a restaurant.
And I also did not know I was pregnant with my third child.
So I always like to say that it's a perfect recipe for disaster.
Having no experience in the business world and the industry in which I was so ready to join,
But truthfully, it also was because of the timing.
Where people didn't have the expectations in 1989 of greatness.
There was no Instagram.
People didn't know what food was supposed to look like.
They just wanted the experience of going into a restaurant.
And I had a lot of freedom.
We're opening up a restaurant today.
It brings...
And one of the challenges everybody's preconceived notion of what the food is, how it's supposed to be plated.
You know, all croissants look the same these days.
You know, all that kind of stuff.
Yeah, yeah.
Okay, but when you opened?
So, like you said, you're inspired by your travels and this idea that like oh, good things are from far away.
Yeah.
But you opened the restaurant, Café Patachou.
Yeah.
With a very like approachable menu.
It was breakfast.
It was lunch.
It was not like highfalutin food.
It was not like trying to be, oh, let me show you guys what you're missing.
And you also open with an emphasis on local ingredients.
Yes.
And I opened also in the neighborhood in which I lived.
And I also opened with the hours that worked best.
As I said, we opened in March and my youngest was born a couple months later.
So I was, you know, trying to had the baby there and open a restaurant in a business I didn't know anything about and didn't really know how to cook at scale.
But it did work and it worked beautifully.
And one of the reasons it worked so beautifully is because we did have access to these incredible small farmers who were so excited that there was somebody in the restaurant world who was willing to buy from them directly.
And I remember very clearly around oh, I would say three or four years into having my first restaurant wanting arugula.
And I called the local produce house and said, I want arugula.
And he said, no, we'll never be able to get arugula here.
That's just not something you're going to find.
Four years later, he found it and brought it in.
And this is something I'm very proud of.
Pete Piazza always says that we brought arugula to Indiana.
And we did it way before anyone else was serving arugula in other states.
You know, it gave us this opportunity that we didn't have to do what everyone else was doing.
And I always figured that if it was something on the menu that I wanted to eat, I bet all my neighbors will want to eat it too.
Okay, so your relationships with the farmers being one side of the coin, the other side of the coin being like oh, now you're in the city, you're looking at the clientele, you're looking at the market, you're looking at the community and what people are more and more excited about.
Was there ever a moment when you looked around at other restaurants opening you're like oh, my god, i'm so excited to eat there or a place you love?
They're doing a great job and thinking like wow, we've really things have really changed here.
Like, are there like little moments where you feel like wow, you're really seeing evolution, like true evolution?
Oh, the difference today from even 10 years ago in this city is magnificent.
What are some places you love to eat around town?
Oh well, you know, I was hoping you would ask because everyone knows I have a thing about list restaurants.
You all know the restaurants that are on all the lists, whether it's Eater or whatever magazine.
Sure, sure.
But I like the restaurants that kind of don't get to the list.
I still go way too often to Working Man's Friend, which I...
Thank you.
Those girls kill it.
And I love their product.
I love everything about it.
And it deserves more attention.
And then I like to support the old school guys, because food journalism is always about the shiny new coin.
And since I'm not a shiny new coin, I still believe in supporting heritage brands.
I think that those are the ones that get overlooked and mislooked, and that bothers me a lot.
We have a colleague friend, Steve Oakley, who has this...
You know, he is so talented.
He worked for Charlie Trotter as his sous for four and a half years.
We have that level of talent here.
And just because it's not a new restaurant in a new area whatever, does not mean that the food is not solid and good and served with incredible hospitality.
Yeah, you know, it's funny.
Um, food and wine magazine famously has an annual feature called best new chef and i remember having lunch once with denna cohen when she was the editor of and i was like know her well.
I asked her like don't you want to do an issue once in a while called best old chefs?
Can i write your issue best old chefs?
And she's it's not really our thing and i was like whose thing is it?
It's got to be someone's thing.
I am really into any list that is like 60 over 60 or 70 over 70 these days.
So yeah, give me that.
Give me someone who has been in the trenches over someone who's like doing something for a year.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I love that.
Well, I mean, that is always the push and pull too, right?
You know, we want innovation.
We want novelty.
We want creativity.
Like when we talk about chefs, like the first, oh, they're so creative.
They're so creative.
