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COURTNEY:
Since this is
My Rouses
Everyday
Around the World Issue, let’s start
with your international travels and food
experiences. Before opening Domenica you
did a year in Italy.
ALON:
It was right after Emily and I started
dating in 2007.Shewould come over to visit and
we would rent a car and travel together through
Italy and kind of explore different towns.
COURTNEY:
Do you choose places based
on food or other things?
ALON:
Food is definitely the number one
thing because we’re both very passionate
about food, but I depend on Emily to teach
me about culture so we can go to museums
and parks.
(Emily laughs.)
EMILY:
Usually when we travel Alon has
ideas about where he wants to go, and I try
to piece together an itinerary that makes
sense so we’re not zigzagging everywhere.
COURTNEY:
You started with the Italian
cooking when you were older, but when you
were young and living in Philadelphia, what
were the kinds of things you ate in your home?
ALON:
I was born in Israel, and raised in
Philadelphia. A lot of what you see on the
menu here at Shaya, like bourekas, which
are puff pastry turnovers with feta cheese on
the inside, and lutenitsa, a tomato eggplant
pepper spread — those are foods I grew up
with, my grandmother’s recipes.
COURTNEY
: Are those Israeli dishes?
ALON:
Well, nothing is really Israeli,
history-wise, but it’s currently Israeli food
because it’s part of the Israeli culture and
what’s being eaten there and cooked there
every
day.Mygrandmother and grandfather
were Bulgarian, actually. My mom used a
lot of my grandmother’s recipes and then
came up with her own as well. She made
a lot of stuffed cabbage and peppers with
rice and meat. So that’s a lot of my food
background. But once I started cooking for
a living and went to culinary school it was
all about Italian for me.
COURTNEY:
Because that’s what you love?
ALON:
Well, it is, but I was pretty much
dropped off at an Italian restaurant to go
work when I was 15, so that’s why I started
cooking Italian food. I did fall in love with
it and I recognized a lot of the flavor profiles
from the food I ate as a kid, whether it was
olives or goat cheese or roasted peppers, a
lot of eggplant, all these ingredients that
both the Israeli culture and Italian culture
base their cuisine off of. So, for me, those
were the foods that I cared about. Once
I moved to the South I began learning
about Southern culture. Emily grew up in
Georgia.
EMILY:
North Georgia, a small town. I went
to Tulane for undergrad — my senior year
was Katrina — and then I stayed in New
Orleans. Alon and I met the year after I
graduated.
ALON:
Emily and I would go visit her
family in Georgia. We’d go to the Southern
Foodways Symposium in Oxford and we
would watch a ballet with people dressed
up like okra doing pliés and pirouettes. We
would listen to poems about pralines, and
everyone would sit around and eat boudin
and talk about how magical it was and I was
like, what is up with all of this, what’s going
on? Why do people care about biscuits so
much? What is it about this culture that is
so moving for so many people?
“Alon Shaya won the 2015 James Beard Award for Best Chef South (the culinary equivalent of
winning the Oscar), and his newest restaurant, Shaya, was recently named Best New Restaurant
in America by Esquire Magazine, and The Daily Meal. He’s a rockstar chef, but like his mentor and
partner, John Besh (a rockstar chef if ever there was one), he’s never too busy to answer a few
questions. I was fortunate to speak with Alon and his wife, Emily, founder and owner of Prêt á
Fête, about their relationship to food, New Orleans and each other. Our interview took place on a
recent Monday afternoon in the beautiful upstairs banquet room at Shaya on Magazine Street in
New Orleans.”
—Courtney Singer
Persian Rice —
photo by
Graham Blackall
ISRAEL