CRESCENT PEOPLE: Chef Craig Deihl’s Favorites

”Dry-aged” and “soft shell” are two of the terms you’ll hear frequently around Chef Craig Deihl’s kitchen at Cypress this time of year…and for good reason. If you haven’t tasted either, you’re doing your mouth an injustice. Chef Deihl learned part of this lesson himself when he arrived in Charleston years ago.

Aside from what he’s doing in his own kitchen, he’s pretty quick to comment on what other people are doing in their kitchens, too, and he has pretty high praise for what some of his neighboring chefs are putting out.

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You’re doing your own dry age, too. Aren’t you?

We’re doing our own dry aged beef, yeah.  Unbelievable stuff.

For people who have not had dry aged beef, they don’t know what they’re missing.

No, they don’t.  And the thing that they don’t get…they think you’re doing dry aged beef to make it dry and, actually, you’re dry aging beef to make it more tender so that the enzymes break it down. And the reason that they used to do it back in the older days is because beef walked around.  It moved and when you let the enzymes break it down, the muscles actually break down from the inside out, so back in 1900, when you didn’t have good proper dental, the meat would break down…I mean, did they also have proper refrigeration?  No.  Did anybody get sick and die?  Well, they might have gotten a little sick, but that’s how they lived back then.  This is meat. The meat started to ferment and nobody was dying.  It just had a more sour flavor to it.  We do all this stuff under refrigeration.  It’s absolutely fascinating, what we’re doing.

What’s your favorite thing on your menu right now? 

Spring is my favorite time of year, it’s the soft-shell crabs.

Soft-shell season really got off to a great start this year.

Oh, yeah, I mean…that is my #1 favorite ingredient.  I would wait all year long for it, and it’s really one of those luxury ingredients.  I don’t want to serve soft shell crabs if they’re not right here on the coast.  I never had a soft shell crab until I loved to Charleston.  The very first night that I worked at Magnolias, they were running soft shell crabs at the end of August, the beginning of September.  I was like, “You want to fill me in on that whole soft shell crab thing?”  He goes “I’m just going to cook you one.”  And he cooked me one up, and I ate it, and I was like, “So you eat the whole thing?”  “Yeah, you eat the whole thing.”

Mmm-hmm.

I was like “Oh my God. That is unbelievable.”   Why does anybody not want to eat soft shell crabs?

A question that can never be answered.

So after that point, it became very clear that in the Fall, we get them for a week and a half to two weeks, if we’re lucky. During the Spring, we might get them for a whole month.  And that’s just one of those ingredients that, when you can get it, you buy as many of them as you can and try to special them out in every way possible with great spring peas and onions and asparagus and things of that nature.  It’s definitely got to be my favorite ingredient of the entire year to play with.

What’s your favorite thing on somebody else’s menu right now?

On somebody else’s menu?

Yeah.  You don’t have to say WHO it is. You can just say WHAT it is.

I can definitely say that probably one of my favorite dishes in all of Charleston is the chicken liver pate that they do over at FIG.  I would eat that every single…I would eat a slice of that every day.  I really would.  I think that is one of the single best dishes I’ve had in Charleston.  And, as much as I want to replicate it, that’s his (Mike Lata) signature thing.  I really don’t play around with liver pate because of that reason.  If you can’t make it as good or better than somebody else, you don’t try.  I’m all for experimentation and trying, I just haven’t figured that one out.

Well, you’ve had a good year and this is not your first rodeo, but you are again a finalist for James Beard Best Chef Southeast.  And congratulations on that.

Thank you.

What does that mean to you and your restaurant and your team in the kitchen?

Well, first and foremost, it means, to me, it really does have that sense of accomplishment that all this hard work that we put into our food…somebody appreciates it.  Because sometimes, at the end of the day, I wonder, really, if we put all this work into breaking down an entire pig or we put all this work into getting local vegetables and producing everything we possibly can while trying not to waste any of it, is anybody paying attention to that?  I think after eleven years of working hard at trying to provide quality ingredients, it’s…we’re reaping our rewards for staying true to what it is that we want to do.  And we’re really not doing it for popularity.  I said, “I want to do it until people catch on that we’re doing a really great job at it.”  That’s when we’ll start to make money.  I’ve stuck it out for eleven years trying to make money because it is such a big restaurant and now that we’re starting to put butts in the seats, it’s starting to make a difference.  I attribute it to having…I have ideas but without having a great staff, or a great sense of support behind me, I’d just be another arrogant, yelling, cussing, chef that sometimes you wonder why anybody ever heard of him type scenario.

Is it arrogance or is it confidence?

I like the verbiage, “I’m not conceited. I’m convinced.”  You know, I really…I believe cooking really is one of those…you either have it, it’s either in you or it isn’t.  And if it isn’t in you, you know you love it and you’re always trying to get it.  But when it’s in you…it’s like one of Jedi-type scenarios.  It so naturally flows through you that it’s not difficult.

It’s not something most people could ever do.  They may be good enough to not embarrass themselves when they’re cooking for family or friends, but they would never serve it outside of those circles. There is a certain amount of admiration in your creativity.

Well, sometimes it’s a curse in disguise because, even when you’re night cooking at the restaurant, you find yourself at home, over the stove, cooking and your wife is like, “You cooked all day long and you still come home and you still cook.  I don’t know how or why.”  Sometimes, it’s usually…I’ll say to my wife, “Go sit down, I’ll do this, it’s so easy.”  She’s like, “I know it’s so easy for you…”

When you’re not cooking, where do you go?

Well, we have a 4 year old daughter, so going out the past 4 years has been a challenge. We found some really good family dining options, and truth be told, in West Ashley, we dine at the Glass Onion quite a bit. It’s more of a casual, family-oriented space, but they cook with great ingredients from local producers.  You can taste the quality when you bite into the product, and I love that.  Another location… after 11 years, I’ve finally been to Bowens Island, and I’m in love with that place, now.  Because it’s good old-fashioned fish fry or good old-fashioned oysters cooked the way you cook them when you want an oyster roast.

• Follow Chef Deihl on Twitter at @cdeihl.
• Visit his personal website at therealdeihlchef.com.
• Visit Cypress online HERE.

Stay Tuned for the final segment, Part 4, next week. For Part 1, click HERE. For Part 2, click HERE.