Why Take Advantage of Restaurant Week? Look to Stella’s Southern Bistro.
By: John Malik
Jason Scholz pays about $8.00 for a whole chicken and in order for his restaurant to be successful as a business, that $8 needs to come back to him at least three times.
“I can make a whole lot of wonderful with a whole chicken,” grins Jason, the Chef/Owner of Stella’s Southern Bistro in Simpsonville, and in the restaurant business such wonderfulness isn’t going to come from a restaurant that advertises on network television during a professional football game but rather on your kid’s high school calendar.
“The restaurant business isn’t for the faint of heart. The margins are very tight, so you’ve got to treat everything that comes in your back door as if it were priceless. I’ve been in other kitchens and watched cooks throw away stuff such potato peels, parsley stems, or bacon fat. At Stella’s we’ll use those parsley stems in stock or an herb flavored oil, the potato peelings can become potato chips for staff meal and bacon fat has a ridiculous amount of uses.”
It’s that sort of coupon clipping mentality that has allowed Stella’s to thrive and Restaurant Week offers an opportunity for places such as Stella’s to cut through the national marketing of the big chains, find new customers, and delight them. It’s also the diner’s chance to try something new — a bistro in their neighborhood that may have much higher aspirations than dropping whole onions in a deep-fat fryer.
“There’s a lot of chicken being sold on Fairview Road and most of it is just fried chicken breast between a bun, so if I bought and sold plain chicken breast, I’d end up competing with the fast food guys. We use whole chickens, they costs less and it gives you a lot of flexibility and options. We’ll butcher the birds ourselves first by removing the leg quarters, and we may use those for confit (kahn-feet), or maybe we’ll make smoked sausage or a stuffing. The breast will get used for a dinner special, the winglets are staff meal, the giblets will go into our country style pate, the livers become chicken liver mousse and we’ll take the chicken carcass and scrape every bit of meat from it then we’ll make stock with the carcass and wingtips.”
I’ve spent more than a few hours working in Jason’s kitchen, and when he says he wants that chicken carcass scraped, he means it. With the tip of a paring knife every available ounce of meat and fat is scraped from the carcass. The bones are cleaned, and with the help of a few humble vegetables such as carrots, celery, parsley, and onion, they become chicken stock which later becomes the backbone for his sublime soups or sauces. The trimmings are weighed then frozen, and when he has the right quantity, they become something wonderful such as smoked chicken Andouille sausage. The fat gets rendered down by simmering it in a small amount of water until the water cooks off and the fat resembles liquid gold. Liquid chicken or duck fat make the most amazing potatoes simply by covering the potatoes with the fat and roasting them in an oven. The leg quarter will often get deboned, cleaned of any tendons, tenderized then filled with a stuffing — cornbread and vegetables this week, perhaps ground chicken and roasted peppers next week. Or the leg quarter may get cured by packing in salt, pepper and herbs. Two days later the chicken gets rinsed then slowly simmered in plenty of garlic, onion, and the aforementioned liquid fat. The end result is what the French would call confit, or preserved. The salt pulls the moisture away thereby concentrating the chicken flavor, it’s chicken flavor squared.
“We’ll never be able to spend the kind of money on advertising that some of our neighbors do. Within walking distance of Stella’s I’ve got at least a dozen fast food outlets, a few fast-casual places and some mid-price casual chains. They bombard the airwaves nightly, stuff your mailbox with coupons, and have dancing farm animals waving signs. Stella’s certainly can’t compete with that, but they sure as heck can’t compete with my kitchen crew either. And by utilizing my groceries properly we can offer an amazing meal at affordable prices. Our first time customers are always nicely surprised that for another dollar or two over what they might spend at a chain restaurant, they can come here and have an exceptional meal,” Scholz added.
Restaurant Week runs from January 10th through January 20th.
Stella’s Bistro is located at 684-C Fairview Road in Simpsonville. www.stellasbistro.com
John Malik is an award winning chef in Greenville, SC. Along with his wife Amy, they owned and operated 33 Liberty Restaurant from 2001 until 2008. Following that he was Excecutive Chef at two upscale retirement communities in the Greenville area. John has a BA in English from Southeastern Louisiana University and has written for Smithsonian Air & Space, Saveur, The Greenville News, Greenville Journal, e-Gullet and has been featured in Southern Living, Bon Appetit and Chile Pepper magazines. John holds the whimsical title of Kingsford Charcoal Flame Master and was named Who’s Who in America Barbecue for his sophisticated take on traditional smoking. While 33 Liberty was open John hosted the entire team of Michelin’s “Red Guide” inspectors for a private meal and lived to talk about it.
John has made numerous guest chef appearances including the Food Network, Fox & Friends, the International Food & Wine festival at Disney World, Great Chefs of the South (Beaufort, SC) “Fixin to Eat” a Salute to Southern Chefs (Paso Robles, CA), the Epicurean Evening (Los Angeles, CA) Charlotte Shout! (Charlotte, NC), Drager’s (San Mateo, CA) and Greenville’s own Euphoria.
While important to remember that he IS a serious chef, most recently, after undergoing major knee surgery, John let the best of his cabin fever get to him and imagined himself as the mayor of his Upstate city…and he was kind enough to drag our editor on his fictional written journey before pondering who has the state’s BEST pimento cheese.
PHOTO CREDIT: Stella’s Southern Bistro
