Chef’s Corner DAVID PHILLIPS

admin Friday, January 3, 2025 Comments Off on Chef’s Corner DAVID PHILLIPS
Chef’s Corner DAVID PHILLIPS

By Diana Vallette

Restaurant Calla’s executive chef, David Phillips, was never meant to have a desk job. “My first job was at McDonald’s when I was 16,” he says. Phillips, who grew up in Texas and spent time in the Navy, started as a cashier at the fast food joint and then worked his way into the kitchen. He was snacking on two McDonald’s double cheeseburgers (no ketchup) when he realized he was destined to be in a kitchen — just not a corporately run one. 

“Food is my love language,” he says. “And the place I’m most comfortable is the kitchen.” Phillips says he fell in love with the atmosphere and fast-paced energy in restaurants. That love burns strong today. 

What makes him unique is his connection to the financial side of the business. He’s addicted to revenue, he says. “The way you make revenue is through repeat customers, and the way you have repeat customers is by having the best, most consistent food.” 

Phillips graduated from Texas Culinary Academy in 2002, moved to Galveston, and got a job at Hotel Hilton before transitioning to the private dining sector in the Galveston Yacht Club. 

At the yacht club he worked under Chef Lee Clements, who he says is an “amazing chef who cooked for Bill Clinton.” Clements taught Phillips to slow down. “He told me my cooking technique was great and I knew processes well, but my flavor development was lacking.” Developing flavors takes time. It’s a skill Phillips has had to work at perfecting over the years, as his natural disposition is all gas, no brake.

His first executive chef gig at Graywood had him and two sous chefs running three kitchens. During his time there, he developed a catering menu and worked 110 hours a week. “I went three months without a single day off,” he says. Cut to 2009. Phillips was flipping through the newspaper and saw Ben Herrera, then-owner of 121 Artisan Bistro, was running a help wanted ad. Herrera stated he was looking for “advanced culinary skills.”

“I walked into 121 with my resume and met Ben at the host stand. I asked him what he meant by ‘advanced culinary skills’ and Ben laughed,” he says. “I’ll never forget that conversation.”

Herrera told Phillips that if he didn’t know what he meant, the two probably didn’t need to be speaking. “I told him the paper my resume was printed on was expensive, and if I didn’t have a shot at the job, I’d like to have it back.” Phillips’ candor led to a 45-minute conversation, and at the end of it he was hired, but as a steak cook — a job he was over qualified for.

“I was hopeful that if I was patient, it would pay off.” He was right. Six months later, Phillips was promoted to executive chef. Since that day, he and Herrera have been running some of Southwest Louisiana’s favorite restaurants and doing so in a way that flirts with unconventional.

While it’s not uncommon to have most restaurants place the majority of the responsibility on a front-of-house manager, the pair believe in cultivating a strong back-of-house. With Phillips, service staff are given responsibility and are compensated accordingly. The theory behind this innovative structure is that it empowers the service staff, eliminates the need for a front-of-house manager in most cases, and directs funds to the back-of-house in a way that makes for a positive work environment and a well-run establishment. “It keeps the most important thing, the most important,” he says. “The kitchen is the most important thing. It’s the heart of a restaurant.” 

Phillips left 121 and bought Dairy Barn on Nelson Road (later changing the name to Dave’s) before selling the place and working at Chart House as a sous chef. Two weeks after Hurricane Laura, Herrera called him back up. He needed someone he trusted in the executive chef role at a place he’d just purchased: Restaurant Calla. “We opened up the week of Christmas,” he says. “We took the items that were already on the menu that worked, put our twist on some of them and created new menu items.

Pushing The Palate

“Everyone thinks palate is about flavor, but palate is about memory,” Phillips says. 

It’s why everyone’s palate is different; we all have different food memories. Maybe it’s the apple pie your grandmother used to bake, or the summer barbecues you enjoyed with your dad. Food has a way of connecting us to our past; our food memories influence our preferences and shape how we feel about certain flavor profiles. 

“My goal as a chef is for you to never think of me,” Phillips says. “I want you to take a bite and be blasted back to some special memory.”

