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Initially, Brian Dunsmoor and Kris Tominaga were key players in a very Venetian story. The chefs met while cooking at Joe’s Restaurant on Abbot Kinney Boulevard. Dunsmoor was the daytime sous chef, and Tominaga handled the nighttime shift. They bonded on First Mondays, becoming friends and bridging culinary philosophies when they ate with the kitchen crew at different restaurants on the first Monday of each month. They eventually joined forces, presiding over the kitchen at an extended Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing pop-up at Capri, fusing Dunsmoor’s comforting Georgia born approach with Tominaga’s seasonal California craftsmanship. This fall, the duo made their concept permanent with the opening of The Hart + The Hunter at Palihotel in Los Angeles. On November 27, I met with Dunsmoor and Tominaga, who shared culinary insights.

Josh Lurie: What’s the biggest challenge for you in running a restaurant?

Brian Dunsmoor: Just being able to do everything you want to do in the amount of time that’s given to you. There are only so many hours in each day. You definitely feel it more when you’re here all the time.

Kris Tominaga: Also, in running a restaurant, there are different things you have to focus on, or not even focus, because I think we’ve set it up where it’s pretty easy. The whole business side is new to us. We know most of it, but there are new things to learn. Balancing that, where you can still put the same attention to the food and keep the business running. Kind of that thing of not falling into the owner syndrome and focusing too much on the financial aspect of it, never letting that sacrifice the product while still being able to run a business and stay afloat is a challenge.

Josh Lurie: Do you have such a thing as a top selling dish?

Brian Dunsmoor: Biscuits, trout, cracklins.

Kris Tominaga: Kale. Most of the menu is pretty well balanced.

Brian Dunsmoor: Those are ones that everybody orders because they’re a little bit smaller and a good way to start the meal. Once you get further down the menu, it starts to spread out a bit.

Kris Tominaga: Those are also dishes that stuck with us from Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing.

Josh Lurie: What about your very first night cooking in a restaurant? Where was that for each of you, and what do you remember about it?

Brian Dunsmoor: I can’t remember the first time, I only remember a night in the very beginning. [At 5 & 10 in Athens, Georgia] we did this smoked duck carpaccio…we’d shave it on a slicer and plate it, and I grabbed just a frozen duck breast out of the freezer and I ended up sending it out. I thought I was going to get fucking stabbed in the throat. It was pretty bad. It could have happened to anybody, but it was pretty embarrassing, especially when Hugh [Acheson] yells at you, you know you’ve fucked up big time, because he’s pretty chilled out. That was a good one. I’m surprised I didn’t get fired for that.

Kris Tominaga: My first night in a kitchen, I was working at this shitty Italian restaurant. It was a neighborhood Italian restaurant that did pizzas and spaghetti with your choice of meat sauce or marinara, and 18 different types of pastas. I was originally working up front. I was in college. I liked the idea of restaurants, I didn’t know I was going to be a chef, but I was working up front and somebody wasn’t there, so I got asked to go in back. It was a two-person line, and there was the guy who cooked everything and there was the prep cook that cut the vegetables and would give it to them for that dish. I just got thrown back on a weekend night. It was super busy. Maybe it was because it was my first time in the kitchen, but it seemed like everything was going so fast. Everything was so fast paced, because it was a turn and burn Italian, so it was just pans being thrown, a dirty kitchen too, towels on the ground.

Josh Lurie: Was this in Los Angeles?

Kris Tominaga: No, this wasn’t Los Angeles. This was in Chico, where I went to college. The pace of it is what got me, and from there, it was like, “This is what I want to do.” It’s almost like a drug, that whole pace and moving around so much and communicating. There’s a certain high. This is fun.

Josh Lurie: What do you look for when you’re hiring somebody to work in the kitchen?

Brian Dunsmoor: Somebody who’s going to get along with everybody, and is ambitious. Anybody can be trained. If you get somebody in here who’s experienced and think they can do it all, it’s just a hassle. I’d rather just hire people we know will fit with the crew. It’s like a family here, not just a bunch of employees. That’s super important to us.

Josh Lurie: Front of house is the same?

Kris Tominaga: Absolutely. Ethics and morals. Sometimes we refer to it as cooks with a conscience. If you know right and wrong, you’re not really going to mess up, because if you mess up and recognize it, you can teach somebody how to fix it, or if you have to do it again, then it will come out fine. When people try to sneak things in and take shortcuts, that’s when things go wrong. It doesn’t matter how much you know about food. If you don’t see the right and wrong, it doesn’t work.

Josh Lurie: Is there anything you don’t enjoy eating?

Brian Dunsmoor: Bananas. That’s the only thing I don’t eat. It’s a childhood thing. I think my parents fed me way too many when I was a little kid.

Kris Tominaga: I’ll eat anything. If it’s a food item and it’s intended for food, there’s got to be a right way to eat it. A lot of times there are ingredients people don’t like because they haven’t had it done well. Banana’s something different.

Brian Dunsmoor: I think if I ate a banana – I haven’t eaten a banana in like 25 years – but if I ate a banana, I’d probably love it. I just can’t bring myself to do it.

Josh Lurie: Are the two of you able to maintain any sense of balance in your life?

Kris Tominaga: Yeah. We still hang out with our girlfriends.

Brian Dunsmoor: That’s what our days off really are.

Kris Tominaga: We still go get drinks with our friends. It’s more that it’s balanced differently. If you can’t figure out a way to balance your life and still enjoy life, you’re just going to be miserable and be burnt out. It’s important to find ways to do that.

Josh Lurie: Would you say that either of you have had any mentors over the years?

Brian Dunsmoor: For me, Hugh Acheson. He was definitely the most influential in every way, the way he runs the kitchen, food style, sourcing.

Kris Tominaga: The biggest influence on me was this guy James Hackney. He was the chef de cuisine at L’Espalier. His self discipline and perspective on food was very influential – not that I do the same kind of food as him – but it’s more the concepts and ideas.

Josh Lurie: Finally, what would it take for you to consider The Hart + the Hunter a success?

Kris Tominaga: For us, there are a lot of things that could quantify success. It’s more the people that come in here, and the longevity of that. When you have people that come in here and are stoked on it, and are still coming in here and still stoked on it, that’s a success to us.

Brian Dunsmoor: We love regulars. We don’t want to be anything more than a neighborhood restaurant, somewhere you can come in, enjoy yourself, not feel on edge, just relaxed, have good food and leave happy. Consistency.