Cover design by Level Inc
For the better part of two months, Bob Brazell walked around with a secret: he’d written a piece for Thomas Keller’s hefty Finesse magazine, a first-person essay on his restaurant Byrd & Barrel, “A New Kind of Fast Food in an Old Community.” The piece, slated for the mag’s new “The Chicken Issue” was written, proofed, edited, touched up. And through all the time that was passing, Brazell made sure to keep things as far under wraps as possible.
“It was crazy,” he says now. “I knew it was coming out. Obviously, it’s a dream come true. I didn’t say anything to anyone. I didn’t want it not published, after telling people that I was going to be in a Thomas Keller magazine. I waited for those two months and then, Monday, I went by my house in the middle of the day, while doing some errands. And sitting on my porch was this really nice package. It was awesome. Pretty cool, pretty cool.”
Layout design by Level Inc.
Brazell says that the moment was special, a career highlight, for a variety of reasons. One, he says, was that he was able to cite a number of the people responsible for the B&B project, from kitchen staff to graphic artists. He also takes it as a sign that his decision to transform an old fast food shell on the City’s South Side was a smart move; though his early base of regulars have already suggested as much.
Having opened on South Jefferson on September 15 of last year, Brazell says that “I didn’t know if the neighborhood itself would take to it. With all the press and hype we got in advance, I expected that the food community would come out for the first week, or so. But the amazing thing has been the neighborhood support. I see some of the same people here three, four times a week. They hang out and become a part of this place and that was a shock to me. And this thing could not work out, still. It’s six-months old and I’m not naive enough to says it’s going to be like this forever. But it’s awesome that it’s happened this quickly.”
The biggest thrill about the Finesse piece, though, is the simple fact that Thomas Keller’s personal stamp is on the piece. As background to that importance, Brazell quickly sketched out his history in the industry.
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“I’ve always been serious about cooking,” he says. “Even as a line cook at Hooters at 17-years-old, I took my job seriously. I knew that it’s what I wanted to do right out of high school, to go to culinary school. But I didn’t have the balls, honestly. I wasn’t popular then, I guess. But I was always really into it.”
Still, he went to work in the industry. But his career in the kitchen was intersected by a four-year stint in real estate, where he found financial success, but a crushed spirit.
“It was the one time I took a hiatus from restaurants,” he remembers. “I thought that I had to grow up, be a shirt-and-tie guy. I got married, bought a big house in the county. I did really well at it, but hated it. I hated going to work every day. It was horrible. So I went to culinary school. I was 26 or 27, so I was an older guy, compared to the rest. Some friends were saying ‘oh, you’re quitting real estate to go to culinary school? Good luck.’ Within two years, I’d lost contact with them.”
During that stretch he was waking up at 4 a.m., in order to make his 6 a.m. classes in St. Peters. After classes, at 2 in the afternoon, or so, he’d hustle back to the City “to work a shift in whatever kitchen I was in at the time. I slept for three-hours a night and I’d do it all over again. And I did that for two years.
“And my mom, every Christmas, would buy me a Thomas Keller cookbook,” he recalls. “The first one I got was the ‘French Laundry Cook Book.’ And after a few years, I had all of them. I remember that the year she bought me the first one, I was going through a tough time, getting divorced. And she’d bought me this $100 book. In the note she said ‘stick this out.’ On the card, she wrote ‘you’re doing what you should be doing, keep your head down and do it.’ I don’t know if I deserve to be in one or not, but I wound up in a Thomas Keller publication.”
Asked if he hoped for the Finesse inclusion to stimulate anything else for his restaurant or career, Brazell says, succinctly, “being in it is enough.”