Phillips says when it comes to Herrera “he’s an amazing businessperson and mentor” with the best palate of anyone he’s ever worked for. “Cooking is just process and technique. Your palate is crafted after years and years of experience,” he says.

At Calla, Phillips focuses on taking the palate and pushing it slightly past what’s expected. Marco Pierre White is his inspiration. White is an “old school chef who subscribes to the ‘keep it simple, stupid’ method.”

“We don’t spend $20 per pound on this protein for me to cover it up with a bunch of different flavors. Salt and pepper — that’s all you need. A good chef lets the ingredients speak for themselves.” 

But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t infuse flavor where others might ignore it. Phillips focuses on developing flavor at every bite. Take something as mundane as onions, for example. He marinates and chars them before later returning them back to the marinade. He does this so they absorb maximum flavor and the diner gets way more than merely onion.

Calla’s famous smoked duck dish was created at 121. Phillips takes six- to eight-ounce duck breasts, which he sources from Canada’s Maple Leaf Farms. He likes the cut because the skin is thick and crisps up well. 

“The dish was developed one day when Ben brought over a broken barbecue pit. I took some wood chips and threw them into the pizza oven. They got so hot that they caught fire,” he says.

The raw duck is cold smoked for an hour in a temperature that never gets above 120 degrees, then seared to order. This method makes for a tender, juicy cut. The duck is served on greens with balsamic vinegar and Tuscan oil, thick balsamic goat cheese, peppercorns, balsamic glaze and basil.

Another unique (and under-rated) offering at Calla is the Iberico double bone pork chop. The pork comes from a rare breed of pig sourced from Spain. The pigs are raised on a free-range farm with a ton of oak trees. As a result, the pigs’ diet is predominantly comprised of acorns. The acorns develop the pig’s intermuscular fat and make a big splash for your taste buds. 

“Typically, pork chops are nice and pink without much marbling, but these chops look like a filet,” Phillips says. “Your eyes and knife say it’s a pork chop, but your taste buds say there’s no way.” Phillips reports it’s one of the best pieces of meat he’s tasted in the last decade.

The dish is served with pave potato, roasted baby carrots, and an in-house demi sauce he fashions into a steak Diane sauce made of Dijon mustard, mushrooms, garlic and white wine. The pork is seared before being finished off in an oven. “It’s a long cook time, but it’s worth the wait,” he says.  

Creativity, Collaboration, Consistency 

Phillips values collaboration, whether that be sourcing local ingredients from small businesses or getting recipe insight from his staff. He believes in developing people and enjoys helping his sous chefs develop their own systems and palate. “I do that so I can free myself up to work on the business side.  

“I absolutely love my relationship with my staff and my boss. I’ve been allowed to spread my wings — having my boss’ confidence, the fact that he knows things will get done is … priceless. It’s such a great, positive atmosphere to work in. It’s nice to feel appreciated, and I’m blessed to work with good people; it makes my job easier.”

Calla uses Sisu mushrooms, pasta from Pasta Lab and The Bekery’s bread, among other local ingredients. When asked if he thought creativity or consistency was more important, he couldn’t choose. 

“Man, you’ve gotta have both. At the end of the day, people come to a restaurant because they’re hungry, and if you’re not producing a consistent product, they’re not going to come back. I have one chance at every customer. Once chance. I’m either convincing them to come back or pushing them out the door. I don’t take that lightly,” he says. “This amazing community has allowed me to perfect my craft for the past 16 years, and I just can’t express what that’s meant to me.” 

Should he ever be in a position to request just one final meal, he’s going with “spaghetti and meatballs, the recipe I’ve been making at 121” with chicken fried steak, barbecue chicken (dark meat, please) and his mom’s chocolate chip cookies.

“My mom made the most amazing cookies. We’d help her make saltwater taffy. I thought it was the coolest thing that my mom knew how to do all of that, but now I know it’s because we were getting by on one income.” 

Aside from his gig as executive chef and general manager at Calla, Phillips is also now an operating partner at 121. “We’re expanding our offerings at 121. We’re going to be a dessert and cocktail destination, so I hope readers will keep their eyes peeled for those changes.”

Photo create on photos: PHOTOS BY WILDWOODS CREATIVE

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