36: Part I Chopped Champion Caribbean Chef Ed Harris

From the island of St. Lucia to the Restaurant Buddakan in New York City, Chef Ed Harris shares his abiding love for food. He takes you step-by-step into his journey that started with a family obsession with delicious and lovingly prepared food which started with early rising to get the best fruits and the best vegetables to make all the dishes sing. We learn about a unique way he was invited to become a guest on Chopped Turbopower Season4 Episode 9.

website: https://knifenspoon.com/  
https://www.instagram.com/chefedharris
Email:ed@knifenspoon.com

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Transcript

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Michael Dugan: 1:03

Welcome as we kick off season two in style with part one, episode 36. He was born in the Caribbean in St. Lucia and developed a passion for the Culinary Arts cooking alongside his family at a very young age. Ed Harris was the winner of the Food Network chopped TurboPower season four, and Iron Chef, international champion. He also appeared as a chef on many other Food Network shows. He's cooked his way to become a top chef in many fine dining restaurants in New York, including the signature Buddha con. He coined the term vegan ish and has cookbooks and consulting to back it up. We are honored to have a conversation with Caribbean chef, Ed Harris. Chef Edie, welcome to the show.

Celebrity Chef Ed Harris: 1:52

Thank you so much, Michael. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for allowing me to be here and just share my journey with everyone. I really truly appreciate it. So to all your listeners out there, what's up people this is Chef Edie and thank you, thank you for listening to us.

Michael Dugan: 2:08

And today, it's actually this evening. We are going to have an amazing time because chef Ed has an incredible story. And I am so excited to share it with all of you. First of all, I just want to start out with how we connected Do you remember how we connected?

Celebrity Chef Ed Harris: 2:24

Yeah, most definitely. Clubhouse. You know, clubhouse has been an amazing platform for people to connect and I've connected with so many people but you in particular you know doing the rooms with food is religion was just oh yeah, it was epic, you know. So shout out to Chef Mimi and everyone you know that put that together, including you,

Michael Dugan: 2:46

Man, I'm telling you. When I first met chef Mimi, she said I want you to do this cooking class. I want you to be the host of this cooking class. And I want to connect you to Chef Ed and I was like who chef at our research and I went Wow, awesome. It's cool. And when you came on man, I'm telling you that pineapple fried rice like I still haven't cooked it but I promise and I will put it on this podcast that I will cook that dish. I promise in the next month or so that will be that will be something I'm going to cook but when it connected with you I just felt this this energy it's really hard to describe but I think our listeners will understand as we go through the show what I'm talking about because you have this cooking passion that's deep in your soul. I love interviewing chefs that have that true passion. Now there's some chefs they just do it for a living are you know they don't really have that, that real connection to food, but you do and when you created and cooked that pineapple fried rice and I heard your voice and I was going oh my gosh, I have to I have to connect with some of that. That's how we ended up here. Yes, thank you and tell us a little bit more. So what was it like growing up in St. Lucia in the Caribbean and if you can describe a little bit about the culture and how you were really connected to cooking and and food and when did all that come about?

