by Virginia B. Wood
When chef/co-owner Stewart Scruggs left Zoot to pursue new challenges late last
year, co-owner Erica Brown was faced with the challenge of replacing a popular
chef and maintaining the justifiably stellar reputation of her West Austin
eatery. In a conversation last week, Brown explained her plans for keeping Zoot
in the forefront of quality Austin dining. “We’ve come up with what I think is
a pretty unique concept,” she said proudly, “we’ve hired a culinary team of executive chefs. They are very talented and have great energy and enthusiasm
to bring to the restaurant.” The co-chefs are both former Zoot employees and
long-time friends, 28-year-old Culinary Institute of America grad Marty Frannea
and 25-year-old Patrick Ehemann, former executive chef at Stonewall’s.
Each chef will have a carefully delineated job description — the areas of
sanitation, safety, scheduling, staff training and procurement are to be
divided between the two of them. Frannea and Ehemann will meet weekly with
Brown, Zoot GM Mark Patton and executive pastry chef Mary Perna to develop
menus. Each man will also be given six full weeks off per year for continuing
education. This year, Brown expects to arrange placement for Frannea in a top
New York restaurant kitchen and Ehemann hopes to put in some training time at
the Ajax Diner in Aspen, Colorado. “The next year, we may try to place them in
restaurants in France or Italy,” Brown reports. Both young men are
understandably very enthusiastic about their new positions. “The job is divided
up so that we can get the mundane things done and then both have time for
planning events and developing menus,” explains Marty Frannea, adding that “we
have different tastes so we have friendly debates about what goes into a dish.”
Patrick Ehemann confirms this, stating “there’s a funny kind of balance that
happens between us, Marty has the classical CIA background that helps pull me
back when I have a tendency to go over the top.”
Zoot’s co-chefs will also be participating in a new shopping program at
Central Market. Special Projects Manager Sharon Gerhardt explains that Central
Market is not getting into the wholesale food business but rather
developing relationships with area restaurants by letting participating chefs
know of special foodstuffs that have arrived fresh at the market. “We have
started a Personal Shopping Service for Chefs that will act as a kind of
forager for local chefs within our store,” Gerhardt says. Gerhardt and her
assistant Don Waggoner bring many years of restaurant experience to this
project. Waggoner will invest some time in the Zoot kitchen, getting to know
the chefs and their cuisine, the better to make informed suggestions about what
Frannea and Ehemann might be able to use in their creations.
Starting this month, Zoot will be buying all its produce and fish retail from
Central Market, with the co-chefs shopping 3-4 times a week, handpicking the
freshest the market has to offer for dinner that night. “My dream day has
always been one where I go to the market and shop for food, spend some time
talking to my staff about what we’ll cook that night and then start prepping,”
says Patrick Ehemann, “and with this new set-up, that’s just what I do every
day.” The service will also create opportunities for cross-promotion. For
instance, the restaurant patron who loves Chilean sea bass at Zoot on Friday
night can buy it at Central Market to try at home with a recipe created by a
Zoot chef. The program is still in the experimental stages and Gerhardt
realizes that she will not be able to have the same intimate rapport with every
local restaurant but she’s determined to make the new service available to
chefs who are genuinely interested.
Send restaurant news, chef/menu changes, food events, or intriguing rumors
to: “food-o-file,” The Austin Chronicle, PO Box 49066, Austin, TX
78765.
This article appears in February 28 • 1997 and February 28 • 1997 (Cover).