Q&A: A conversation with Turn's David Kirkland

×

Expand

Photography by Kevin A. Roberts

Locals might remember David Kirkland from Venice Café’s Jerk Shack, but more likely it’s the wondrous pancakes and Brie LTs that he’s produced at Café Osage for the past decade. The former DJ now has a new gig, appropriately named Turn (3224 Locust, 314-240-5507), a moniker that’s equally full of restaurant connotations.

How did you get into the restaurant business? It all started at a place called David’s, a second-floor restaurant on Big Bend in Webster. I was a lazy 16-year-old and only lasted four days. I didn’t get serious about cooking until college—because it helped pay for college—but I really learned the biz from Mark Erker [Catering St. Louis] when he ran the café at the Saint Louis Art Museum.

Did you know your former colleague David Guempel before you worked together at Café Osage? I’d interviewed with him when he owned Zinnia. When it closed, he ended up working with me at Osage, coming on a few months before we opened. He has a lightning-quick mind and saw the big picture quickly. It was David who taught me to think fast on my feet, which is absolutely essential for a chef.

Talk about Café Osage. It was unique in several ways.  We had our own quarter-acre garden across the street, plus a hoop house with several beds, both of which were a new thing for a local restaurant in 2008. Over the years, we knew which vegetables and heirlooms we needed and which grew best. Tomatoes did well there, except in the years when they didn’t, which the non-gardening customers could never understand.

People loved the café’s jams. I started making more and more varieties, some of them made with herbs grown on the roof. When it was time to give gifts at Christmastime, baking became time-consuming, but I learned that five gallons of jam goes a long way. People loved getting it because it was different.

What’s the connection to Bowood Farms? The main nursery in Clarksville supplies the St. Louis nursery—which Café Osage shares—with most of its plants. In the early days, the farm supplied us with bison. Its hoop houses and greenhouses still supply the restaurant with microgreens year-round.

I remember cooks walking through Café Osage at lunchtime with aprons full of vegetables from the garden across the street. I miss that aspect of it. My friends at the Northside Workshop, a nonprofit in North City that conducts camps and workshops for kids, have planted seeds to help supply the new restaurant, so that’s still pretty local. Their two apiaries will supply the new restaurant with honey as well.

What was your takeaway from Café Osage? Having an onsite garden forces a chef to be creative all the time. Sometimes there’s a glut of something; sometimes none. My favorite dish there was the Garden Benedict, an English muffin with an herbed goat cheese spread, heirloom tomato, poached eggs, and a creamed Missouri corn sauce on top. No hollandaise.

Café Osage was—and still is—a wonderful concept. That’s what turned me on to it. Being able to have breakfast or lunch overlooking the [Bowood Farms] nursery—or inside the nursery—is very cool.

Discuss your transition out of Café Osage and the next step. I’d been there almost 10 years and felt I’d reached the pinnacle of what I could do there, so I left in March 2016 to start something for myself, which became David Kirkland Catering.

How did David Kirkland Catering get started? [Philanthropists] Ken and Nancy Kranzberg had wanted a chef presence in the four-story corner building they were developing on Locust Street, where Plush used to be. Discussions with Chris Hansen, their director of operations, put me—and my catering company—on the ground floor, with a full kitchen. The whole situation was a lucky turn of events, so to speak.

Is the restaurant called Turn by David Kirkland or just Turn? When I thought about it, I said, "There’s no reason to pin my name to this," so it’s simply Turn, which focuses on the theme.

What does the name Turn mean? I love to cook and was a DJ in San Francisco for six years. Whenever I cook, there’s music playing. Both use the same motion… You’re combining one piece with another to create something new. At Osage, I became known for several jams that I called my slow jams. I named them after R&B songs and added a record graphic on their jars. That’s how the whole Turn thing got started.

The connotations are endless. Turning tables, turning things on the grill, turn up the heat, turn of the seasons… Restaurant associations are everywhere.

And it plays into a design detail. There’s a display of 72 record album covers along the main wall, the only wall that isn’t glass. It’s a changeable mosaic, an art wall that shows who we are and what we like to listen to.

What’s on the other walls? Windows—plus frosted glass panels that change colors. We can project our logo or the evening’s specials on the glass. The panels swivel to close us off—or open us up—to .ZACK’s foyer.

Frosted glass panels that turn. There you go. Another association.

What’s the service model? Full service for breakfast and lunch, plus dinner events and catering. There are seven breakfast items and the same at lunch, plus specials.

What’s the best item on the breakfast menu? The most unusual item may be the biscuit flight—four different kinds served with the jam of the day, plus local honey and butter. There’s a Benedict with this great New York Rye from Companion, Baetje Farms goat cheese, caramelized onions, smoked salmon, poached eggs, and dill hollandaise with capers. My multi-grain pancakes were popular at Osage, and I’ll continue that program at Turn. One secret is that I beat in the two egg components separately, which gives them volume and fluff, and I use buckwheat groats, which gives them a touch of crunch.

How about at lunch? I’m betting on the reuben patty melt, made from local corned beef mixed with a little ground beef. For the tortilla burger, we’ll mix beef with cheese and chili peppers, cook the patty to temperature, fold it into a tortilla, and grill that on a flat top. There are several healthy options, too, like a quinoa bowl.

How has St. Louis’ dining scene evolved in the past decade? Recent transplants to St. Louis are welcome new places and chefs who take chances. I think you’ll continue to see just that where they work and frequent, like Cortex and Grand Center. People are looking to spend the entire evening in the theater district, like they do in other cities, so we’ll toy with that, collaborating with guest chefs on some nights, and maybe call the series Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?

What makes Turn different? To start, there are not a lot of breakfast café spots in Grand Center and Midtown. The entire .ZACK building is intriguing and exciting, basically an incubator where performing arts organizations can work, collaborate, and perform. There’s a theater, restaurant, offices, a private event space, record shop, and Sophie’s—all geared toward artists but open to the public.

Where did the .ZACK name originate?  It’s the name of one of the Kranzbergs’ grandchildren, as is Sophie and Marcelle—as in The Marcelle—another Kranzberg venue just down the street.

Has your cooking style—or cooking philosophy—changed over the years? I consult my staff more today than in the past. There’s a dialogue now. The opposite of a ‘my way or the highway’ philosophy. I present a cooking situation and ask, "What do you think we should do here?" If there’s ownership, the item will get made just as passionately as I would make it.

Will Turn venture down any other side streets? I’d been preparing Blue Apron-ish meals for a group of doctors, providing a soup, salad, and raw fish, with cooking directions, because fish doesn’t reheat well. I’d like to do the same in this building—have a grab-and-go case, where people can pick up a meal and cook it in their space at their leisure.