And obviously that's a really interesting, exciting, important thing.
But I remember actually having coffee once with a dear friend who is in fact a very innovative, very creative chef.
And he went to this like hot restaurant the night before.
I was like, oh, how was dinner?
And he's like, you know, I used to complain that there's not enough creativity in cooking.
And he's like, maybe there's too much creativity.
As someone who ate at Noma and refused to eat the ants and some of the other things, I agree there may be too much creativity.
But what I noticed, because I know someone well who worked there, all those chefs when they left Noma they went to the taco stand.
They went to the Italian restaurant where they got the cuisine grammaire.
They wanted comfort food themselves.
We live in a world where there can be room for both, but i do think that we put way too much emphasis on creativity as being what is more important of the realm.
Yeah, and i'd rather go for quality simplicity, and that's just my vibe.
Sure yeah, and i think the beauty of a great restaurant scene is when there's all those things at play.
Yeah, so thank you so much, martha.
Well, thank you.
And congratulations on all your success.
Amazing.
I really appreciate it.
And thank you for this opportunity.
It was a pleasure.
Let me join Martha Hoover.
Martha Hoover is the owner of Cafe Patashou and many other restaurants in Indianapolis and is the founder of the Patashou Foundation.
More from the stage in Indianapolis in a minute.
I'm Francis Lam, and this is The Splendid Table from APM, American Public Media.
Thank you.
Square also helps you manage your staff payroll and schedule, sell online or in person with synced inventory and you can access your money instantly with Square Checking.
Square launched its most powerful tools yet, designed to give local businesses a competitive edge without the complexity
If you're ready to sell smarter, run your business more smoothly and stress less.
Right now you can get up to 200 off Square hardware at squarecom.
Slash go slash, splendid.
That's S-Q-U-A-R-E dot com slash G-O slash Splendid.
Run your business smarter with Square.
Get started today.
It's time to level the f*** up.
I'm Robin Arzon and I light fires.
I'm an executive founder, best-selling author ultra-marathoner mother, proud Latina.
And I'm not done yet announcing Project Swagger, my new weekly podcast, Your Transformation Toolkit.
I'm gonna cut through the noise and give you actionable takeaways each week in under 30 minutes.
Elevate your hustle with routines, strategies, and mindset shifts that I have pressure tested.
I have burnt down this Beyonce candle like all the way to the bottom.
We have been trying to manifest.
Carves are not the enemy.
I probably have a piece of bread or a bagel with me at all times, and I am not exaggerating.
Tune in on February 24th for episode one, Building the Skill of Self-Talk.
This is the foundation.
Follow Project Swagger wherever you get your podcasts.
Let's go.
I'm Francis Lam, and this is The Splendid Table, the show for curious cooks and eaters.
We're bringing you a show we recorded with WFYI, Indianapolis Public Radio, on stage at the Basile Theater at the Athenaeum.
So after Martha Hoover gave us the story of how the Indy food scene got to where it is today, we brought on a few more guests to talk about what they're seeing in the present.
Coincidentally, they're all transplants to Indy and they're doing some of the most exciting work cooking, baking and covering food in the area.
Samir Mohamed is the chef and co-owner, along with his wife Rachel, of 9th Street Bistro in the town of Noblesville.
Zoe Taylor is the pastry chef and co-owner, along with her partner Josh, of Borage Cafe and Bakery.
And Brian Garrido is a food writer Eaters, Indianapolis correspondent and a contributor to Edible Indie.
Let's get to the stage.
Hello, hello.
Welcome, welcome.
Samir, let me start with you, actually.
Okay.
Okay.
You came to this area after years of being a chef in the Denver area.
Right.
Why?
Well, I married a Hoosier.
So that was the first part of it.
But also when we would come to visit family for the holidays and whatnot.
I saw, like Martha had said, all these farms around and such a potential for working with farmers ranchers, on a very hyper local level.
And then I think we also saw a need for great restaurants.
That we're more independent more –.
I hate the term farm-to-table, because every restaurant, including fast food, is a farm-to-table restaurant.
But we're working and creating relationships with people that care about food as much as we do.
Okay, but you were not actually – you're currently not in Indianapolis.
You're in Noblesville, which is 45 minutes away.
And actually, you corrected me the other day when we were talking.
