Here's to the local restaurants, to the chefs, owner operators, the staff.

The ones who love being in the weeds night after night When we go to work each morning, that's who we have in mind from where we source our food food to how we deliver it here's to them, the ones who are out there cooking for us every day.

Restaurants are the heart of everything we do.

We are Performance Food Service proudly supporting Food is Love Support for food is love is provided by Wild Alaska Salmon and Seafood 100% fisherman, family owned independent seafood sourcing Catching, processing and delivering seafood directly to the consumer's front door.

From caught to bought wild salmon direct from the fishermen information at WildAlaskaSalmonandSeafood.com I've scoured the St. Louis scene for long enough now that being in another city feels like being in an alien landscape Tulsa is or feels like a little big city.

It's easy to get around here.

The nightlife is happening.

There's an art scene and the kind of eclectic places that makes a city hip.

There is no shortage of places to eat or grab a drink, all of them new to me.

I don't stop to darken any of their doors.

I'm looking for something more familiar.

Comfort food, if you will, something to make me feel like.

I'm back in St. Louis on Sydney Street, having a lobster roll and quietly wondering to myself, what does a James Beard Award look like?

As a chef, I need to stay curious in order to evolve.

For me, that means looking beyond a good meal to learn more about who made it and what inspires them to cook.

Every great city has great food.

I'm going on a journey around the world right here in St.Louis.

I'm on a quest to find passionate chefs who cook from the heart. "

And I think it's the best" to prove that food is love.

It's going to be delicious.

Food is love.

Love your food.

Growing up in a Hispanic family in New Mexico, working in his grandparents restaurant, Kevin Nashan never imagined himself where he is today, one of only two St. Louis chefs to win the James Beard Best Chef Midwest Award and owner of Sydney Street Cafe and Peacemaker Lobster, both in St.Louis.

Bussing tables as a teem, it's unlikely that he had any clue that one day his food and accolades would come to be considered a factor in the transformation of St. Louis into a recognized culinary scene.

But who is Kevin Nashan?

How did all this get started?

To find out, I'm meeting Kevin and his flagship restaurant, Sydney Street Cafe.

We're here to meet Kevin Nashan.

He's an award winning chef.

James Beard award winning chef.

So that says a lot.

How did you end up at St. Louis of all places?

Wrong turn in Albuquerque.

Yeah, no.

Long story short.

I went to university here one of the few universities I got into with St. Louis University and coming from New Mexico, my parents knew I had an aunt and uncle out here, and they thought it was a good Jesuit school that would kind of keep me in line.

And off I went.

Our family had a restaurant for 27 years, so I wanted to kind of segway out of that.

At least I thought I did.

And then I went to SLU and I was going to go to law school and did the five year plan, only to really figure out my last year that I really wanted to kind of like, maybe open up our own restaurants.

My brother and I because we kind of go in pairs He was in SLU with me, too.

We were like, hey, listen, let's try to open up our own spot.

And we figured one of us had to know about food, so I drew the short straw, so to speak at the time and got into CIA and used that as grad school and then just literally fell in love with it.

I mean, it's one of the things in life.

It's kind of like when you meet somebody and you just know it was instant click.

And I loved it.

And it was weird because growing up in the industry and being around just amazing opportunity and food and all that, I mostly just did either dishwashing or front of the house.

I ate.

I was a consumer, but I never really cooked.

I hung out a little bit.

My mom, she's Hispanic So we made empanadas during the holidays and did stuff like that.

But it wasn't like, I didn't help cook meals and stuff and took the trash out in a bunch of places.

I lived in France, I lived in Spain, lived in Chicago, New Orleans, New York, and then found my way to St. Louis because, about a girl.

Yeah, well, that's where all the good stores always start.

Right?

St. Louis is such a good food city.

You would have to spend at least three or four days here to hit all the little pockets.

Each pocket is different.

But that's why I love this town.

It's great.

And everyone's kind of, I love it that everyone's different, too not everyone's mimicking each other, and everyone's kind of beating their own path.

And that's how it should be.

That's called a good food city.

The one cool thing that I love with cooking, and I tell everyone that comes and works with us is that you get paid twice.

If you really sit and pay attention, you get a paycheck, and then you get paid because the skill that you're learning can never be taken away from you.

And that's why, you know, if you know how to roast a duck perfectly, you'll never forget that and how you make a pizza dough and how you make whatever it is making a vinaigrette.

No one can ever take that away from you.

It is a skill set you can take wherever you can go live in Spain.

You can go live anywhere and take that with you.

You don't even need to have a conversation.

You could just start cooking.

Let's go out there.

I'll show you the garden.

So far.

Kevin Nashan seems like a nice guy.

All the garnishes and stuff for certain dishes are all out here.

I never get tired of this, impromptu garden strolls in an adjacent parking lot hold for me all the wonders of a Christmas morning.