Celebrity Chef Ed Harris: 4:08

I love that. You know, and there's so many layers to that question. Oh, yeah. You know, well, the first thing just to kind of create a picture, right? So my family at a very young age was always traveling throughout the Caribbean. So I actually lived and went to school and about 12 to 14 different schools throughout my childhood like oh my gosh, yeah, so it was pretty intense. Pretty crazy. So I literally lived in St. Lucia Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, St. Kitts, Jamaica, Guyana, just tons of different places, but growing up in the Caribbean, what was really impactful to me was just the access to fresh fruits, fresh vegetables, you know, there's markets that are open up every single day, but you're getting there at between five to six in the morning because that's when everyone is out and that's when you get your groceries because if you get there like an eight o'clock move, you know what I mean? You have the leftovers. Yeah. So you you had to be an early riser. And this was literally the whole island. Wow, that was the first introduction to just fresh food, you know, and then besides that with the Caribbean, you know, trees, fruit trees and vegetable trees are so abundant. Everywhere like almost every yard had either mango trees had bananas, like had some form of fruit, plums, whatever it is. So you already had access to these things but my Dad cooked my mom cooked my grandmother cook my grandfather or my uncle's everyone in my family cooks. Oh my gosh. I mean, it was just really amazing for me because I saw this I spent time with my grandfather and he just made a few dishes but he made them so well because he did them over and over and over and I learned from him just repetition of dishes can really make those dishes sing. My parents even had a few restaurants when I was younger so I was always in the business in some way shape or form. And my mom was actually the chef of one of the restaurants that we had, and I was always behind her like day and night you could not get me out of the kitchen I got burned badly so many times on my legs trying to cook by myself when they weren't there when they weren't looking. I was like, oh my god, man, that's amazing. Honestly, yeah, like and this was I was like maybe eight, nine years old in the Caribbean back then. And this is like 89, 1989, 1990 Things were just different. You know, the stoves were different, you know? And growing up in the Caribbean then sometimes we would cook outside or we have like one burning stoves just to name a few different things. It was just fun for me because I always felt that you know, no matter if I was hungry, whatever the case may be, I can always whip something up one of the stories that I share with people that I think was one of the you know, moments that I really realized that I could really do this but not professionally just know that I could really cook I was making rice and peas dish from my dad and he was coming home you know from work and a few people were going to come out come to the house and I was like you know I'm going to surprise everybody. I'm gonna cook before mom and dad comes home and they started cooking off. Exactly. Literally they know that I just like I totally over salted the food that now I was tasked with how do I fix this? Because I can't serve it.

Michael Dugan: 7:23

Oh, yeah, right. Exactly. But you weren't done right. No,

Celebrity Chef Ed Harris: 7:28

I was not done and I was like, You know what, this will be the end of it. You know, I need to figure something out. So I cut off some fresh vegetables. I added it to the rice. I added some more water. You know I did a few different things. I can't remember exactly what it was because it was so long ago. But long story short, I fixed it. And it didn't take salty at all. It was actually enjoyable and you know, they all ate it and no one knew that I over salted it to begin with. So that was like my little secret, you know that I kept to myself but that was just kind of growing up in the Caribbean, you know, between swinging between the different Caribbean islands and just being open to you know, Trinidad where there's curry to make these different kinds of curry and then Guyana, which is in South America, which is such a big culture when it comes to different kinds of cuisine like Chinese and Indian like it's heavily influenced there. So my love for food really developed especially in Guyana because one of my uncle's he would pick me up from school, you know, at least two three days out of the week. And we would go straight to the Chinese restaurant because that was like my jam.

Michael Dugan: 8:35

Oh, so cool, man. I love it. Yeah, man. Thank you. That is that is really special. Like I don't know a lot of Chefs that have that kind of story like you're connected to not just cooking but you're connected your family, you're connected to the land, you're connected to everything. You know, that explains it. That's because I feel so much passion from you. When I hear you speak. We were connected that really defines it. So it really came from your childhood. It wasn't just a dish or something like that. It was your lifestyle. Almost. So moving on. What happened next? You were living in the Caribbean but then eventually you moved from the Caribbean. Right? And what age did that happen?

Celebrity Chef Ed Harris: 9:19

Yes, correct. So I moved to Brooklyn when I was 16. Okay, you know, moving here was obviously a culture shock, you know, because it was the first time I came to America and quartz city exactly at 60. And you're like wow, what is this? You know, I'm like looking up at the skyscrapers and looking at all the different restaurants, you know, just food accessible. The supermarkets are different, like literally everything is different, you know? And then there was high school of course, but you know, one thing that was prevalent throughout my life, even from moving to New York was when I went to high school, I really dived into culinary arts, like we had home met classes. We had this club that I joined, wow, yeah, we had this club that I joined. It was called Future homemakers of America. And my teacher Her name is Miss Clark. Such an amazing person.