You were like –
Well, we were in Denver, but I wasn't really in Denver.
We were in Aurora.
Right.
Did you just miss the bullseye?
Or what's up with you?
I like to be different.
Okay.
I want to go where everybody else isn't going.
And food needs to be provided everywhere, not just where it's popular.
So being in a bit of a smaller community...
How was it sort of establishing yourself, and how was the experience of breaking into a community?
Very interesting, especially being in Indiana with the last name Mohammed.
It was interesting and difficult creating some relationships, but ultimately food brings everybody together.
And what we've created now is completely different than my feeling initially.
We're in a community where really last name doesn't matter.
It's about what we do and how we support our community and how they support us.
Okay, so I want to actually bring it to your menu, because I was looking at the menu for your restaurant the other day.
It didn't look like the menu.
I would stereotypically assume to be in a neighborhood restaurant in a little bit of a smaller community.
You have a steak, but it's a part of a risotto dish.
You have mussels in a Thai curry.
How do you come up with your menu?
Yeah.
What it really comes down to is what's in season, what's available, and what do I want to cook?
But I think really, what do I want to eat?
My wife and I, we wanted to create a restaurant that we wanted to eat at every night.
I've been in the industry for well over 20 years cooking what other owners wanted me to cook.
And so once you can break free of that and do whatever you want, it's exciting and challenging in a sense, where you kind of just want to keep bringing it.
Yeah.
But you say okay, being your own chef and being your own owner, you don't have to answer to anyone, but you do have to answer to your customers, right?
Sometimes.
Sometimes.
I think that's where it's nice and not to be braggy or anything, but having a full restaurant almost every night.
People are coming to you, so I can do whatever I want.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, I think it's that...
Well, it sounds like it's part of that thing that you just talked about.
When you were new, you're kind of like, okay, what's my place here?
And now you've established relationships and your customers are also your neighbors, presumably.
They kind of come with you in your journey.
I want to actually ask you specifically about an item on your menu because I thought it was interesting.
You have something you call a pork and foie gras meatloaf.
Right.
Now, where I come from, that's probably called a pâté guarnere, and either you know what it is and you order it, or you don't know what it is and you order it and pretend like you know what it is.
So I don't know if you're really making a classic French pâté, but I love that.
To me it sounds like you're taking this dish.
And you're like defancifying it.
Right.
You're taking the pretension out of it and you're making it and calling it a meatloaf.
So actually, tell us how you make it.
OK, so how do you get people to eat foie around here?
You put it in meatloaf.
So you know, we take, we take ground pork, infuse it with some orange zest, lots of sage, good classic meatloaf and then we actually get foie gras pieces, which is It's not the whole lobes that we're getting in.
It's kind of I hate to say byproduct, but it's what doesn't make it into all the fancy restaurants, right?
So we take this product that nobody wants, chunk it out into palatable sizes.
And before we cook the meatloaf, we actually freeze the foie overnight, fold it into the meatloaf right before we bake it, so that way it doesn't completely just disappear while it's baking in the oven.
And for somebody who's heard of foie gras before but never quite wanted to just go for that seared foie with the cherry compote and the crostinis, we could put it in the meatloaf and they can go and brag to their friends that they tried foie gras.
It's funny because I don't think of it as a challenge or an achievement.
I just really want it.
Yeah, you do want it.
It's a perfect fatty binder.
Yeah, it keeps it nice and moist.
Ketchup on the side.
Right.
And then we put a little bit more of a twist on it, where we're serving it with Celeriac and sweet potatoes, which is typically something you would never see.
But we're getting people to eat Celeriac that was grown 11 minutes away from our restaurant.
Oh, my God.
That's so cool.
Yeah.
It's like celery if you're a maniac.
I've always wanted to make an ad for it.
No one's paid me to do that.
It's going to happen for you.
That'll be my next achievement.
Actually, Zoe, I want to talk to you about one of the dishes on your menu now that we're here.
As I told the crowd, I had a totally fabulous meal at Borage last night.
Super delicious.
The desserts and the breads were especially chef's kiss.
Shout out to my bakers here, Emma and Rachel.
Amazing job, amazing job.
Oh god, like the pimento cheese, grilled cheese on the milk bread totally bonkers.
I love that milk bread so much.
It's a labor of love.
