An Audience With The New King
Gulfscapes was fortunate to be granted an audience with the newly crowded King of American Seafood, Chef John Currence, a few weeks after his triumph at the Battle of New Orleans. Before we could interview him, we asked how we should address him. Your Highness? Your Majesty?
“I prefer your Royal Seafood Dudeness,” Currence deadpanned, “But you can just call me Dudeness for short.” How had his life changed since his ascension? “ I had no idea of the amount of attention that went along with winning. I kind of went blindly into this, because I have three existing restaurants to run and a new one just starting, so I didn’t pay as much attention to it as I wanted. It was a real slap in the face when my sous chef, Heath Johnson, and I showed up and saw the other teams. I told Heath we had to kick it into gear!”
His Dudeness operates four restaurants in Oxford, Mississippi, including nationally known City Grocery. His newest restaurant is called Big Bad Breakfast. More on that later.
The Deep South is a strong influence and attraction to Chef Currence, having been born in New Orleans, grown up in the Carolinas and spent summers helping his working class grandparents in their garden in Georgia. He is well known for his creations of Deep Southern American cuisine. At the Cook-Off, he even looked Deep South, choosing to dress in blue jeans, a dark blue head-kerchief, and boots, instead of in the crisp chef outfits that were the predominant attire. Taken in combination with a small soul patch under his bottom lip, it gave him the look of a modern day southern rebel. But to those of you who equate such a look with the unsophisticated, let this be a lesson: Currence’s list of accomplishments is as long as your arm, having been recognized repeatedly by the most prestigious culinary institutions in the country. He also is a consistent promoter of the arts, and spent a couple of years as president of the local arts council, and was a driving force behind the construction of a community performing arts center. After Katrina, Currence spent months in New Orleans leading the rebuilding of Willie Mae’s Scotch House, which was the subject of a documentary film, “Above the Line: Saving Willie Mae’s Scotch House”.
Chef Currence spent time in New Orleans as a chef, but found a nice niche in Oxford for his restaurants. How does New Orleans food differ from his restaurant’s style? “You don’t see a lot of the deep south style vegetables in New Orleans cooking,” he said. “New Orleans is unique because it has its own food style. It has over 200 years of mixing cuisines and they have melded into each other to create their own kind of food. New Orleans’ cooking has a past, a present and a future. It is insanely rich in history and soul. New York and San Francisco have great restaurant, but they don’t have a style all their own like New Orleans. They have great ethnic restaurants in New York and San Francisco, but they are separate; they haven’t melted together like New Orleans’ has.”
Now back to Big Bad Breakfast (BBB for short). “I’ve always wanted to do a breakfast restaurant, but I could never get my brain wrapped around working so early in the morning, worrying if staff would show up. When a great location about half a mile from the Oxford town square became available, I took the leap,” revealed Currence. “ I’ve always thought breakfast was an overlooked meal. I want to give it the same attention and importance that we give dinner.”
To do this, his Royal Seafoodness built a smokehouse so he could make his own bacon. “Once we were doing bacon, it was obvious we might as well go ahead and do our own ham and sausage, too. We now supply ourselves. And we operate locally. We buy local organic free-range pigs. We also buy local vegetables, grits…there was enough local fruit this summer that we made our own jams and jellies.” He also grows fresh herbs organically behind the restaurant. BBB offers a classic diner style experience, with plenty of egg choices, omelettes and even Pan Perdue, a brandy spiked French Toast. There’s also a lunch menu, which includes Coca-Cola brined fried chicken (free range, non-caged chicken, of course).
Currence’s immediate future will center on building BBB. The notoriety gained in his victory in the Great American Seafood Cook-Off certainly won’t hurt business any. But it is the quality of food and service that ultimately make any restaurant. Using the freshest meat, vegetables and fruit raises the quality of any restaurant. Currence’s decision to process his own pork, grow his own herbs, and make his own preserves takes it up to a new level. Dare we say it has risen to a level fit for a … Dudeness?