Michael Dugan: 10:16

Still remember? Let's let's give a shout out to her. Definitely yes,

Celebrity Chef Ed Harris: 10:20

shout out to miss Clark. I mean, she drove me mad like you know, she did not let me slack off at all. It was to the point where wow, you know she was like, No, you know, I know you can do this. I'm not going to accept anything else. She would give me these recipes. Love it. In high school, you know, it's not the norm for guys to be cooking. You know, unfortunately, you know, I had to deal with that whole situation of, so you're really you know, you're gonna really be in the class with all the girls cooking. I'm like, Yeah, I mean, was what I love to do. Right. So that was for like the first year but then after they started seeing the food that I was making, and how easy it was for me to replicate the recipes that the teacher gave me. The question stopped, you know, and it was the the new questions came up and he was like, Can you help me? Can you do this? Can you do that? Because with that first year of school, high school, my next year, we graduated to the next level and with that you were able to do this class where you cooked for the faculty you cook for the teachers and the staff. Oh, wow. So that was really fun, because that's where I really got to experiment and I got to just kind of get into my own a little bit more and just really do recipes the way I wanted to and just kind of have fun with it. And, you know, that led to me going into culinary school right out of high school. Like I didn't even take a summer vacation. I didn't take time off. I graduated.

Michael Dugan: 11:45

I heard that. Oh my god. That's amazing. Yup. You were just driven. It's like a magnet.

Celebrity Chef Ed Harris: 11:51

I loved every minute of it. Like it was so compelling to me and I had so much fun doing it that I didn't want to stop, you know, so I graduated high school and the next month I was in culinary school, the Art Institute of America. It was the first one that they opened in New York City. So I went to the first art institute. And you know, it had a different name back then. But it was in Chinatown in New York. And it was so amazing. I got to work and do shows on CNN, I got to work at HBO because of the school like it was just really amazing.

Michael Dugan: 12:25

In cooking school. You got to do shows on CNN, I got to help. The Chef's oh my god, that's amazing.

Celebrity Chef Ed Harris: 12:33

I know it was fun, you know, and the only reason I got to do it was because, you know, I made it my mission and my goal to just drive myself you know, I was there always early. You know, I was always sharpening my knives in school like the teachers knew that okay, this guy is serious about his craft. So, you know, those opportunities came a little bit more frequent, I would say, you know,

Michael Dugan: 12:57

So I went to cooking schools. I went to a community college but South Seattle Community College is well known across the US as one of the top community colleges and there was a year long waiting list to get in. Wow. And I got it and after about six months, nice, but as you know, I know you know this, that turnover rate is so high, it's bad because people burn out. They realize that it's really tough. It's not a glamorous thing right off the bat, right and you really have to work at it and I was so committed and driven just like you and I said, I'm gonna make this work, you know, and I was so pumped about it. But what I was gonna say is maybe you could describe or walk us through what it's like to be in cooking school like ours might have been different than yours, but I'd love to hear what that book like if I was walking in, you know, within the first month or two, what would I expect and what happens behind the scenes?

Celebrity Chef Ed Harris: 13:55

Wow, that is a deep question. And, you know, just to veggie back off of what you said, you know, with the turnover, it's you know, a lot of the kids that I went to culinary school with a right after we graduated, I would say at least half of them took a totally different career path, you know, pharmacy, you know, right, you know, other jobs like it was just crazy like I was looking at everyone's like we were like so intense in school and like, you know, we were going for it. But that didn't happen. Some people went into the Army once to the Marines. It was crazy. Like everyone just totally went and did separate things. But in terms of culinary school, the first couple of months. It's definitely intense. You know, and I'll say this, you definitely want to be careful because I saw so many injuries, right? You know, and just so many things of just negligence because you know, you're new you're fresh, you're green. You know you don't know the ins and outs right and if you don't have the right teachers telling you what to do are just you paying attention, you can really get hurt. You know, I'm one person we were in one class and you know how you have the three compartments things one for rinsing, one for washing, one for sanitizing. Yeah, so the washing sink, it was covered in soap so you couldn't see what was in the sink. And someone decided to leave a knife in the sink. So after they did that, someone else went to the sink to go wash and just dove their hands right into the sink. Of course they got cut really bad because the knife was sticking out right but you couldn't see it because it was covered. In the sun. The solar oh my god man. So you know there are stories like that, you know, or even me personally, I got burned really bad. Like I was taking a cake out of the oven when I was doing my pastry class. And you know someone not paying attention. She literally walked by me without looking slammed the door back in as I was pulling my kid out of the oven so the hot door literally slid across my forearm as I was taking my kick out. I got the biggest blister. Oh my God ever in my life on my arm. I still have the scar today.

Michael Dugan: 17:06

I have some of those. Yeah, man. That's that's paying your dues early.

