LITTLE ROCK — Five-year-old Fiona can’t wait for duck season. That’s when she gets to help her dad, Capital Hotel executive chef Lee Richardson, pluck the ducks he brings home from hunting near Stuttgart. The little girl yanks feathers from the birds, then observes closely as Richardson butchers the wildfowl, and she identifies its internal organs and often grabs the duck’s heart or tongue before dashing into the house to show her mother.
“She can tell the difference between a mallard and a drake,” her mother, Martha Richardson, says. “It’s hysterical. When she and Lee get to spend time together, it’s really cute. He teaches her those kinds of things and she eats it up.”
She does, indeed, Richardson agrees. And he delights in spending time with his daughter, doing things solely for her pleasure. For example, when he makes duck gumbo, he’ll include the duck’s “flippers” in the mix so Fiona can find them.
“She loves them. She’ll carry them around.”
Like father, like daughter. Fiona, who longs for the day she can go hunting with her dad, loves cooking and has not only learned about preparing freshly killed duck but also how to make ravioli from scratch. Richardson learned about wild game and cooking from his father and paternal grandparents while growing up in New Orleans.
Easily Richardson’s biggest fan, Fiona symbolizes much of what the acclaimed chef aspires to accomplish at the Capital Hotel in Little Rock - appreciation for handcrafted, artisan food made with locally produced ingredients that pays tribute to Arkansas and Southern culture and tradition in fresh, modern and sometimes startling ways.
Pig’s knuckle salad with red-eye vinaigrette, Gulf shrimp and pinto beans, seared foie gras with Arkansas black apples - all these dishes now or in the past have appeared on the menu of the elegant Ashley’s Restaurant, which during Richardson’s tenure has earned the AAA Four-Diamond Award. Also, instead of serving the expected caviar or chocolate-covered strawberries with champagne to guests in their rooms, the Capital Hotel surprises them with handmade, freshly fried melt-in-your-mouth pork rinds.
“I love prince-and-pauper kinds of combinations. A fatty pork rind is the perfect complement to a crisp champagne,” Richardson says, explaining that pork rinds are a “real important part of culture. Around this time of year would be hog-killing time and people would kill hogs in their back yards and make cracklings in a big iron pot.”
But today’s pork rinds, like most foods, have “gone industrial,” he says. “They’re produced industrially out of industrially grown pork.” In contrast, the Capital’s pork rinds - the result of a 72-hour braising, drying and frying process - are from the skin of “heritage hogs that are raised in a much more artisan manner. The pork rinds are done by us by hand,” Richardson says. “To me, that’s bringing back a bit of that culture.”
CULTURAL EVOLUTION
Richardson, 42, has refined his concept of food and tradition into what he calls “New Americana,” defined on his website (newamericanacuisine.com) as “a celebration of our cultural past and an exploration of our cultural evolution. ... New Americana implies the creation or emergence of something new that is tied to a history, geographical region and culture.”
What that means for Richardson, the Capital Hotel and Arkansas is the creation of modern food using homegrown produce and meats - Arkansas black apples, pecans, sweet potatoes, crawfish, catfish, heirloom pork and chicken, rice, goat cheese, collard greens, sorghum, stone-ground flour and meal - that are rooted in traditional cooking but kicked up several notches through unique combinations, ingredients and presentation.
Richardson can’t remember a time he wasn’t deeply interested in every aspect of food - “I’ve always been an eager diner” beginning in childhood. His biggest influences were his father (Leo II) and paternal grandparents, Leo and Maggie Richardson.
“My grandmother’s food is still the most heartwarming, soulful, deeply flavored food that I’ve ever had. My grandfather took care of the meats and he worked the barbecue pit outside. My father is very creative and experimental in the kitchen.”
While family lore has it that he was cracking eggs into a bowl as he sat on the kitchen floor at age 2, Richardson says he was 12 when he actually cooked his first dish: sauteed duck breast with a fruit-based Cumberland sauce.
“At that time, I was pretty tied to recipes. I didn’t deviate much. It was either duck breast or some traditional cuts of venison,” he says. His grandfather taught him to hunt and he learned much about cooking freshly killed game during stays at hunting camps.
“They would cut venison hearts up into chunks and just fry them. It was just fantastic. I would kind of do the same at home.” In addition to his family influences, Richardson says, he was fortunate to live in New Orleans, absolute heaven for any food lover. “I was always wanting to try something new and then having the opportunity to dine in a lot of places. I was exposed to an incredible variety of food.”