It's like a three day process, An eight-day process.
Three-day.
I would still do it if it were eight days because it's that good.
But it's only three, thank God.
Baking, it's a commitment.
But I want to ask you actually about a very simple dish that's on the menu.
It's boiled spinach.
The gomai.
Yeah, it's a boiled spinach with like a savory sesame dressing.
When I talked to you the other day, and I said, I'm going to come in for dinner.
And you said, I probably won't be there.
But you got to get this thing.
Yeah.
It's not exactly the sort of thing a chef would say.
You know, you got to come in and get our boiled spinach.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Tell me why you did and why you love it so much.
Um well, I know that it was one of the first things that Josh and I cooked together, that we ate out together.
And I was like, I love go my like, try this.
It's so good.
And then we fell in love with it.
And we started cooking it at home when we were new baby chefs in love.
And Yeah, I don't know.
It's just it has a place in my heart.
And what makes it so good is like the spinach that we get from Mad Farmers Collective.
Like it is this toothsome, like amazing spinach, that like when you treat it kindly and like just barely wilt it down and then like dress it.
It has this sweetness that like carries through and it's just so good.
It's so simple, but it's so good.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It was super delicious.
And the daikon on top.
Yeah, it's just.
Yeah, just a little bit.
It's like the simplest dish ever.
And as I was eating it, I think I understood the reason why you told me to get it, because I feel like it says something about the approach of the restaurant, which is, you know, you're talking about the farm that the spinach came from, and
Yeah.
When you go to the restaurant, it has sort of a diner feel.
It's very approachable.
It's very like just comfortable, comforting.
And a lot of chefs again, as we were talking about Martha, a lot of chefs pride themselves on the creativity on there.
Oh, you've never seen anyone do this before attitude.
And it feels like the attitude you have is very much more like no, come see our neighbors and what they're doing over here.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
I think we're really following in the footsteps of, you know, the Marthas and like, Becky and David Hostetter of Duos and like, just trying to like create the backbone of community that they've done in this city and make it approachable and something for everyone.
Yeah.
Okay, but that idea of creating community too, right?
It's not automatic.
No.
And you are located in a neighborhood of the city that you weren't before.
So you're sort of like newcomers to that neighborhood, to Speedway.
Yeah.
Um, and I noticed on the website, like your front and center, you're like hi, we're your new neighbors.
We want to be a part of this community.
We want to be a part of your world.
Tell us about that.
Like, why is that so much your ethos and what do you do to do that?
I think it was just really important for Josh and I to like.
I mean, I'm not originally from Indiana and I have a lot of imposter syndrome, as a lot of women and people do.
And...
He's from Crawfordsville.
So opening a business in Speedway, which is a smaller community, we just wanted to be kind of like right out the gate.
Like, hey, like you guys might be like, what the heck is this?
And that's OK.
We're not here to tear anything down.
We just want to be an addition and we want to be opening up the dialogue about how food is just.
We don't pay farmers or the producers or the migrants enough for what we are able to eat, and fast food isn't what we should get used to.
And having the transparency right out the gate was really important for us and just being like hey, we're transplants too, like we're not from here, but we mean well, we come in peace.
Yeah um, so it's.
It's a place that obviously like, has a center of gravity.
Yeah right um, and Being a newcomer to that place a little bit like Samir was saying it can be a little bit challenging.
And I know that you've been open six, seven months.
And like any endeavor in the world, it has had its ups and had its downs.
But when I was there last night I spoke with Josh and he mentioned hey, one of the things we tell each other as a team is that asking for help is never a sign of weakness.
It's a sign of strength.
And, as I understood it, you guys like went on social media and said Hey, we really want to do something great here, but it'd be really nice if more folks were coming.
Yeah.
Tell us how people responded to that.
Yeah, I had a bottle of wine and then I made a post and I was like it's been really slow and I'm scared.
Payroll is scary.
For a small business.
There is very little wiggle room and I was just like.
It has been very slow and
What I kept hearing is like hey like, maybe people don't know, like how slow it is for restaurants and small businesses, like during the cold months.
I mean, it's just they people just don't know.
So I was like, maybe I'll just like let them know.
And so I like got on.
Instagram and um, truly thought nothing of it, and then the next day it was just like, I mean, and that weekend rocked our socks and since then has been very busy and we've been very tired but very grateful of all of it.