Celebrity Chef Ed Harris: 17:11

Here. Yeah. So you know the things like that going on are you know, but your first couple of months you really get to figure out the basics. You get to do knife cuts you get to learn how to sharpen your knife properly, how to hold your knife, you know, and you get the basics in terms of what Nizam plus is, you know the French terminology for different cuts, you know, things like that. But if it's something that you're really passionate about, you're going to have fun but you have to put in as much as you want to get out of it. You know?

Michael Dugan: 17:43

Yeah. And you know what's interesting? I'm not sure if your school is the same but what I loved about South Seattle Community College is we had a rotation. Yes, every two weeks we would have a completely different menu that we were challenged to cook right so and we learn as we went along and we had different stations. So you would rotate you know, you would start out as a as a prep cook. And then two weeks later, you're out there waiting tables, right? Or you're in the burger bar. We actually had a burger bar. And then we had a breakfast area right and then we had a fine dining room and a casual dining room. And so we would rotate around for two years to all these different stations and as we rotated, we were promoted. So you you now have more responsibility, more leadership 100% And eventually become a sous chef. Yes in title but not experience. Yeah. I respect you more than you know, because I know you put your time in. And I know you studied and under some amazing people but most people don't understand to be a chef. It takes a long time. It's not it's not an overnight thing. It's not you know, go to school and you become a chef. It's it's really putting in your time and your and your commitment, I think but Does that sound about right?

Celebrity Chef Ed Harris: 19:00

No. 100%? Yes. Okay. And I love that because like you said you one week you are doing garbage day, one week you're doing hot apps one week you're doing entrees one week. You know and then you got to run the kitchen and you got to expedite and that was fun for me man. Like I could do that all day long. me to go. Yes, that is so true.

Michael Dugan: 19:22

Very, very cool. So we painted a little bit of picture of what it was like at cooking school and understand after you left cooking school that opportunities came about can you tell us a little bit about like what happened after you after you graduated?

Celebrity Chef Ed Harris: 19:37

Yes, definitely. So you know, for me, and I'll tell you a funny story. So I always felt as a young cook as a chef that I needed to get as much experience as possible. So what I did was I would work at a place and when I got bored, I would leave and go somewhere else. So that would be six months. That would be a year. That might be two years. It just really depends on the establishment that I worked at the time but my mom was so worried and she's like, why are you doing this? Why can't you stay at one point I'm like, you know, I'm not learning, you know, and

Michael Dugan: 20:14

bouncing around. Yeah, so

Celebrity Chef Ed Harris: 20:17

I made it my goal to bounce around because I knew this was the only way that I can get as much information as possible and learn and acquire stuff so I can master these different skills that I wanted to have under my belt. Right? And the way I would go about finding my jobs was in New York, there was this magazine called timeout in New York. And literally, it's one of the coolest magazines ever because it listed every single restaurant in New York, from Bordeaux, to cuisine style to cheapest to most expensive. I would just flip through it. I would pick the kind of cuisine that I wanted to learn the kind of restaurant that I would like to go work in and I will just send them my resume and I will do that every single time I wanted a new job. And that's how I found all of my jobs. You know, and it just worked for me and I say this to say if you're in the restaurant business, and you want to acquire a bunch of different skills, you work at a place until you're not learning anymore. It's like the only reason you would stay there is if one you're going to get promoted and you actually want to be the head chef or the executive chef. But if you don't, and you're just there to acquire knowledge, once you have that knowledge, then there's really no reason to stay there. Right, right. Because the more you know as a chef the more you can cook the more cuisine you can do, the more versatile you are right, because that allows you exactly your

Michael Dugan: 21:42

Knowledge expands. Yeah, I get it because I did something similar. I moved I moved around a little bit every six months every eight months and learned so much and acquired new skills. helped open a couple restaurants in exactly that was amazing experience. But then it does. You look at the resume and they don't understand a lot of times but when you explain it and you say here I was I was looking to grow. Exactly. I can relate that. That's brilliant. That was a brilliant strategy. Thank you. And so where did you work? What restaurants in New York did you work