Despite his passion for delicious, exquisitely prepared food, Richardson didn’t start out seeking a culinary career, but instead chose to study psychology at the University of Colorado. “I wasn’t the most enthusiastic student. I didn’t really want to be in school,” he says, explaining that his interest in psychology as a vocation waned when he realized it would take at least eight more years of study after undergraduate school to reach the professional level he desired. He turned his attention to cooking for his friends.
“I would bring jambalaya, gumbo and red beans and rice to keg parties. It certainly made me popular, but in a way where I could hide behind the food at the same time. I think that was kind of captivating for me.”
STILL WATERS
The spicy Louisiana dishes were a foil to his quiet personality and demeanor, just as his creations today may seem to those who don’t know him.
Richardson’s right hand at the Capital Hotel - executive sous chef Jeffrey Ferrell - says of the chef’s natural reserve: “What people don’t understand is that he’s thinking about everything he sees. ... When he meets new people and talks about what he foresees for himself and the restaurant, I stop what I’m doing and eavesdrop because it allows me a new perspective on his thought process.
“Lee’s reputation in the culinary world is truly starting to blossom. He’s known as someone who has very high standards,” Ferrell says. “Slowly, he’s becoming, on the national level, someone to take seriously in the industry.”
Richardson’s professional visibility has risen steadily since he played a role in transforming the Capital Hotel, designing its five state-of-the-art kitchens during a more than $24-million renovation project that came to fruition four years ago. The renovated hotel, Ashley’s and Capital Grill opened the Monday before Thanksgiving in 2007.
Earlier this year, Richardson was voted “Best New Chef of the Midwest” in Food and Wine magazine’s “people’s best” contest, receiving 40 percent of the votes, and he was a 2011 James Beard Foundation Award semifinalist. On Oct. 15, he and his staff created and served a New Americana meal for a sold-out Outstanding in the Field event; the touring culinary program’s mission, like Richardson’s, is to honor local farmers and other producers while reconnecting diners with their food heritage.
Outstanding in the Field was held literally in a field at Scott Heritage Farm. The menu included Arkansas foods and Richardson’s take on classic Southern dishes, starting with pimento cheese and fresh-baked crackers. Richardson served sorghum-roasted Aylesbury duck from P. Allen Smith’s Moss Mountain Farm with his signature rice grits (created by coarsely grinding Arkansas rice), black apples and muscadine glaze, among other dishes.
FOCUSED ON FOOD, TRADITION
Richardson began earning his place in the industry immediately after returning to New Orleans upon graduating from college. Instead of attending a culinary school,he chose to learn through apprenticeships with established chefs at some of New Orleans’ best restaurants. His early years included stints at Emeril Lagasse’s French Quarter restaurant, NOLA; Graham’s Restaurant under chef John Graham; and Peristyle under chef Anne Kearney. In 2005, when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, he was chef de cuisine at John Besh’s Restaurant August.
In 2006, he was offered the Capital Hotel chef position, where he could design his kitchen from the ground up and assemble a culinary staff of creative people who share his vision.
“We were sad to lose him from New Orleans, but so happy for him and his family and what he’s been able to do there in Little Rock,” former mentor Besh says. “He instantly created a world-class restaurant. He’s been focused on doing that his entire career. He’s retained that focus on the food and genuinely enjoys making people happy. That’s the reason he’s such a big hit and success.”
“Lee has consistently blown my mind with his approach and consistency with local food, and his patience and dedication to local farmers,” says Jody Hardin, president of Certified Arkansas Farmers Market in North Little Rock, which requires participants to certify everything they sell is produced on their farms. Hardin supplies grass-fed pork, vegetables, sorghum and other foods that Richardson’s chefs and other culinary staff use in creating cuisine for Ashley’s and the homier Capital Grill on the opposite side of the historic hotel’s lobby.
Hardin met Richardson when the chef first visited the River Market’s Ottenheimer Hall in search of locally produced ingredients while interviewing for the Capital Hotel job.
“I was really fired up about building the local food movement and he was looking for local food sources,” Hardin says.
After his visit to Little Rock, Richardson revealed his enthusiasm for the culinary possibilities in Arkansas in a follow-up e-mail to Capital Hotel marketing director Chuck Magill: “The most important culinary movement in America is about ... sustainable agriculture and recapturing the wholesome and vibrant products from which today’s tasteless results of mass production have been born. Arkansas is the Natural State. It’s the perfect place topush this movement.”