Tell me what you think it is.

Love cooking with this,... too horse rash.

What's that growing over there?

How about this?

This tastes exactly like an oyster.

Eat the whole thing.

Are those ramps.

You can do that in the city?

Yes.

It's very deceiving when you park in here because you would never know all this exists.

It's a lot of stuff.

How do you know that the whole neighborhood is not helping itself to fresh herbs?

Well, that's what they're here for, too.

It's for the neighborhood too.

We love to share.

It's so good.

When the kitchen is positioned this close to a garden it usually means you can find something good and fresh on the menu.

That's really good to cook with.

You take a beautiful loup de mar, wrap it and steam it And horseradish grows well here in the Midwest.

It does, in Illinois too.

Right.

All of this walking around and food talk has me looking forward to lunch.

And lucky for me, Kevin's restaurant Peacemakers Lobster and Crab is just down the street.

Prior to Peacemaker, anyone with a basic understanding of restaurant logistics would have laughed at a high volume seafood concept done this well in St. Louis.

But Kevin Nashan is killing it.

The kitchen is getting slammed.

So Kevin steps in to help.

My parents really gave us..

The biggest thing that they gave us was a work ethic and to really show like, hey, listen, no matter what you do, you really, truly just got to weather the storms.

There's going to be so many storms, just weather them and good will happen.

He is such a nice guy.

This is what I do best when I visit all these restaurants.

Eat.

Next, I'm going to Kevin's home to make pizzas in his backyard and meet his wife, Mina.

I couldn't be more excited.

As you might expect from an award winning chef, There's an oven in his backyard, and it's beautiful.

Kevin has his mis an place ready and the oven is heating up by the looks of the sprea, these pizzas are going to be good.

You probably don't have any problem getting people over when you cook you in the backyard.

I don't know who wouldn't want to come to Kevin Nashan's backyard with all this stuff.

So is there a pizza restaurant in the future?

Negative.

Negative.

Back of the house.

That's it, just something that's therapeutic.

And I don't know, just really, I love making them.

And a lot of my buddies have restaurants that are geared towards pizza.

And I've always been inspired by it, but more so.

It's fun.

It was something that I was like, if anything, I can do it in my backyard.

I wanted to do this because my kids are engaged.

They can do it with me.

And it's fun.

It's something they always love to eat.

And then it's so versatile.

I can cook like porkata.

I can do ribs.

I can do so many things.

Beautiful bread.. kind of clean the floor of it.

And I like to use, like, a little guy like this.

It's good for air circulation.

It really kind of gets the heat up really quickly.

It seems like there might be a learning curve to this, but I'm taking notes to Kevin's approach.

Check out these.

These are beautiful short neck clams.

And you know how masculine that looks to when you shoot in there with that thing.

Yeah, it does.

To make matters warmer.

The temperature outside today is over 100 degrees.

Ironically, the saving grace is that the oven is nearly 750 degrees, and our pizzas are done in mere minutes.

Ours is kind of a little thinner, and we'll just kind of dock it with a little fork.

But this is good for the boys.

It's a simple pepperoni pizza.

We're going to do a clam, chorizo and a chimchurri.

So what else do we have here?

So this is basically your fermented chimchurri.

Basically took all the ingredients that I would do in a normal chimchurris parsley that kind of thing, and then just kind of ferment them, and then we do fresh, and we kind of mix the two together with, like, shallots and garlic and oil and some spices.

I like to throw a little cumin in my chimchurri.

So did you teach yourself to do all this?

Yes I taught myself.

I'm not great at it.

They're probably finicky.

You got to learn where the hot spots are and everything.

Absolutely Kind of just get this.

That is beautiful.

Yeah.

It's fun.

It's different, right?

Yeah.

Now we get to do the fun part two and just kind of do the finishing touches on this guy.

And so we have these beautiful clams that you got to taste earlier, cooked with some garlic, some clam juice kind of really brothy.

Kevin has a great mind for flavor combinations and thinking outside of the box or pizza box in this case.

But his background in fine dining is something I can still see shine through, even in the pizza.

He just has a mind for it.

Chimi churri and clams.

It's like I always say, its the simple things, but Kevin swears he has no future plans to open a pizzeria.

I'm getting hungry.

And we'll give you a plate right there.

It's the first time I've ever had clams on the pizza.

I love the clams.

I love the sausage, and I love all the love that's in this pizza Chewy!

No.

Come back here.

Kevin's wife and business partner, Mina Nashan, just arrived and I can't wait to try to get some dirt on Kevin.

I mean, he's such a nice, talented guy, but there has to be something she can tell me.

He must be hiding something.

When's the last time he asked for a raise?

Kevin?

I'm sure Kevin has, He literally.

I haven't gotten a paycheck since when?