Celebrity Chef Ed Harris: 22:14

at? Okay, so I worked at Michaels, which is in right off of the Brooklyn Bridge, going into Manhattan and then I worked for John George. I worked for two of his restaurants. I worked for Vaughn and I work for John George the actual restaurant itself. I worked at Budokon Oh, yeah. Where else did I work? I worked at Michaels, which was an amazing place because you know, the thing is with the restaurants that I picked that I worked in, I pick them for a reason. You know, I wanted to learn something that they did really well right you know, so I bounced around to a few places. I opened up a few restaurants with a few chefs that I knew. But you know, my years and then I did a catering job in Long Island. I worked at this kosher catering place which was intense because that is a completely different animal. When it comes to the restaurant business. You know, there's certain rules that you have to abide by, you can bring in your own knives. You know, the theory there is different, like there's just so many things. You can't work before a certain time. So it was interesting, but I got to learn a lot, you know, and that was always my goal, you know, to work in places where it pushed me you know, a challenge, right? So I could then acquire this amazing knowledge that I can then use later on for whatever it is I decide to do in the future.

Michael Dugan: 23:36

Wow. And you know, it's funny when you say this because my parents came from New York, right? Nice. My dad, was raised in the city and my mom lived in Long Island, NY. Jean Georges. Okay. Yeah. Can you describe what it was like working at Jean Georges?

Celebrity Chef Ed Harris: 24:01

It was intense. Because you know, Jean Georges is you know, one of those high end it's like top top level. It was such a well oiled machine, but we did Wow. You know, because this was in one of the one of the biggest hotels in New York City. So, you know, you had different levels. You know, you had lunch going on, you had the room service area going on, you had you know, dinner service breakfast and all that good stuff. But um, John George himself was just such a great chef to work for because he understood hospitality, you know, and he understood service. And, you know, work in between working at John Georgia and working at Vaughn, which is his other restaurant. You know, sometimes when I worked at Vaughn, we would do prep for John George because they just was so busy on their end that they couldn't get all of that work done. So you know, Vaughn would step in and do some of the prep for them, especially when they had like parties. That's how that would go. But it was an amazing experience between pastry and you know, savory. It was one of the best places I've worked for. Definitely

Michael Dugan: 25:11

That's amazing. And then Buddha Khan, you gotta let us know. Yes. What is it like at Buddha Khan, I am dying to know I want to go there. Now after I found out about it?

Unknown: 25:22

Buddha Khan is I have to say, of all the places that have worked Buddha Khan is definitely my favorite place that I've worked. It's also the place that I worked the longest. I was there for five years. And that was like a record because like, I've never worked anywhere that long in my entire life. Wow, I had so much fun. You know, Buddha con was the place that I got to go and chopped. Oh my gosh, wow. Otakon it was it was so intense. Like, I mean, we did when I worked there. We pulled in about 25 million a year in sales, just doing dinner service. We weren't open for lunch or breakfast because we were so busy for dinner. Right? And BeautyCon was such an established place that we would get buyouts and buyout is just simply someone coming in and saying, I want to use your whole restaurant for the day for the night. You know, because I want to have a private jet. So we would we would get all of these movie premieres. We would get all of these different parties. Tom Cruise his wife, the kids would come you know like we did like tons of celebrity in terms of events. And it was such an amazing place to work. And when you talk about food, I mean, yeah, you had a wok station, which had about five people working. You had the hot app station which had three people working you had garmarget. Which had two to three people working depending on the day. And then you had the fish station that had three people and then you had the meat station that had three people. So that was the single day, how the kitchen ran, right. So it was definitely definitely a well oiled machine and then you have dim sum, which came in at eight in the morning. Love that. That's a whole another situation. Yeah.

Michael Dugan: 27:12

Right, another podcast.

Unknown: 27:16

You know, Buddha calm was amazing. You know, and I love it there. I made sure when I was there that I really carved out a spot for myself like I made sure I learned every single station. Yeah, I worked every single station I learned all of the dumplings how to make all of the doughs the fillings I breathe Budokon when I was there, I love it. To this day, I can call the chef and say hey, I'm coming in. And they treat me like family without a doubt. It's amazing. You know that relationship is just something that I wouldn't trade for the world. I mean, we talk you know, once in a while, like we just text the other day because it was his birthday. And you know, he's just an amazing guy right now and give him a shout out. Yeah, Chef Yang. You know, it's they His name is Chef Yang. He He's just an amazing guy.

Michael Dugan: 28:03

What's amazing about him, let's let's let's really put it out there.