FAMILY MAN
Richardson wasn’t keen on Little Rock or Arkansas at first, Magill recalls. But after seeing what the city had to offer his family and what the state’s farmers and growers could provide him in terms of ingredients, Richardson decided Little Rock would be a good place to pursue his vision of creating new dishes with old-time connections and raise a family.
“He’s a very quiet, reticent fellow but in fact, he’s really sweet and he’s a very devoted family man,” Magill says. “He’s a what-you-see-is-whatyou-get kind of guy.”
Richardson’s wife agrees.
“He is what he presents himself to be,” Martha Richardson says. “He’s kind of quiet and doesn’t really talk a lot. But he’s funny. Fiona and me, we’re always making things up and being silly and he likes to laugh a lot.”
While he spearheads the Capital Hotel’s entire food operation, Richardson reveals something he says most people are surprised to learn: He does very little cooking.
“A lot of people don’t realize the degree to which my role here is guidance and direction. If I were running all of it, I would have exploded or imploded years ago.” His culinarians are handpicked, chosen from the people whose paths he has crossed during his career or recruited from small schools such as the New England Culinary Institute in Montpelier, Vt.
“Until we opened, I had envisioned myself actually cooking a lot more specific things, but really I opened two restaurants in one day. One is seven days a week all day, the other is still seven days a week, three meals a day,” Richardson says. “The only way for me to keep a handle on the whole thing was actually to not do any of that.”
However, he says, “I’m involved. I didn’t put the stuff in the pan, but I chose who did.”
Ferrell says Richardson has created a nurturing creative atmosphere for his chefs. “The culture here is really healthy and it’s a great place to work. The guy has been working tirelessly for 41/2 years to make this place what it is. I see my role to take the pressure off him.”
Richardson’s 10- to 12-hour workdays don’t give him much time off, but what he does have he spends with his family, taking the occasional hunting trip and doing what he says is “business/pleasure,”usually some kind of food event benefiting charity.
His family visits him at the hotel and often dines there. Last year, Fiona and her friends celebrated her birthday by making ravioli and cupcakes in Ashley’s kitchen, then sitting in the dining room - wearing fairy wings - to eat their creations.
“I can’t say enough about what sort of family man he is and how driven he is, not just to achieve culinary success but to be a good father and husband,” Besh says.
Thanksgiving always finds Richardson, Martha, Fiona and his parents at Ashley’s; this year will be no exception. While he has to spend more time than usual overseeing the kitchen operation, he says, ‘I hope to be able to leave the kitchen a little early to sit down with them.”
The holiday menu, naturally, has family connections.Among the dishes to be served are Smoky Heirloom Turkey Breast, Haricot Vert with Brown Rice and Cranberry, Braised Heirloom Turkey, Sausage Pecan dressing and Beaujolais Gravy with Sweet Potatoes Brulee. Dessert? Pumpkin Tart with Maple Ice Cream.
“The turkey is actually two different courses, white meat, followed by dark. I have incorporated my grandmother’s dressing and gravy as a means of carrying on my family’s traditions and, of course, these were the items that really inspired me to cook,” Richardson says. “I could never improve upon my grandmother’s Thanksgiving table.”SELF PORTRAIT Lee Richardson
DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH Nov. 11, 1969, New Orleans.
ONE FOOD I ABSOLUTELY WON’T EAT IS Calf’s liver.
MY FAVORITE COMFORT FOOD IS Red beans and rice.
MY LEAST FAVORITE FOOD IS Mass-produced, processed and genetically engineered.
MY IDEAL VACATION WOULD BE Getting lost in the French countryside.
GUESTS AT MY FANTASY DINNER PARTY WOULD BE My closest friends from different phases of my life and those who have already passed on.
ONE THING ONLY MY FRIENDS KNOW ABOUT ME IS I don’t really get to cook much.
MY FAVORITE COOKING UTENSIL IS A straightended wooden spoon, a spatula really. If you’re not cooking with wood, you’re not cooking.
THE LAST BOOK I READ WAS The Help.
MY FAVORITE MOVIE IS Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
I CAN’T RESIST Sweetbreads.
MY GUILTY PLEASURE FOOD IS Cheetos.
ONE WORD TO SUM ME UP Deliberate.
High Profile, Pages 43 on 11/20/2011