21 years, 22 years.

Kevin He loves books and to collect books.

And we were living in New Orleans for a year together, engaged, and I came home from something.

And when I got back, two weeks later, rent was due and we I said we've got to pay rent.

And he said, I just bought a bunch of cookbooks.

I spent my whole pay check at a place in New York that he loved called Kitchen Arts and Letters.

Like, we have to pay rent.

Ah ha, I have it figured out now .. from the sound of things.

I think Kevin may have a compulsive cookbook buying habit.

This will require more investigation, but I think I'm onto something, and it could get dark, but at any rate, the pizza is delicious and the company can't get any better.

Mina and Kevin are a picture of a symbiotic restaurant marriage.

They have grown together along with their business and shared the same vision.

That's what makes it work, and you can see it in them.

They were so gracious to welcome me into their home.

I'll never forget this, pizza making in Kevin Nashan's backyard.

So that's it.

Right?

We've been to Peacemakers and Sydney Street, spent time here in Kevin's home.

That must be the end of the story.

But it's not.

When I set out to get to know Kevin Nashan, I didn't expect that I would end up here.

Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Tulsa is not unlike St. Louis.

Parts of it has the same feel.

They both have a picturesque skyline, and they both have one of these, Peacemaker.

I sort of feel like I'm in a parallel universe where everything is the same but slightly different.

Case and point, here's Kevin Nashan and he's about to show me how to shuck oysters.

Neat.

Well, I think that a lot of people are very insecure about oysters and how to really do it correctly.

So why don't you show me?

Well, I don't know if I can do it correctly.

Oh, I'm sure you can.

Ill give it an old college try.

What I like to do is I like to like, look, I always kind of put this down there.

Put this as pressure.

I kind of come in.

You don't need a bunch of everyone, like, wants to do, like, a crazy kind of strength.

But all you want to do is just kind of get under that lift.

Kind of put your readers on, make sure you're able to see and get in the back end and see that move right here.

And then I just kind of turn it.

And then that's it.

It's just technique.

And boom, I'm in.

Boom.

I kind of clean that guy up here.

I loosened it up, and then I'm looking for a lot of, like, juice.

Really salinity.

But look at that.

We're in Tulsa, Oklahoma, why dont you taste that.

I mean, I couldn't have done it any better myself.

You are truly an expert.

I'm not an expert.

I'm just the guy.

A lot of salt water in there.

There you go.

A little salt water in there.

Yes, I like it.

Yeah.

Kind of clean these guys up.

I'm going to have you do this one and you can kind of use.. And I always like to have two.

So I have one.

Exactly.

There you go.

Pop that back in.

There you go.

Look, made you an oyster Shucker.

The fare here at Peacemakers in Tulsa is pretty much copy paste of that in St. Louis.

But entering the kitchen here is like entering a time portal.

So now we're going to a different restaurant?

Yeah.

This Peacemaker.

And this is La Tertulia.

Back to Kevin's childhood in New Mexico, working in his grandparents restaurant, La Tertulia.

That's right.

Connected by a common kitchen, Kevin has both a peacemaker and another restaurant.

inspired by his grandparents serving Northern Mexican cuisine.

La Tertulia is a complete departure from what Kevin has done in his other restaurants.

But on a personal level, it's closer to where he started out taking the time to do things the best way, like prepping and milling corn in house for their own tortillas.

Bertha, como esta?

Bertha is the backbone.

She is the jefe of the whole thing.

How are you doing?

She does wonderful.

So right now, she's rinsing the corn and just kind of getting it ready.

Yeah, really clean.

The Nixalization has done its job.

You can smell, like, really nutty.

That's what makes all the difference.

And they have this down to a science.

But running two restaurants in another state takes more than a dream and good food.

Kevin had to build a team that he could trust to pull it off.

And in today's world, staffing is the hardest part.

But somehow Kevin made it happen.

Hi.

Brian is our chef at both spots, at Peacemaker and La Tertulia.

He is definitely the jefe okay.

Ok. Glad to have y'all It's just good to have a ninja.

He's a ninja.

Every kitchen needs a Ninja.

It almost feels like we're in the way, right?

Yeah, you are.. We're in the way.

It's good.

The dual kitchen setup could be a recipe for disaster, but here it's running like a well oiled machine.

This is what we all love.

The craziness of the kitchen.

We are right at in the middle of this restaurant, Kevin Nashan's restaurant.

And this is what I live for.

There's a lot of things going on in here.

To hear Kevin talk about La Tertulia is to hear tales about the old city of gold.

But it's not a myth.

Kevin has brought new life to something his grandparents created.

And the food here is exceptional.

At the end of a long day, I'm glad I came to Tulsa to experience this myself.

It has painted a far more personal side of Kevin's story for me.

He's more than just a James Spirit Award winner.