Like it has been huge.
So yeah, That's amazing.
It's amazing.
I'm sure amazing to know that, oh, hey, we're getting revenue.
But also like, oh, this is your community.
Like they're saying to you, hi, we're here too.
We're here for you.
It's incredibly heartwarming.
And thank you, Indy and beyond so much.
That's terrific.
You should really go.
It's really awesome.
Super delicious.
And that brings me to Brian.
So, Brian, you have been in Indianapolis for five years.
And five months.
Five years and five months.
No one's counting.
And you came really ready to explore the restaurant scene, really ready to explore the restaurant world.
But I want to ask you, what has really surprised you about the restaurant scene here?
Ooh.
Well, first off, I think that the restaurant scene, the independents, don't get supported as much as they should.
And where I'm from, which is Los Angeles.
When something opens and it's new, people flock to it in droves.
And these two both kind of, well, Samir opened during the pandemic.
And then you did your outreach, right?
It was very community building.
And I don't think you would see that in Los Angeles.
But ultimately, at the end of the day, I think that what we see here in Indy is this kind of Everybody wants to be very, They really want to do really great food and work and they want this kind of notoriety, but they're not getting it ultimately.
And I think that that's kind of what I wanted to do when I first came here.
I wanted to make sure that these chefs were actually getting noticed on kind of a larger scale than here in India.
Sometimes I feel that we don't support them as much as we should.
Yeah well, it's also interesting because you, you know, coming from LA, you know it's like it's the entertainment capital of the universe, right.
So I think Martha had mentioned she saw a real change in the restaurant scene here, sort of like an evolutionary step.
That was related to her, to the creation of the food network and you know, when we started as a country thinking more and more of restaurants as a form of entertainment well, in LA there was already a playbook right like oh, we know what the campaigns that movies have for publicity when a movie comes out.
And so I wonder if there's already a natural sort of pattern that chefs there knew how to take advantage of.
But
You were saying often you would find chefs in restaurants here with no PR person, with no publicity and not even necessarily a desire to put themselves out there.
They just kind of want to do their thing.
So how do you find those folks?
Well, Reddit, Facebook, I mean Instagram.
Yeah, I mean, you really have to do your homework.
I'm going to say a small little story on this.
So there's Barbecue Heaven, which is owned by Ronald Jones, who I actually wrote about in Indianapolis Monthly.
He's had this restaurant for 70-plus years, right?
What's 70-plus years?
70-plus years, yeah.
70.
70, 7-0.
He's 86.
He started it when he was 11.
Wow.
Wow.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And he opened it with his parents.
It's an incredible story.
But also, he has one of the oldest black-owned restaurants in the country.
I mean, I think that I think He had been profiled in the daily newspaper, but he hasn't really been profiled on a national level or in really a glossy magazine.
So...
I mean, that's about the history, right?
That's something that we need to be talking about here in India.
I mean, he should be a known entity.
He's legendary here.
The funny thing is that some people here don't even know him.
Is he open on Saturdays?
He is open on Saturdays, and he's a really sweet... gentle man.
I mean, he's done a lot.
He had five restaurants, and I mean, he's just incredible.
Amazing.
Tell us about someone else.
Well, I mean, I'm going to talk to you about Zoe, and also Samir, and also Rachel, whose wife is out there too, and Josh.
I mean they do incredible work and I've talked to Eve Beatty, who's the food and dining editor of Indianapolis Monthly, and we both kind of said that barrage, had it been placed in Brooklyn or had it been placed in Los Angeles, like Silver Lake, or had it been placed in San Francisco, it would be off the charts.
All the magazines would be clamoring for their recipes.
It's just that good.
But yet...
Trying to get the media here to focus on Indianapolis is very, very difficult.
And Samir's food, I mean, you're talking about the pork and meatloaf.
That was extraordinary.
He also did this risotto.
Harissa, risotto with a tomahawk pork chop a couple times?
Yeah, pimento risotto.
Oh, my God.
And also, Josh's grilled cheese pimento with prosciutto with his egg.
