Acclaimed chef Ben Grupe opens Tempus in The Grove

The long-awaited restaurant will launch on October 29 with to-go service.

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The following Q&A appears in the November issue of SLM. Tempus opens at 4370 Manchester on October 29 for dinner pick-up service only, Wed-Sat from 6 to 9 p.m. Order online here.

Some of the metro area’s most talented chefs work in private clubs and are relatively unknown to the dining public. One of them, Ben Grupe, earned a spot on the ACF Culinary Team and eventually became its captain. Now, the 38-year-old is setting his sights on his début restaurant, Tempus, which he decided to open in October despite the pandemic, beginning with to-go service.

When did you know that you wanted to be a chef? I got into the industry when I was 15, setting up and bussing events at Windows on Washington. I started washing dishes at Brian Menzel’s B. Tomas in Clayton, and when the salad cook no-called/no-showed one night, I got the call: “Grupe, you’re on salads.”

When did you catch the culinary competition bug? As soon as I started my first apprenticeship, at Racquet Club Ladue. [Chef] Chris Desens would go to The Greenbrier [resort] for Club Chef’s Institute and share his knowledge with us when he returned. At the time, he was also trying out for the U.S. Culinary Olympic team. He made the team, by the way, and I quit culinary school to do an apprenticeship at The Greenbrier. For any trade, it boils down to learning basic fundamentals, and The Greenbrier teaches them and ingrains them in you better than anyone. I was surrounded with hundreds of like-minded individuals, all of us held to Olympic standards and expectations, which was amazing.

Talk about The Greenbrier’s apprenticeship program. It’s four years of intense, extensive grinding—stocks, sauces, butchery, charcuterie, baking, pastry…  It’s not for everyone. Competition is part of the curriculum. It’s a paid internship, and at the time it required two letters of recommendation, preferably from a certified master chef, and you needed work experience or a culinary degree. You have to work a season at the hotel ahead of time just to see if you can handle the stress and the pressure. I remember my sophomore year, I’d get to the kitchen at 5 in the morning to work breakfast, which went until 11. I’d get pulled from there to do lunch banquets—and get pulled from there because I was scheduled at 5 to do dinner service.

Sounds like boot camp. Funny you should say that. There was an episode on a Food Network show called Culinary Bootcamp, and it was about The Greenbrier’s apprenticeship program, where the failure rate was close to 70 percent. My class started with 16 chefs, and we ended up merging with another class. 

How well did you cope? I didn’t think I was good enough. There were, like, 30 apprentices when I was there who were just killing it, several younger than I. But I stuck it out, graduated in December 2009, and moved back to St. Louis. I tried out for the Olympic Team two months later, started a new job at Old Warson Country Club, got married, and bought a house, all in a few months. It was full throttle.

How was Old Warson? The volume of business that they do—the sheer volume—Old Warson is a monster. There were three dining rooms when I was there, plus simultaneous banquets going on. Managing a team of 20 people in a kitchen setting like that, with so many moving parts, taught me discipline and leadership.

Then there was Meadowbrook Country Club. I had hit my ceiling at Old Warson; there was nowhere for me to professionally progress, so it was time to take that next step of running my own kitchen. When I started there, I also began a tour with the Culinary Olympic Team... I was now hooked on competition, totally obsessed with it, so other things, like my duties at the club, fell by the wayside. I realized that the culture of clubs just wasn’t for me anymore.

Were all the country club experiences the same, or were they all different? Similar from a food standpoint, though different environments and clientele. You have to remember that the number of members are equal to the number of bosses you have. If a member wants a four-egg omelet with 12 fried oysters and then two scoops of raspberry sorbet in a Burgundy glass, that needs to be set out when the omelet is served, so it’s nearly soupy when he gets it, then that’s what you do. Or if it’s 11 a.m. on Thanksgiving and a member wants a turkey dinner—and even though the 300 you’ve cooked are already spoken for—you still find a way. But that’s what we’re there for, and people pay a lot of money to have that kind of service. Our job is to provide hospitality.

