Interview: chef Ken Vedrinski (Trattoria Lucca)

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Chef Charleston

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How much room for expansion is there in Charleston at this point?

That’s a great question. I’d say it’s saturated. I’d say it’s almost to the point of no more. I think you have six or seven restaurants opening this year, major ones, not little mom and pops, major ones. Charleston only has so much tourism, and the city is less than a half million people, so just the base of the locals can’t support all these restaurants. We’re not a tourist restaurant, so I live off the locals and foodies that kind of run the circuit. I’m not scared of anybody, certainly, but it’s very competitive. I don’t think it can go much further. I just don’t know why they think they can keep opening restaurants and they’ll all be busy. We’ll see.


Chef Charleston
What was the last international trip that you took?

Italy, three months ago. I was there three weeks. I went back and saw my cousins.

Where in Italy?

Abruzzo.

[Vedrinski finds a bound photo album.]

This is my travels. I go there and I go tour my mother’s hometown, and then I eat in all the great places. Well, not in the places you read about. I eat in all the little – and Rome’s not a great place for food in my opinion. Convivio is really good. That was the one place I had a great meal in Rome. Great seafood.

What do you look for when you’re in Italy?

You know, you look at the chefs. What I try to do, like this place here – [points at notebook] – this is in Campagna. Bernardo is sort of the king of that style of cuisine, very rustic. Everything in the restaurant comes his farm, including the water, because he has a natural well there. He raises little black pigs. Everything comes from his farm, his little farmhouse. I love that kind of cooking, so honest and delicious.

Robertino Contadino?

Yeah, so simple, so delicious. He makes all his own salumi. The Amalfi Coast, the fish right out of the water, right there. The pasta was cooked so perfectly, with just a little tomatoes and parsley. Sugo, obviously comes from Campagna, little tomatoes, it’s so product driven, simple, it’s little wonder how he did it, but it was so delicious.

Pasta Charleston
What are the limitations to Italian ingredients in Charleston?

None. From here, and on the Amalfi Coast? I’m on the coast. I get octopus that comes from Hilton Head. I get shrimp that comes from north Georgia. I get everything I want.

What about the dairy and the cheese?

Cheeses, obviously, I buy Italian cheeses. There are some differences. The milk is different. There are some locals that do a really nice job, but cheeses, I buy all the time. We make some. We make our own ricotta, and we make our own mozzarella, but I can’t get buffalo milk. When the mozzarella’s coming right from Italy, I’ll buy it, because I can’t replicate it.

How did that experience over there impact you?

You get inspired, incredibly inspired. It reinforces the simplicity of the cuisine. What I do here is not – I love what Sean Brock does, with all the molecular and the chemicals – and you look at it, you wonder how he did it. You don’t wonder that about my food. Certainly from a taste standpoint. So simple. You just have to fight for the ingredients, and then respect it. Everybody says the same thing, but you always wonder if they really do it, if everybody sticks to that. It’s expensive. Ingredients are everything, and I buy the best of the best. Those tomatoes, it’s been really warm here, so we’re still getting local tomatoes. Those farm eggs are expensive, and our pasta is almost orange because the eggs are not factory eggs.

Pasta Charleston
What is your favorite part about owning a restaurant?

Freedom. The freedom to do what I want.

You were saying you enjoy the freedom of owning your own restaurant. What were you saying before about when there’s somebody signing your check?

They’re always going to have control. Maybe the guy who’s your partner doesn’t like fresh pasta. He tells you, “I don’t like fresh pasta.” So you don’t make it. He keeps signing your paycheck. You split the money. You’re killing yourself, which I do. I work 80 hours a week. You split the money at the end of the day. I don’t do it for money, but that still stings a little bit. Or maybe he wants to paint the walls with gold flaking. It’s hard. Say they own 51%. He paints the walls with gold flake. At the end of the year, when you do dividends, if you’re paying dividends, or distributions, it comes out of that. Even buying this – [points to Dolly, the fresh pasta machine] – this was $4800. Maybe my partner, who owns this place, says, “Oh no, no, no, you just buy dry.” That happens. That’s why a lot of chefs, if you read why chefs leave, it’s always the classic, “Our vision wasn’t the same.” That’s been said a million times. I don’t have to worry about that. Every chef who’s ever left a high profile restaurant has said that.

What’s the biggest challenge of owning a restaurant?

The old evil, making money. The business side of it’s the evil side.

Why do you say that?

You fight with the credit card companies. You fight with the insurance company. You want to talk about distractions? Those are distractions. I deal with 72 different purveyors in some way, shape or form. You deal with 72 different people, who sell candles, to this guy, that guy, and they’re all making their living by selling to restaurants. And the margins are small, so you have to stay on it, and on it, and they know – they’re good businesspeople – they know that I’m a chef-owner, and I’m not saying what they’re doing is unscrupulous, but you better be checking to see what they’re doing. And they know when you’re busy, that you’re not checking everything. So everybody challenges you. Again, I’m not saying that they’re doing anything inappropriate, but you’ve got to be careful. There’s a lot of chefs out there that are great chefs and horrible businessmen that have lost restaurants. I had that old mentality that if I make good food, it’s going to work. That’s the further thing from the truth. Making money, you’ve got to pay your bills. I have a house, I have a car. It’s a challenge, to say the least.

What’s the last meal that you cooked at home?

I cooked for myself yesterday, and I made pasta broccoli.

If you could only cook with one more protein, what would it be, and how come?

It would certainly be seafood, and I’d say black bass, which comes from the waters here. When it’s in season. They’ve had to close the fisheries down. Something with black bass, olive oil, lemon, maybe a small pasta.

Who’s a person that you’ve never cooked with before that you would most like to cook with?

Well there are certainly some guys in Italy I would love to cook with. There’s a chef called Mauricio Fiorini. I would love to cook with him. He has a restaurant called Il Clandestino in Marquay, right on the Adriatic ocean, and it’s amazing. It’s all seafood that came out of there, but he does it raw like crudo. I ate one of the greatest meals of my life there, sitting there, at night, fire’s going, these little things, looking at the ocean, the Adriatic, eating this seven-course meal. It was absolute perfection.

Marc Vetri, I’d like to cook with him. I tried to cook with him, two years ago, and unfortunately, he was having his third child, so he couldn’t come, but his chef de cuisine came, a guy called Jeff Michaud, who was awesome. He was totally fun to cook with. So probably Marc Vetri.

Where and what do you like to drink when you’re not here?

At Lucca? Certainly wine. I love Italian wine. I drink a lot of wine from the southern part of Italy, south of Rome. I love the wines from the islands from Scaglia in Sardinia. There’s an island called Elba that makes rosés that are perfect with seafood. Do I drink them at home? If I have an occasion, I do. I don’t just pop a bottle and do that, but I love Italian white wines. For awhile, they weren’t all that great. I love a simple Italian white wine when I get home. I think it’s delicious.

What about when you go out?

At Del Posto in New York City, we drank a bottle of Valentini Trebbiano, which was one of the greatest white wines I ever drank in my entire life. It was expensive, 300 bucks, but I didn’t care. That night was really special.

What would you want to be known for as a chef?

To be successful. The failure rate of restaurants now is 7 of 10, and I had two restaurants that were very successful, so being a successful restaurateur/chef. And we’re honest. We’ve done it right since day one. I can certainly say that I’m never going to be the guy that you’re going to see on “Top Chef,” but I think to be respected, I’d be happy with that.

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Joshua Lurie

Joshua Lurie founded FoodGPS in 2005. Read about him here.

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