And it's also just extraordinary. anyhow um we love it's also really fun to watch them cook that too yeah yeah i mean they're they're turning out really great stuff and i i believe and i feel strongly and that's the reason why i started writing for eater is because i felt that there needed to be more emphasis on how good the food here is yeah and it sounds like So much of what we heard this evening is it's not just the quality of the food, but it's also like the strength, the connections and relationships that really undergirds the whole thing.
So with that, we will say goodbye to the three of you.
Ladies and gentlemen, Brian Garrido, Samir Mohamed, Zoe Taylor.
That's Samir Mohamed of Night Street Bistro, Zoe Taylor of Boragecom and the food writer, Brian Garrido.
We'll be back with more of our live show from Indianapolis.
I'm Francis Lam, and this is The Splendid Table from APM.
Before Minnesota, Illinois basically wrote a playbook on how to fight back against Trump's ICE crackdown.
Governor J.B.
Pritzker told everyone in the state to take action when ICE came to town.
Pull out your phones.
Film everything.
They're shooting moms in the face.
So peaceful protest seems like the least you could do and what we should be encouraging people to do.
They've shot somebody here in Chicago five times for just observing from her car.
Illinois created an accountability commission, took ICE agents to court.
And when Trump sent in the National Guard, they blocked them from the streets and they won.
A model for Trump resistance on the state level.
Today Explained drops every weekday and now Saturdays too.
I'm Francis Lam and you're listening to The Splendid Table.
We're coming to you from Indianapolis, where we found a great city really finding its own voice in its food and restaurant scene.
We recorded this show with WFYI in front of a wonderful audience at the Basile Theater, at the Athenaeum.
Okay, so we've talked a bit about the past and about the present.
And for our last segment we wanted to get to the story of one bakery and how the past and the present and the future are all kind of converging.
So there's a beloved place in town called Rene's Bakery.
It was founded by Albert Rene Trevino.
And for 20 years he made excellent breads and pastries actually trained many of Indy's bakers today.
And recently, a pair of young men Isaac Roman and Thomas Hayes have taken the shop over.
We welcomed Isaac and Thomas to the stage to learn more about this story.
Ah!
Oh, my God.
The only thing better than seeing a baker is seeing a baker with a box.
Oh, yeah.
We brought you some goodies today.
I can't wait.
That's amazing.
Okay, okay.
So let's... Now I'm just going to keep staring at that box.
Okay, so let's talk about Renee's.
Renee's turns 21 in March.
Why don't you tell us a little bit about the bakery, and maybe we'll just start from your perspective Isaac,
Okay. and what Albert has meant to the neighborhood and the indie food scene in general.
I think Renee's is a Broad Ripple staple.
Albert did a great job building up the community, and every customer that goes in there is just as important as the last, no matter what they get.
All the regulars that come in every single week.
Albert did a good job knowing all their names and asking about their families, and it's really important for a small business like that to have that connection with the community.
And Thomas, how do you know the place?
So I grew up a mile away from Renee's.
I've been going for the last 15 years.
It was one of the first places I brought my wife when she moved to Indianapolis.
It's pretty incredible.
Hmm.
I think Albert put it once.
He's very passionate about pastries for the people.
And a high-quality croissant for a reasonable price.
Using the best quality ingredients is what makes Rene special.
I felt at home there.
I couldn't imagine working for another boss.
So the past four years, I was only supposed to be there two or three years.
I told Albert in my interview.
I was like I want to learn from you for two to three years and open up my own bakery.
Little did I know, he was training me to take over.
Really?
Yeah.
That's so interesting because I think someone who at that point he had probably done it for 15 years and have some kids show up in your kitchen and be like I'm going to do this for two years and open my own place.
And for him to not smack you upside the head, but actually take you seriously.
Is that who he is?
For sure.
He trained a couple of pastry chefs here in Indianapolis.
He's always very generous and open and honest about how to run a business.
I think it was important for him to pass it along to the next generation.
Working in the bakery, it's long hours, really quiet.
You're there in a place with probably one other person for a really long time.
So, like, that's an understatement.
Yeah.
And now you two are experiencing that together.
How close do you get?
It's a two-car garage.
Close.
And Thomas, as a guest, actually tell me how have you gotten involved with the business and the industry as a whole, or Rene's itself?
Start where you want.
I'll start off where I got involved in the industry.
I wanted to be a chef since I was five.
Kind of worked my way up through kitchens.