After your country club stints, what did you do? I started doing pop-up dinners in 2014—10 of them in a year and a half—to introduce myself to the general public here, because nobody really knew me. I wanted to see how people reacted to what I do, which was taking classically rooted fundamentals and flipping them on their head to see if I could generate a spark. An example of that is the cod chowder, a take on New England clam chowder which is typically very rich and creamy. I replaced the dairy with coconut milk, lightening it up, adding dashi to add umami, focusing on knife cuts with the potatoes, and introducing chayote squash, kohlrabi, and celery root. A piece of miso cured cod was laid on top of it (see photo above). Using the same ingredients, you could have made a traditional hearty chowder or reworked them to come up with what I made. The response to the chowder and pop-ups was great, by the way, so I knew I was onto something. I did a potato skin dish, too, in which I took some fingerling potatoes, cooked them sous vide, added rendered chicken fat, seared to get a crispy texture, then finished with sea salt. I then added bonito mayonnaise, capers, and preserved lemon. They’re lighter, and there’s more technique, but it’s still a potato skin. It’s a familiar point of reference rooted in foundation with an unexpected result.

How did you start with Olio and Elaia? Ben Poremba reached out during the pop-ups and said he was stepping back to focus on growing the restaurant group, and did I want to step in. At the time, I was halfway through the second tour of the Culinary Olympic Team. He was fine with that but I needed to be transparent with him. It was at Elaia where I honed my restaurant style and I found my voice. I was there with Ben two and a half years.

How about Olio? I left their food alone because the food was good, and as unconventional as it was, the place worked. Sometimes showing restraint is the best thing you can do.

Do you have a mantra? Hard work. I’m a “if you’re not willing to work for your goals, don’t expect anybody else to” kind of guy. This business is hard and it’s demanding.

One of your aphorisms is “flavor first”? What does that mean? To some chefs, it means adding MSG. I’m not ashamed to say I use it, too. I don’t have a 50-pound bag of the stuff, but chefs will use it when necessary and appropriate, like when you want to add another layer of flavor and increase umami, which doesn’t need to happen all the time. It’s like using an acid or a specific salt or fat; they all have a purpose in layering, in accentuating each flavor. Making food delicious is my—and my team’s—Number one priority. In simple terms, it’s applying technique to provide flavor.

What’s an example of that? Take a braised carrot dish, for example. You roast them in carrot juice to get some Maillard caramelization, having added some spices and spirits to accentuate the carrot flavor. You could reduce the sauce, to accentuate those flavors, and add crispy carrots by say, cooking dehydrated carrots in a carrot syrup. The goal should be to use the main ingredient, when appropriate, to concentrate and layer flavor.

When you tried out for the “Olympic” team, what did it entail? It was a two-part tryout. The first was presenting a platter for eight people, then a five-course meal, including hot food presented cold, four finger foods, and something else. It was 12 hours and five the next day. If you passed that, you were invited back for part two. I got the highest score out of 26 at the first tryout, and I was going up against well-established chefs and other master chefs. I was pumped—but terrified. I still had the second tryout ahead of me.

You eventually became captain of the team. I was named captain in 2014, assembled my team, and competed in 2016. Each team competed two days. Cold food was on display one day, which they called “edible art.” The next day was the hot kitchen, where we had six hours to produce three courses for 110 people. We were the world champions in cold food, third in the hot kitchen, and scored fourth overall, out of 30-something teams. 

How many medals have you won, and are they displayed in your house somewhere? I probably have won 30-plus awards and skill medals. Although I’m very proud of them—and don’t take this the wrong way—they’re all in a shoebox.

What special qualities does it take to be the captain of a Culinary Olympic Team? Discipline, patience, and being consistent, exactly the same answer I’d give about running a restaurant kitchen.

