(lively music)
- Everything here is here for a reason.
It has meaning to us.
I am Chef Greg Baxtrom here at Olmsted
and this is Where Hollywood Eats in Brooklyn.
(lively piano music)
Now, I'm just gonna warm that.
When we opened up the restaurant,
we wrote a list of everything that we knew that
we could get that was available at the time
and we were sorta is in this awkward period
where it felt like Spring but it wasn't really Spring yet.
So we didn't really have a lot to work with.
I'm gonna season this with lemon juice and salt.
The care that we put into sourcing the products
is the consistent factor in the menu.
When we opened this restaurant
we didn't really have a lot of money
so my dad loaded up his van
and drove all of his tools out here from Chicago.
My dad built the chef counter,
the bar, we redid the tables together,
all the seating and the benches in the back.
There are things that come from my childhood
from the way my parents raised me
that are in the DNA of the restaurant.
And my mom has been here twice and she loved it.
So on any given night,
Frank our neighbor,
to a line cook from Manhattan,
to Chef Achatz from Chicago,
to Gwyneth Paltrow will be here.
(lively piano music)
The menu hits all these different notes
that makes it desirable for,
ideally, just about anyone.
(lively string music)
We tried to make as much as,
like a closed system as possible.
So we have fish over there that
every time we clean the tub,
we spray that water over the garden.
This is garden one, rhubarb, mint, and lemon balm.
You can see that the garlic that we planted last fall
is starting to shoot up.
We wanted to draw their eyes
from the front of the restaurant to the back
and so we put this living wall up.
You're gonna meet Gary.
Gary is a female.
Come on Gary.
Okay.
That's Gary.
The quails give us eggs.
We use the eggs when we can in the menu.
It's not a fully functioning farm by any means
but it's something that we care about,
we want to participate in.
That's my ethos.
Like I believe strongly in that stuff
but I don't believe that the guests
have to give a shit about that.
(lively music)
I've really only worked at fine dining,
like top 50, San Pellegrino,
three Michelin star restaurants.
A couple of years ago, people would ask me,
what do I want the guests to feel at your restaurant.
And I would say such obnoxious things like
challenged, or intrigued.
I was into the fifth or sixth word
would I say tasty.
Now that's all that matters.
What we do is we just put in a lot of labor
into the food and we just don't really charge for that.
Like we have this crab rangoon
where, you know, the crab is coming from Maine,
and the kale we're growing out in the garden,
and we make ricotta cheese.
Then we have to make the sweet and sour sauce,
so that has 30 ingredients.
After putting hours of work into these
silly little crab rangoon,
we just throw them into a to-go box.
The guests are just receiving a plate full,
delicious, fried crab rangoon.
We get to put our ethos into it.
We get to use the product that we wanna use
and express ourself through our food
in an unpretentious way.
Diners are more educated now.
They want the same level of service.
They want the same wow factor in the food,
in the presentation.
They want it to still come sustainably resourced
and be delicious.
They want everything that all these restaurants provide.
They just don't want to pay for it necessarily.
Olmsted is an ambitious neighborhood restaurant.
We don't want to alienate the neighborhood.
I live in the neighborhood.
I want them to feel welcomed
and that they have something proud of.
And I want someone from California
that is in town to do their eating tour
and I want the people that I've worked for,
the people that I admire,
I want them to respect the work that I am doing.
I like the moment when a guest is eating
the sour mushi or the delica squash ring
and their head just kind whips back a little bit
because they're really enjoying it
and they're also asking themselves, what is it.
And in that moment, that is the purpose
of the restaurant.
They're wondering what the hell is going on
but they're nodding their head yes.
That is what it's all about.
(lively music)