Interview Hugh Amano of Food On The Dole

Food people love talking about food. And, fortunately, from analyzing where the best tacos are to lamenting the food truck law, there’s a lot to talk about in Chicago. As a Chef himself and blogger at Food On The Dole, Hugh Amano has surely done more than his share of talking about food. Still, the guy wants more. That’s why he’s launching the Food On The Dole Salon, where guests can make food together and then hang out and talk about food. The A.V. Club caught up with Amano to talk about the first salon March 10, his history with food, and just how he’s going to keep a conversation on track.

The A.V. Club: Let’s get the big question out of the way first: What’s your history with food?

Hugh Amano: I went to the New England Culinary Institute in Vermont, and then I worked here and there. I’ve been in Chicago for about seven years. I was working at Uncommon Ground on Devon as the Chef De Cuisine, and then in December 2008, I was laid off due to cutbacks.

So, I was unemployed and had a bachelor’s in English, and was interested in food, so even though I had no idea what a blog really was, I decided to start one. I had an image in my head of people who blogged and the food blogs out there, like, “I made this cupcake today. Here’s a picture of it,” and I wanted to get away from that for myself and so I could keep writing. I wanted to show people what I was doing without a lot of cash. My ethic has always been to try and keep food down to earth. I respect and admire the Alineas of the world, but that’s not my bag. So, that’s Food On The Dole.

AVC: Are you working now?

HA: A while back, I got a job teaching at The Chopping Block. It’s cool for me, because I’ve always wanted to get people interested in food and get them to understand it.

I have a friend who does underground dinners through X-Marx, and we’ve done some dinners together. Teaching has been cool, but it’s a little different than what I want to be doing.

AVC: How does the salon fit into that?

HA: The salon is going for a much deeper connection. It’s tough to describe, and I know it’s somewhat ambiguous on that blog post, but I’m leaving it like that because I want it to be something that can be shaped. I’m just starting this, and who knows what’s going to come or what type of people will show up.

It’s going to be somewhere between an underground dinner and a cooking class—both of those things and neither of those things, all at once. I don’t want people to have no interest in food and be interested only in being social. I want people to come in with something to say and contribute.

AVC: Contribute what?

HA: The most interesting things to me foodwise aren’t what people are doing in restaurants but rather what real people are doing. That’s what I’ve learned the most at Chopping Block. It’s more real to me, and that’s the salon. I want to give people a place, which I provide, to talk about this stuff. I’m not going to teach recipes, but rather ideas and concepts. We can let the evening kind of go from there. There’s no time limit. I don’t care if we end up staying up all night until 6 a.m. drinking whiskey and talking about food. That’s fine with me.

AVC: So, like food ethics? Food politics?  

HA: If it comes up, totally. In the classes I teach now, things kind of stop at a certain place. I want this to be a forum where anything goes. “Is this egg organic?” “Where did you get this chicken?” I want anything to be welcome.

People come together over this sort of food. In my experience working in restaurants, the connection to food wasn’t there, and the roundtable thing over well-prepared food doesn’t exist in the capacity that I want it to, so I’m trying to create it in whatever small form. I want different people from every corner of life. Everyone has something to contribute, even if it’s someone who didn’t know chickens were living creatures. That actually might be one of the more important people to be at a salon.

AVC: Are you worried at all that you’re just going to get a bunch of like-minded people talking about like-minded opinions? Can you avoid that somehow?

HA: Yeah, like people watching a Michael Moore movie. I’m not sure how to avoid it. The salon’s in its infancy, and I don’t know if that’s going to happen. I don’t want to exclude anyone.

One thing I do know is that I don’t want groups of six people to come. They’ll just talk about what they always talk about. I want a certain level of discomfort there, so you’re not just saying something your buddy will back up every time.

AVC: Are you going to have other guest salon hosts?

HA: I don’t know. I think that’s kind of far out. Right now, I’m shaping it and I want it to be my baby. I want to establish it as that. I’m totally open to having people come and guest chef it, but because it’s so small and intimate right now, I can’t see that happening really soon.

Really, it’s not so much the technique or credentials that I’m selling to people by having this, but more the venue. I feel like, because it’s my house, I need to maintain a certain sense of control over that. At the same time, I can recognize when certain people are better at something than I am. A friend of mine who knows butchery really well could come and do that sort of thing. I’d like to have one about cocktails, just have someone really knowledgeable come and at least be a guest.

I don’t want it to just be six of my chef friends sitting around talking about kitchens, though.

AVC: How are you feeling about turnout?

HA: It’s always kind of hard for me. A couple of years ago I did private cheffing and I put an ad on Craigslist for Valentine’s Day. Daily Candy wrote an article just about me doing that, and you just always kind of expect the calls and e-mails to come flooding in. I got about 12, and I was expecting way more.

I think with this a lot of people want to see that I’m not a serial killer inviting them into my house from the Internet. I did a few potlucks with Food On The Dole and about 12 people came to the first one, and then a lot more people came the second time. They wanted to see that there was no body count.

I’m realizing, I think, that it’s a bit of a lofty idea or a seed. I’m going to grow it and get people to come out. I think word of mouth is a big deal for this. You know, underground dinners are done to death, but there’s still an element of certain people wanting a certain level of street cred, like going to something their friend didn’t know about.

AVC: I was reading your blog, and you have a post where you write about plucking and butchering a goose, which was pretty gross. How did that come about?

HA: It was pretty intense. My friend had them in his fridge and they looked like they were asleep. They’re so soft. When I was plunging my hand into it, it was warmer the farther I got in. Tearing all those feathers out at the beginning is a little weird, but the more you do it, the more you get used to it.

All the while, though, I was holding it in reverence. The thing is that I respect the animal, but it becomes like if you had a big bowl of fennel and you’re separating roots, fronds, and breaking it down into usable bits.

I wanted people to feel something from that post, some kind of reaction. The last picture I posted, a lot of people saw it as these two decapitated geese heads, but I just thought it was a really beautiful picture.

AVC: There’s this theory that if you eat meat, you should kill an animal and butcher it from start to finish at least once, so you really know what it means. Do you know that theory?

HA: I totally agree with that. When I was at Uncommon Grounds, we took a group of some cooks and waiters to Gunthorp Farms in Indiana and did the tour and everything. Then we went to the kill room, and those who were willing were allowed to kill a chicken. Some people were like, “Oh, I can’t do it,” but the rest who did, like… I had this grill cook who said, “I’ll never, even at the peak of service on Friday night, mess up any sort of meat ever again.” Like, I just took this thing’s life. It’s reverence for the beast.

I think there’s a difference even when you’re watching something being butchered and actually killing something. If it’s already gutted and cold, you don’t get the same reaction. You don’t hear it. Especially with a pig. They make all kinds of noise when they’re being slaughtered.

I guess the whole thing is that it’s supposed to make you have that kind of “ugh” feeling if you do it, so maybe that stop at McDonald’s becomes a little more difficult in the future. Maybe you’ll think about it a little more.