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MY
ROUSES
EVERYDAY
JANUARY | FEBRUARY 2016
EMILY:
My aunt Bill ... my aunt
is named Bill
(both laugh) ... she
makes these amazing biscuits.
She’d wake up at 5am to make
them and she would put them
out on the porch and everyone
in the family would come get
their own biscuits. She and Alon eventually
traded biscuit recipes.
For Alon, going home with me to Georgia
and seeing the food we cooked in our house
like red eye gravy and biscuits, chicken and
dumplings and things like that ... that was a
primer on Southern food.
ALON:
That’s one of my favorite things to
do, to learn what people cook at home for
their families. That’s how most people in
the world eat. Not at restaurants. That’s a
window into the true culture of food.
COURTNEY:
You’ve been back to Israel
several times in your life. You say going
in 2011 with chefs David Slater, Jacques
Leonardi and John Besh was a turning
point for you.
ALON:
That was huge for me from a food
standpoint. Going back to Israel and seeing
that food,eating in the restaurants and people’s
homes, going to the markets ... it all just kind
of sang to me. It felt real, it felt normal, it felt
like who I was, and I realized that I was kind
of hiding all that in my cooking.
Then Emily and I stayed another couple
of days after that trip ended, and we got
engaged, which was really amazing. So of
course, Israel holds a really special place for
both of us, and it’s more than just how good
the falafel is. Her family’s Jewish history,
my family’s Jewish history, and being there
together, and of course, getting engaged
there ... Israel has been cemented into our
lives forever.
When I came back to New Orleans, I
started testing Israeli recipes on Emily at
home and then putting them on the menu
at Domenica. We would make the cabbage
salad with orange blossom vinaigrette and
tahini with lamb Bolognese and crostini for
parties at the
house.Wewould do the roasted
cauliflower in the Big Green
Egg.Westarted
doing a lot of hummus at the house, and we
got a dog and named it Ceci (Che-chi),
which means garbanzo bean in Italian.
COURTNEY:
So the menu for Shaya really
started brewing at Domenica?
“That’s one of my favorite things to do, to learn what
people cook at home for their families. That’s how
most people in the world eat. Not at restaurants. That’s
a window into the true culture of food.”
ALON:
At a point where the Israeli influence
started taking over the Domenica menu too
much, we knew it was time to open Shaya
so we had a real outlet for this food. But
I never really sat down and thought about
a menu for an Israeli restaurant until we
had signed the lease on this building. Then
I would go and sit at City Park on a park
bench with all my notes that I compiled,
pictures of our trips to Israel and notes on
the food we would eat there and I would
call my mom and say, “what was that thing
you used to make again?”
COURTNEY:
What can you share about the
foods in Israel and the things you can get
that are traditional foods to that area that
maybe make the food so special?
ALON:
It’s a melting pot of cultures. In 1948
when Israel became its own state you had
millions of people immigrating there from
Bulgaria, Poland, Russia, Greece, Morocco,
France, you name it. All of Europe and
add Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, Ethiopia,
Eastern Europe, Africa, the Persian Gulf
… all of these different places ... and they
brought their culture and cuisine with them.
Our menu reflects that. We’re not really
inventing anything we’re paying homage to
what makes these cuisines and foods so good.
COURTNEY:
What about the
pita bread at Shaya? You take
a piece of bread and rip it in
half and hand the person sitting
next to you a piece ... Were you
hesitant to serve whole pita
instead of sliced?
ALON:
There are a lot of cultures that
eat that way around the world and it’s
time to celebrate it here, get people to be
comfortable with it.
EMILY:
I think it’s like an icebreaker for
people at the table. If you aren’t comfortable
sharing the pita you aren’t going to be
comfortable sharing the dips.
ALON:
You should never eat with those
people again if you aren’t comfortable
sharing with them.
COURTNEY:
The hummus you do here,
where you have something in the hummus,
is different. Is that drawn from Israel or that
is just you?
ALON:
In Israel they serve hummus with
lots of different things.The more traditional
would be warm garbanzo beans tossed with
tahini, but they also do fava beans that
are stewed down with hardboiled egg and
for breakfast a lot of people will get their
hummus plates with pickles and red onion
and harissa and hardboiled egg. That’s our
breakfast hummus, which we have on the
menu here, too.
COURTNEY:
You went back to Israel with
chefs John Currrence, Michael Solomonov,
and Ashley Christenson for a culinary tour
the
Around the World
issue
[ABOVE] Warm Chocolate Babka with Poppy Seeds
and Halvah Ice Cream — photo by
Graham Blackall
[RIGHT] Avocado Toast — photo by
GrahamBlackall