Wanted: Experienced chef for local brewery/gastropub. Must be someone with a creative streak, who has run large-scale, iconic restaurants, and who loves to cook and inspire others. The ideal candidate would be a longtime local, well-versed in the concepts of beer-making and the art of pairing great food with great hand-crafted brew. Call Alvarado Street Brewery & Grill.
For three years J.C. Hill, the co-owner and brewer at Alvarado Street Brewery & Grill, has dreamed of filling such a help-wanted ad with the ideal candidate to run the kitchen at his Old Monterey shrine to suds. He’s hired quality chefs since opening the doors in May of 2014, but never someone to take things to the next level.
Now he’s found that chef, and it’s Brandon Miller, who brought two local restaurants to prominence, starting with Stokes (in the historic adobe that now houses Restaurant 1833) and then Mundaka (the Spanish tapas joint that recently turned into Mexico-slanted Pescadero).
Call it fate, or a weird culinary cosmic convergence, but Miller began looking for other opportunities following the Pescadero switchover — at the same time ASBG chef Jeremiah Tydeman was leaving for Carmel’s Seventh & Dolores.
Miller had resumed his passion for home brewing about a year ago, and has been walking in Hill’s door every few weeks, bumming strange yeast varietals or rare hops for his own amateur brewing operation.
“We would spend a lot of time talking about beer, and I’ve tasted a lot of his beer,” Hill said. “It’s really good.”
He never imagined that Miller would be available, or even interested, in running ASBG.
“Jeremiah told me he had a great opportunity to grow as a chef, and I was happy for him,” Hill said.
But with summer season around the corner, Hill began to panic. So he called marketing specialist Marci Bracco for recommendations. She told him about the perfect candidate — her husband Brandon. “It was spooky. I could immediately see that perfect fit,” Hill said. “We’ve never had a chef with his background and his accomplishments, it brings a whole another level of experience we’ve never had. His skill, and also his passion for beer.”
Before his 13-year stint as executive chef at Stokes, Miller worked in San Francisco at Lulu Bis and also at Campton Place. Before that he learned from famed chefs Michael Chiarello (Tra Vigne in St. Helena) and Cindy Pawlcyn (Fog City Diner).
“This is kind of my jam, really,” Miller said. “Big restaurants with a lot going on.”
Last year Miller, 53, dusted off his old beer-making equipment (“because guys never throw anything away”) but he found that things had changed quite a bit since has last brewed a decade ago.
So he began hanging out with Hill, Peter B’s Brewpub brewer Justin Rivard and at Bottoms Up, a home-brew store in Seaside.
“It’s really serendipitous that this happened,” he said. “I’m psyched to get started.”
Miller will start sometime after the Fourth of July, and will ease into menu changes. “This place is a beast, like jumping on a high-speed train,” he said. “I have to get used to the equipment, the staff, everything.”
But sitting in the brewhouse on this day, the ideas pour out of his brain anyway: “I want to use the smoker, maybe some smoked cod cakes with squid ink aioli, smoked vegetables. Definitely a charcuterie program, incorporate beer into the menu. Want to do our own tasso ham, and I have an idea around octopus ‘salame.’ Oh, and chicken-truffle sausage.”
He didn’t stop there. With his new boss looking on, Miller waxed poetic about polenta sticks with Maytag bleu cheese and steamed beer gastrique, wild boar meatball sliders, stuffed potato skins poutine, housemade hot dogs with IPA mustard. And then he dropped the mic with hand-held Mennonite meat pies with cabbage, something he dug up as an amateur food historian.
He took a breath and Hill broke into a huge smile.
“This is music to my ears,” he said. “God, this is awesome.”
The beer is already awesome. Hill and his crew have earned quite a reputation in three years, developing a beer program that incorporates many styles. The Minesweeper California ale won a silver medal at the 2015 Los Angeles International Beer Competition, and the much-hyped (and hopped) Mai Tai PA earned a coveted gold medal at the 2015 Great American Beer Festival (the Oscars of beer-making).
In April of 2016, Hill opened a production brewery in Salinas, allowing ASBG to provide draft beer to other restaurants. He plans to eventually start a food program there as well, with Miller at the helm.
“When I heard he was available it was like, whoa, are you kidding me?” Hill said. “I can’t wait to start working together.”
That will happen in a few weeks, and Hill can shout something that no quality craft brewer has ever shouted: “It’s Miller time!”
Creative youth movement
Young chefs of both sexes have taken high-profile chef jobs of late, injecting creative ideas into the mix. In the last few weeks I’ve eaten at Sticks at Spanish Bay, where chef Anna Marie Bayonito has added menu items such as smoked trout rillettes and butternut squash spaetzle. Over at Carmel’s il grillo, young chef Quinn Thompson puts out cutting-edge food like Wagyu beef cheeks with polenta and green tomato sugo.
The highlight came two weekends ago when rising star chefs Klaus Georis and David Baron combined efforts once again for their Can I Live? culinary pop-up series. This time they unleashed a wildly creative and laid-back lunch at the Georis tasting room in Carmel Valley. Served European style, the 10-course menu lasted four hours, with food paired with Georis wines.
The best part? No finickiness allowed. No catering to allergies or intolerances or vegetarians. “If you don’t like a course, just skip it,” said Georis. “There’s another course coming.”
Georis spent time at chef de partie at Quince in San Francisco, and the Carmel High grad is now home and plans more pop-ups.
Baron is part of the culinary team about to open Salt Wood Kitchen and Oysterette in Marina.
“Can I Live? is more an expression of us being able to get creative in the kitchen how we want,” he said.
Among the array of dishes were: roasted clam with kimchi butter; lamb tartare with grilled purslane and toasted quinoa; and spring pea chawanmushi.
Watch here for more information on these creative feasts, or check them out on Facebook at facebook.com/canilivedinners.
Mike Hale can be reached at thegrubhunter@att.net. Listen to his weekly radio show “Food Fodder” at noon Wednesdays on KRML, 102.1 FM.