Do you have to be a country club chef to try out for the U.S. Culinary Olympic Team? A lot of the chefs do come from educational institutions, hotels, and country clubs—places that can, quite frankly, afford to devote some staff and the dollars it takes to compete internationally. Chefs who compete work at this on the side, constantly. At Elaia, the customers were the beneficiaries. I would value engineer my program into the items I was serving, which provided invaluable feedback.

If a chef wanted to begin competing on this level, what’s the first step? Given the current climate, competitions are pretty much dead. When things improve, interested chefs should work for someone who is, or has been, involved with the program, like I did with at Chris at the Racquet Club.

In 2017, you competed in the American Ment’or BKB selection for the Bocuse d’Or. The Bocuse d’Or is the most prestigious culinary competition in the world, and a lot of people don’t even know about it. [It was] founded by [the late French chef] Paul Bocuse. The best of the best chefs are selected to compete and represent their countries. BKB stands for David Boulud, Thomas Keller, and Jerome Bocuse, son of Paul, and the Mentor foundation provides scholarships and grants for young culinarians to compete in the Bocuse d'Or every year. As far as my culinary career goes, that tryout was the most significant competition that I ever did. It is the pinnacle of competitions. Only 15 Americans have ever competed in this.

How did it go? There were three candidates: two chefs from Michelin-starred restaurants and me. I put everything I had into it—physically, emotionally, and mentally. I was given an entire kitchen at Hickey College to use. We’d work there all day, go to Elaia to do dinner service, and many times go back and train during the night. I was working 20-hour days for months just to prepare. I remember not feeling well one night, going to Nudo House for some pho, letting my staff run Elaia that night so I could train, and remember sleeping on the kitchen floor, on a cardboard box, and waking up four hours later. There was nothing that was going to prevent me from winning the competition. I came in second, but I did well. That was some of the best food I’ve ever cooked. 

When did you decide it was time to do your own thing? If I won the competition, I would move to Yountville, where the training facility is next to the French Laundry. I’d train for 16 months with some of the best chefs in the country to compete in the Bocuse d’Or—which is held every two years in Lyon—and that’s all you focus on. The Mentor foundation pays the salaries. It’s a big, big deal. I told myself if I didn’t win, I’d embark on another journey, which eventually became Tempus. 

Tempus was supposed to open in 2019. It’s opening a year later. What happened? Let’s just call it a series of unfortunate events. Every restaurant opening has one. We had several.

You’re opening Tempus during the pandemic without a dining room, which means there’s no physical vibe. Everything has to be conveyed through the food. The challenge is to convey thoughtful, genuine hospitality without much physical contact. Hospitality experts everywhere are having to reinvent and rethink hospitality. We must now communicate with different forms of communication. We must somehow make what seems foreign feel comforting. Our goal is to establish and nurture that familiarity, because we’re all basically eating food out of a box. We don’t have the restaurant experience to fall back on. We want to create something meaningful and purposeful that you can enjoy in your home.

Why didn’t you wait until that day came? We were ready to confidently move forward with this project. Our plan A was to open Tempus. Tempus’ Plan A became opening for to-go service. The dining room will open when it can, but how we treat employees and guests, creating a safe and inclusive environment, was always part of our Plan A. We put together a very small team of select individuals to keep our numbers down. I’d hate to bring on a ton of people and then face another shut down, only to tell those folks we can’t support them.

When the dining room opens, will you offer tasting menus? The menu for the night is what is offered. If someone wants to create a tasting menu from that, we can make that happen. That way, we removed the pretension of having a set tasting menu with more courses than most people often want. Do three courses, six, or whatever. Here’s what we would suggest. My menus are designed to be a la carte or to work in progression.