I opened a few restaurants with the Cunningham Restaurant Group, like Livery and Rye's.
And I was always a fan of Renee's.
And Isaac was my headline cook at Rye's.
And we just really meshed well together.
And when everything was happening with Albert, Isaac just kind of said hey, you know, we have an opportunity here, but we need to make this happen for the community, for Albert.
And it happened really quick, but we kind of pushed everything we had aside to keep it going.
Yeah.
Well, actually, let's talk about that opportunity.
And knowing that Albert is not here in the room with us, for folks who may not know the story.
He fell ill and was no longer able to work in the bakery.
What was that moment like for you Isaac, as someone who was his protege, his mentee, and to hear one day, quite out of the blue, I think, that he wasn't going to come into work that day.
It was heartbreaking because, you know, he's a friend before he was ever my boss.
And, like I said, I couldn't imagine working for any anybody else like he was the best boss and working side by side with him for so many years to know that he can't come in and do what he loved anymore.
That was very, very heartbreaking.
And Thomas, you got to know him as a customer too, right?
So did it feel personal to you?
It absolutely felt personal.
Again, it was my favorite bakery in the city.
It reminded me of pastries I had in Europe, and you could just tell that he put all of his heart and soul into it.
I think that's another thing, too, where that's the kind of person Isaac is.
He puts all of his heart and soul into everything.
So when he was telling me, like, hey, we need to do this, we didn't take it lightly.
We weren't going to do something that wasn't going to make Albert proud, first and foremost.
So you could definitely tell that kind of rubbed off on Isaac, that same work ethic that Albert had.
Yeah.
Yeah, it was pretty easy to work 12 hours for a guy that worked 16.
Can we get in the box now?
Yeah.
So we've got some pretzels here.
Okay.
Okay.
This is a everything pretzel and a regular salted pretzel.
So why did you bring the pretzel?
It's very soft.
So this is a recipe that Albert had scribbled in a notebook somewhere, and he just brought it in.
There were no instructions.
He was like, hey, this is a good recipe.
I want some pretzels.
Figure it out.
And I think that's what a good mentor should do is guide you, not necessarily tell you what to do every step of the way.
Yeah.
It took me about a week, two or three times to get it the way he liked it.
But eventually we got there.
And we've had a lot of great feedback on those pretzels.
It's so tender.
Thank you.
That when you're eating sweet things all the time, we crave just like a little bit of salt.
Oh my god, this is delicious.
Sorry you're all hearing me chew.
Can I throw a piece out?
It's so good.
Okay, so this is a recipe that he had written down.
Was it like a puzzle?
Okay, it's going to be like 48 grams of flour.
It's like 2 grams of salt.
Now figure out how to make it.
Yeah.
With everything, there's a methodology.
Right.
And with pretzels, you have to boil it before you bake it.
And every bakery, every piece of equipment is different.
So it might on one oven, it might be bake at 400 in our oven.
It was 325.
And you know that's trial and error, of course, and albert was always great about if i, you know, mess something up.
He knew that i took it very seriously, so he never made me feel bad for it.
He encouraged me every step of the way and build up my confidence.
Yeah, he was a great mentor.
And he let you make mistakes.
Yeah, just huge.
I've never had a chef left me making mistakes.
It's the best way to learn.
Well, in the old school chef world, it was like, you're expected to be perfect.
And anything short of perfection is shame.
Unacceptable.
Yeah.
No, I think he respected how much I cared about the product I was making.
He saw that i beat myself up over it.
Messing things up didn't happen very often, but the few times it did, he he let me know that it was all right.
It's just, it's just money, it's just dough.
We will survive.
You know another thing i've never heard of.
It's just money, what i?
Just money.
I tell you what.
That's a trait that isaac and i share where uh, we take it so personally, but like in a good way, where we're serious about it.
We want to make our mentors proud, we want to make ourselves proud and we don't rest on our laurels.
And you said you know, talking about chefs doing that i opened so livery is a latin american restaurant right down the street.
In the first two months i had, like i felt like i was doing really well and i we got this new fancy oven speaking of ovens And there were steam settings on it.
And I did the wrong steam setting, and I overcooked 40 pounds of pork.
And I remember going up to Chef Casey and saying, like, I'm done.
I'm going to lose my job.
And I go up to him.
