Today we’d like to introduce you to Gabe Lava.
Hi Gabe, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
My story, like a lot of chefs, started at home in the kitchen with my mother, whether hiding from my older siblings or seeking her company. The food she cooked wasn’t extravagant, but they focused on what was important and made with love. Not to say my dad didn’t cook, but my time was split between houses for the first chunk of my childhood. After she passed, my dad kept things interesting with the occasional black pepper maple salmon or whatever else breaking up the monotony of pasta & sauce, meatloaf, etc. He taught me how to cook “eggs saganaki’ (still not sure if that’s a real thing), and supported my developing interest in cooking.
After a brief stint at music school, I enrolled in culinary school with reluctant support from family (they knew resistance was futile). It was soon after I picked up my first kitchen job at Quince in my hometown of Evanston, Illinois. The chef there took an unwarranted liking to me, and gave me opportunities I shouldn’t have had (thank you, Mark). I learned how to make French style frozen custard, butcher duck, dress a salad, plate a dish, prep sweetbreads, run a station, and just how to be a “cook”. After Quince, I landed a position at the renowned Italian restaurant Spiaggia in downtown Chicago (thank you, Pete) where I worked the pasta station in the fine dining kitchen and got my first experience with events in their private dining kitchen.
I moved to Boston to work at No. 9 Park, the recently closed flagship restaurant of Barbara Lynch. Local ingredients, lots of new techniques, weekly changing menus. “Intense” would be the word…Things started to come into focus from there. I moved back to Chicago to work at the Michelin starred Bonsoiree – a small tasting menu only, molecular gastronomy restaurant. I eventually made my way to sous/pastry chef, writing menus and recipes, running the kitchen, ordering product, and putting together n/a drink pairings. I was able to experiment. A lot. Like…tobacco frozen custard, lamb brain ravioli, 8 presentations of whatever ingredients, smoke crisps. The pantry always had something different to play with and I took full advantage of it.
Lula Cafe was something else entirely. I was looking for something different from my fine dining experience, and I was ready to apply to the Cheesecake Factory to get that large scale, fast paced environment…until I saw a listing looking for an AM sous chef to help run Lula’s acclaimed brunch program. Though local products were used in places I had worked at previously, this was on another level, and I was ready to absorb more of the meaning behind that approach.
In 2012, I got an invitation: my first chef living overseas was getting married the next year and my lease was about to expire. So obviously, 24 year old me moved back in with my dad to save up money before buying a one way ticket to Bangkok for his wedding, gradually making my way westward back home. I tried to cook often – sometimes that meant a stage at a proper restaurant anywhere from a single service to a few weeks, and other times in a home kitchen with new friends and some things picked up from the market. The focus was food of all sorts – street food, fine dining, pub grub, and hitting up a McDonald’s in every country I could.
I bounced around a little bit when I got back in the country, helping open a few projects, trying out some new directions, always keeping an eye and ear open for what works, what doesn’t. It was during that time in Chicago I met my wife, Kim. She was a server. I was a sous chef. Butterflies, fireworks, and brunches soon led to road trips visiting her family in Northern Michigan which soon led to unexpected discussions about where to plant roots. We got married in fall of 2016 and moved to Traverse City the following spring.
Traverse City was certainly a change of pace from Chicago. Why did the turkeys cross the road? I don’t know, but I waited for them to pass before I continued on my drive around Leelanau Peninsula that first weekend in town. I worked at a small ramen shop/izakaya downtown with a focus on local produce and scratch cooking. A quick interview turned into hours of conversation. Things just clicked. Not too many places make their own ramen noodles, and even less source local wheat to do it. We were also a stone’s throw from the Sara Hardy Farmers Market giving me a great introduction to more of the produce and producers of the area. The menu was hyperseasonal, changing over completely every few weeks. We used what was locally available and tried to keep things interesting even in winter when there’s not much more than root vegetables and storage crops.
I launched Gabe’s Old Fashioned Foods in 2018 originally as a wholesale production of frozen custard, sorbet and other frozen novelties. I was thinking about my family’s future and whether the restaurant biz would be able to allow me to enjoy it. It was pretty clear the long hours and late nights were not sustainable, so I charted a new path. I got into quite a few stores and was expanding until covid hit. Everything sort of shifted after that. I dabbled with catering for a couple seasons after more or less falling into it. Legend has it a friend of a friend had an aunt that needed a caterer in 5 days, and I was able to do it. That turned into some private dinners, which turned into bigger parties, fast forwarding to today where events like weddings, holiday & graduation parties, family reunions, etc are the main focus of my business.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
No path is ever smooth. But I’d be kidding myself if I said mine wasn’t charmed. I’ve had the same huge bumps that many others have had to deal with – long hours, crap pay, injury, broken promises, covid, etc etc etc – but I managed to pull through in no small part due to the support from family to make what I could out of those bumps. I lost about a year of my career to a carpal tunnel injury – I used that time to dive into cookbooks and is also when I started thinking about selling my ice cream, developing recipes that would later serve as a starting point for Gabe’s Old Fashioned Frozen Custard. The Covid reset forced me to consider new options giving the space for the catering side of things to grow.
And I’m still figuring it out, week by week. I strive to find a proper work life balance, which is difficult in the summer season, but overall I’ve managed make things work.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Gabe’s Old Fashioned Foods is both a catering company and wholesale ice cream manufacturer, making frozen custard, sorbet, and ice cream sandwiches for retail stores and restaurants in the area. I make frozen custard the old fashioned way from scratch with no stabilizers or additives, sourcing local ingredients. My Burnt Honey Frozen Custard has only 6 ingredients: cream, milk, honey, egg yolks, sugar, salt. That’s it. Those ingredients are the base of my other flavors whether with real vanilla bean, fresh local mint, local fruit, fair trade chocolate, etc. No ‘flavorings approved by the FDA” or anything like that.
For catering, I do things a little differently – as opposed to having a set list of dishes to choose from, what I like to do is have a conversation to get a full sense of what a client likes, and what they’re looking for specifically for their event. From there, I create a custom menu to consider. It goes back to this idea I picked up while traveling – “ten people, ten colors” is a Japanese idiom representing the uniqueness of everything and I try to bring that to what I do. So whether it’s a wedding celebrating the union of Irish & Lebanese families, or a simple friends’ getaway wanting to experience Northern Michigan, there’s always something that can be pulled out to make it special. It keeps things interesting for me as well. People have this peculiar habit of pushing me in unexpected directions and I am all for it. Never let an opportunity to buy a new cookbook go to waste…
I highlight seasonal produce from local farms wherever possible. One of the simplest yet most consequential details I get is the date. A few weeks makes a big difference as things come in and go out of season. I continue the relationships developed when I first moved up here getting regular updates from places like Lakeview Hills Farm, Providence Farms, Grand Traverse Mushrooms, etc, and odds are you’ll find me at the Traverse City farmer’s market scurrying around with a tattered list, and maybe 1 or 2 too many bags to carry.
What would you say have been one of the most important lessons you’ve learned?
Breathe. Make the effort to appreciate the people and things that keep you going.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.gabesoldfashioned.com
- Other: https://www.localdifference.org/blog/know-thy-farmer/