Discuss the black-and-white mural on the side of your building. The lack of color takes the intimidation away from what people may think is too fancy of a restaurant. Yes, the presentations are precise, but you’re still ordering potato skins, a steamed bun, and chicken and dumplings. The formality is absent. There are no white tablecloths. You might be hearing rock and roll or hip-hop. The ambience is relaxed and urban. It’s familiar, fun, and exciting—not your average fine-dining restaurant.

Will Tempus be a special occasion restaurant, as many fine dining places are? If guests want to dress to the nines, Tempus is the spot. We want to be an ABC restaurant [anniversary, birthday, celebration]. But if you’re in jeans and a t-shirt, the level of hospitality and experience will be exactly the same as for the guy in a tuxedo. We say we offer ‘food without labels’ and that applies to the guest, too. We don’t want either to be pigeonholed. Inclusivity is a core value with us. It applies to ingredients and techniques in the kitchen as well as any person we come into contact with.

How did the epidemic change Tempus’ focus? I had to scrap everything I had planned for previously—the menu, the team; every aspect pretty much changed. It derailed the construction process, but it also gave me an opportunity to redesign the project from the ground up and not have to pivot operations. For example, it was easier for us to implement safety guidelines because we didn’t have to act retroactively, and without opening the dining room initially, we can safely, confidently operate a restaurant and exceed what in many cases are subjective safety guidelines.

How much did the menu items need to change for a to-go environment? We’ve engineered the menu specifically for to-go food. If you put a microgreen—or even lettuce—into a box, then it’s going to die. Our goal is to provide the guest a best experience, considering the parameters and our abilities to make to-go food delicious. To us, fine dining is not fancy; it’s a philosophy that we embrace.

What’s on the menu? Snacks, starters, entrées—all a la carte—but the number of each will vary, as will the proteins, according to customer response. We’ve determined that using recyclable plastic boxes will be best for our style and composition of food. We reuse boxes like that at home for home for meal kits and also to store things like kid’s crayons.

Will any of the dishes you used in competitions make it onto that menu? Not specifically, but you will see iterations throughout the menu. A lot of similar techniques will be used. The idea is to offer what is familiar—basic proteins, seasonal vegetables, popular dishes—and apply classical cooking techniques to modify the presentation to make Tempus a different experience. During these times things are unpredictable and so we didn’t want to limit ourselves to one “type” of food. Sometimes you may want a fried chicken sandwich and other times you may want a beautiful piece of black cod. At the center of it all, we didn't have to convert a menu to take-out, we built a menu around takeout.

How will the ordering process work, and will you deliver? It will be similar to ordering takeout food from anywhere, using online ordering and curbside pickup for dinner only, Wednesday–Saturday to start. We’re opening online ordering for each day, the day prior, but playing off our intent of making things accessible, if people suddenly find themselves hungry at 7 o’clock they can still place an order. We’re not delivering initially, but we are looking for creative ways to engage more guests since a lot of our clientele will be from out west. 

How will the beverage program work? We’re lucky that Drew Lacido is still involved. He’s presenting signature cocktails, some classic cocktails, a natural and bio-dynamic wine program, and some bottled beers.

What’s the price point? Entrées are generally in the $20s. That said, food is not cheap these days, so the price point might fluctuate a little bit as the price of ingredients fluctuates.

Talk about the interior. Although the bar and dining room are separated by a glass door, we’re treating the entire floor plan as the dining room from a menu and service standpoint. We worked hard on getting the lighting right, because there are hard materials—a lot of steel and a lot of wood. There’s an open kitchen. I’m excited to show off the safety measures we put in place. But more exciting right now are the two windows we installed that look right in the kitchen. One is strictly for pickup service; the other we can experiment with. Maybe we’ll put a guest table there that looks directly into the kitchen that can be serviced directly from the window. That could easily be incorporated into the outdoor seating plan.

Is there a dish that stands out as an example of what Tempus represents? All the dishes are standouts, in my opinion. My recommendations are printed on the menu. I don’t have a signature dish or a favorite item. They’re all my children. I love them all equally. 

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