He's more complex than just Sydney Street.

You've gotta get some of that egg, though.

Yeah.

Going into the kitchen, from one restaurant to the other in Tulsa, I couldn't help to see a parallel of Kevin working between two cities, going into the kitchen in one and coming out in another.

But in doing this, he has brought it full circle.

The restaurant he started in is the same one where he will finish, so to speak, it's poetic, and I don't think there is a better tour guide to show you around Tulsa.

I think you find that in Tulsa, that's like, a lot of the admiration I have for this town.

Is there's a lot of people that do a lot of really good things with the fortunate circumstances they're in.

And I think that's what life is about.

It seems impossible to tell a story about Kevin Nashan without mentioning the James Beard Award in 2017 and how that cemented his place as a culinary titan of the Midwest, a champion who injected a huge dose of pride into the St.Louis food world.

While all that is true, that isn't what makes Kevin a champion chef, it was how he treated those around him, those who works with him when things got busy in the restaurant, he jumped in.

Besides them, he really is a great guy, genuine, thoughtful, creative.

I see now how opening La Tertulia was a full circle moment for Kevin, a restaurant built on sentiment, nostalgia and the same longing for the food of your childhood that we all have.

Only Kevin recreated it and is sharing it with the rest of the world.

It's personal and beautiful, but I'm still left wondering, what does the James Beard Award look like?

Yeah.

And initially in Tulsa, we didn't know for sure that that's where it was going to be.

We didn't know where it was.

We didn't know if it was going to happen.

Like the La Tertulia.

It's very Southern, but it's very South West, with all the Native American and people go travel to New Mexico and to Santa Fe.

And immediately when we were there and people learned that he was from Santa Fe, and they knew restaurant.

They knew his grandparents restaurant.

And people would come into the restaurant just to say that they had met my grandparents and their stories of the restaurant.

And it was just an immediate thing where it's like, well, here it just lands.

It was meant to be.

As Kevin pours us a glass of champagne in his home library.

I look around the room and begin to realize, this is confirmation.. Not only was I right about his cookbook obsession, but it may be even worse than I imagined.

I mean, look at him.

This is clearly the face of a man who has secrets.

All jokes aside, the library of cookbooks here is very impressive.

Many are rare and sought after.

And Kevin's fascination with cookbooks is just another reflection of his passion for food.

I could probably spend a couple of days in here reading.

But among this vast library, none are more highly esteemed by Kevin, than this.

A handful of old paper menu, recipes and cookbooks that belongs to his grandparents.

So these are all the books, too, that I used for when I was studying for La Tertulia and just studying the history on it.

And these books you can't find they're so out of print.

It all seems so clear now.

La Tertulia was always meant to happen.

As for the award, it's somewhere on a shelf hidden underneath the sea of cookbooks.

Surely a prestigious award like that is deserving of a prominent spot on a mantle.

But for Kevin, that's not the point.

Awards are interesting.

Yes, super flattered and grateful.

But there are so many great people out there, so many great restaurants in this town.

It's like why us?

And I'm very grateful for it.

I think it's awesome.

I love this town.

What defines you is the day in, day out of customers and guests coming back.

We're on our 18th year at Sydney Street.

You're fortunate enough to get it, But it's the team that does that, and it's multiple teams.

It's not just one team.

It's just multiple teams.

It's kind of like doing anything excellent in life.

It's not what people see right then and there.

It's the amount of time way before no one else saw.

I always think of like doing a restaurant like a marathon.

No one sees all the hard work that goes on before it.

But they sure see mile 24 to 26 and they're all high fives and that kind of thing.

And truly, I mean, I think that's the gist in my humble opinion of life.

You find out what you want to do in life and what makes you happy, making other people happy.

And then you win.

For him is more about the journey, family, tradition and sharing the respect with his kitchens.

There's some kind of moral lesson in it all, I think.

But when you reduce it down, it's just about love.

Thank you very much for having me, Kevin.

It was great.

And thank you very much.

I really appreciate it.

Yeah.

Great time.

We had a wonderful time breaking bread with you and make some pizza and sharing stories.

Cheers.

This is a lobster Tertulia, a Peacemaker lobster in New Mexico.

Food is love.

Here's to the local restaurant, to the chefs, owner, operators, the staff, the ones who love being in the weeds night after night, when we go to work each morning, that's who we have in mind from where we source our food to how we deliver it here's to them, the ones who are out there cooking for us every day.

Restaurants are the heart of everything we do.

We are Performance Food Service, proudly Supporting Food is Love.

Support for food is love is provided by Wild Alaska Salmon and Seafood 100% Fisherman family owned Independent Seafood Sourcing Catching processing and delivering seafood directly to the consumer's front door.

From caught to bought wild salmon direct from the fishermen Information at WildAlaskaSalmonandSeafood.com