I was like, Chef, I messed up the pork.
I'll pay for it.
I understand if you have to write me up.
I understand if you have to fire me.
But I messed it up, and I wanted to tell you I'm so sorry.
And he looks at me and goes, best boss ever.
He goes, you're never going to do that again, are you?
And I'm like, no.
And the only punishment was we ate pork for family meal for the next two weeks.
But kind of like what Albert did for Isaac you make a mistake and if you're serious and you care about what you do, it takes a good mentor to let you make that mistake.
And it's a good way to weed out to who you want around you.
You know, we're getting to the point now where we're training, and it's.
It's nice when people make a mistake.
And that sounds weird.
But it's nice when people make a mistake and they don't just roll their eyes and say who cares when somebody makes a mistake, and they look at you and they're you can tell they're upset about it.
That's the kind of people that I want.
I would rather have somebody who is going to care about making a mistake than somebody who does decent but never makes mistakes.
What other non-mistakes do you have in that box?
We've got the classic Renee's butter croissant right here.
Oh my God.
Okay, you're amazing right now.
This is all thanks to Chef Thomas over here.
He really took to the croissants pretty quickly.
We had about two weeks to get everything figured out under Albert's guidance, and he's done an amazing job with all the croissants.
Thanks, brother.
I appreciate that.
I think that was one of the hardest things for me was it wasn't it was not hard to tell Isaac like, hey, I'm in.
We were talking about my startup and restaurants and how I got into the industry when I was five.
And I told my grandmother and mother that I want to be a chef when I grow up.
My grandma looked at me and said, well, you know, there's different kinds of chefs.
You could also be a pastry chef.
And I said, no, that's not cool.
I don't want to do that.
I don't want to be a pastry chef.
And you know, between Isaac and I we've worked every.
We're young but we've worked every position in the restaurant industry besides general manager in front of house manager.
And so when Isaac said, hey, we need to do this, we both understood the gravity of doing it right.
And Isaac is so good at making the breads.
And it was just us two when we started.
And that meant that I had to pick up croissants.
And how do you pick up croissants and make them as good as Albert's?
You can't.
You know, this guy was a bakery god in our eyes.
We could have opened two weeks sooner, but we didn't, because we wanted to make sure that what we were putting out would make Albert proud, would make the community proud, would make ourselves proud.
But there were days where we were working.
Isaac was working, you know, 16, 17, 18 hours on bread.
And I was laminating dough 18 hours a day, making hundreds of croissants that we wouldn't sell, just to try to get them to the point where we knew that Albert would be proud of them.
Has he been by?
He has.
When he can.
I'll say to you.
I hope he's proud.
I think he's excited for what we have in store for Renee's.
And I think he's always I think he's very proud of what we're trying to try to do here.
We're grateful.
That's an understatement.
We are truly grateful to continue Albert's legacy at Renee's.
And while we are excited that we get to keep it around, it's also melancholy.
We wish that there was a world where we weren't doing it and that Albert could continue to do it.
Have you given him one of your croissants?
We have.
Unfortunately, he is unable to eat or drink or speak, but I think he appreciates all the layers.
It meant a lot when he So he did come in a few weeks ago and he saw some of our classic butter croissants and he looked at us and goes Thumbs up.
That seems like such a simple gesture, but...
From him, that meant a lot.
Yeah, that's beautiful.
Thank you so much.
Ladies and gentlemen, Thomas Hayes, Isaac Roman, and Albert.
Isaac Roman and Thomas Hayes are the new owners and torchbearers of Renee's Bakery.
Well, that was our show from Indianapolis, produced with our friends at WFYI Jesse Fisher, Adam Gross, Stacey Sputovil, Roxanna Caldwell, Aaron Ernest, Shadana Rowland and Greg Petrovich.
And thanks to the crew at the Basile Theater at the Athenaeum Foundation.
Thanks to all for being such great hosts.
We had a ball.
The Spun.
The Table was created by Sally Swift and was made this week by technical producer Jennifer Lukey, producers Eric Romero and Maria Wartel, and managing producer Sally Swift.
Jordan Turgeon is our digital producer, our intern is Ruby Sigmund and Lauren Humbert is our senior podcast production manager.
Thank you for listening.
I'm Francis Lam, and this is APM, American Public Media.