Unknown: 28:06

What's so amazing about him is so when I went there for the job, so the way I got the job at Boudicca, let's rewind a little bit was sure I was looking to be the sous chef there because I was like, you know, I just came back from solutia. I'd done a consulting job at this five star resort in St. Lucia and I left you know, I worked there for about three months, three to six months. It was about six months, and I came back and I was like, Okay, I need to find a job and I want to do Asian food. So where can I go work? So I of course, I went back to my Time Out New York work. I found Budokon I sent him my resume.

Michael Dugan: 28:41

What a strategy man. That's brilliant.

Celebrity Chef Ed Harris: 28:44

Thank you. So I sent him my resume. And I was like, Yeah, you know, I want to come in for the sous chef position. There's like, we're so sorry, at what we literally just hired someone for that position. If you take the light cook position, then you know, depending on how things go, you can move up and be a sous chef. I'm like, alright, I'll do that. I'll take a step back for now because you know, I've been out of, you know, New York. See the restaurant business for like, at least a year. So I'm like, let me get my feet wet again and see how things go. Wow. And then this is completely new for me, you know? So it's like, I'll be able to learn a ton of things which I wanted to do. Anyway, fast forward three years in. The chef leaves the executive chef leave which is lots of masma Another great guy. You know, I learned a lot from him, one of the most patient chefs I've ever worked with, so definitely shout out to him. He's in Denver now. So if you're ever in Denver, or you know, anyone listening is in Denver, and you want to check out some amazing restaurants do look up lawn Semenza one of his signature places is called Show lOn. And he just does amazing food but he left and Chef Yang took over with another chef and when I first interviewed with Chef Yang, he was like, if you can last a year. Then I'm going to give you a knife one of my cleavers.

Michael Dugan: 29:59

Oh my gosh, that's awesome. Wow. All right.

Celebrity Chef Ed Harris: 30:03

All right. I'll take you out for that offer. You know, because I didn't have a cleaver at that time because this was like my first official Asian restaurant. Vaughn was part Asian. It was like Thai, you know, with French influence. So it wasn't your typical Asian restaurant but it just had Asian influences. Okay, but Buddha Khan was like my legit OG first Asian restaurant that was all Asian food. So I was like, Okay, I'll take that challenge. So fast forward. Five years later, I lasted definitely more than a year because it was intense.

Michael Dugan: 30:34

He got the knife. Yes,

Celebrity Chef Ed Harris: 30:35

I got the knife. Wow. Yeah, I got the clever. Right. And, you know, he's just, you know, he's just a spectacular guy. So that's, you know, how that whole story came about?

Michael Dugan: 30:44

Wow. You mentioned the word chopped and I can't let you get out of this because you mentioned it. I was like, we can go any direction that you want to go but I've we got to know the story. Right. So yes, how did chopped happen? How did how did you get connected to chopped?

chef: 31:01

So that's another funny story. So working at Budokon, the executive chef at the time was lon and you know, Budokon is situated in Chelsea Market. And Chelsea Market is an old Nabisco factory building. So right now they turned it into Food Network has an office there. MLB has an office, the baseball company, tons of different companies out there and then on the first floor, there's tons of purveyors, there's a seafood market. There's an Italian place, tons of different stuff. So it's a really cool place to walk around and you know, just visit and sightsee buy wines and alcohol and that kind of stuff. The chef is walking in the corridor, and one of the Food Network staff that knew him was like hey, you know and this was when chopped was like, you know, chop is still hot, but this was when he was like, really in its prime. It's hot. And this was 2010 2009. And he spoke to the line and he was like, hey, you know, I would love to interview for jobs. And if you know anyone, please send them my way. So he comes back into work and he's like, Hey, Ed, and we were really close. So he comes in to work and he's like, Ed, you know, you won't believe who I spoke to, as I could tell him he told me. He's like one of the one of the directors for chat and I was like, No way!!! Believe that. Yeah, exactly. So he goes, Do you want to do it? I'm like, of course I wanted to, you know, that's my show. Yeah, he connects the two dots. And I go for an interview. And the interview for chopped was really simple. It's like there's a camera in front of you. And they just ask you a bunch of questions just to get your camera presence. they email me back and they're like, You got chosen to be on shop. You know, do you want to do it? This is the layout, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, yes, thank you.