Tag: Aaron Winters

Aaron Winters lands at Sur La Table.

Post author By Michael Donahue
Post date April 11, 2019

CREDIT: Michael Donahue

Aaron Winters recently taught a cooking class on how to make beef bourguignon, that fancy French dish that seems so complicated and time-consuming to prepare.

It wasn’t.

“Instead of cooking on the stove top, we use an Instant Pot, which is a pressure cooker and a slow cooker all in one,” Winters says. “It speeds up the cooking time. Instead of taking six hours to make beef bourguignon, it takes 40 minutes.”

Michael Donahue

to work in the kitchen.

Winters, 43, who opened Porcellino’s Craft Butcher with Andrew Ticer and Michael Hudman and was executive chef at The Vault, is now head chef at Sur La Table in Germantown. “If you would’ve asked me a year ago if I’d be a culinary instructor at a cooking store, I’d have said, ‘You’re out of your mind.’ I was all about the ‘I want to be number one at this,’ and ‘I want to be the next this.'”

But life changed after his daughter was born. “I realized it was more important for me to be a father.”

Winters grew up on a self-sustaining farm on the Ohio/Pennsylvania border. “My sister and I each had our own salt shaker. Instead of going and getting a sweet treat out of the cabinet, we’d take our salt shaker and go out into the garden.”

Their parents worked, so Winters and his sister made dinner for everybody. He learned to cook by watching Great Chefs of the World on PBS. “All through high school, of course, I took all the cooking classes.”

He served for five years in the Marines, but a back injury curtailed his military career dream. He spent the next 15 years working in retail jobs, including the Home Depot and Bed Bath & Beyond.

After moving to Memphis to work for H. H. Gregg, Winters, who had seen Ticer and Hudman on The Opener, ate at Andrew Michael Italian Kitchen. “Our backgrounds were similar with family and food and the love for it and such. I told them, ‘I make sausages and salamis and stuff in my house.'”

Winters, who learned charcuterie from his grandfather and from reading, never stopped cooking. “I catered events and I cooked for family all the time because I just loved to cook. It was my relaxation. I’d work a 12-hour day in retail, and then go and spend hours researching and cooking.”

He quit his job and eventually became chef de cuisine at Hog & Hominy.

Winters, who joined the Butchers Guild, met Dario Cecchini, who invited him to become one of his apprentices. He flew to Panzano, Italy, and lived above Cecchini’s butcher shop. “I butchered every day from sunup till 4 in the afternoon. Then I worked in the restaurant after that until about 1 in the morning.

“I worked with these butchers and I sweated with them. Got yelled at a lot. I realized I knew nothing about butchery before I went there.”

Cecchini introduced him to Filippo Gambassi, a member of a prominent family of salumerias, who asked him to become an apprentice. “I worked at Terra di Siena in Poggibonsi, Italy, learning how to make prosciutto, salami Toscana, guanciale, coppa, all that.”

When he returned to Memphis, Winters helped open Porcellino’s. He then opened his own business, Burning River Chef, which he still owns. “I supply private chefs. And I do private butcher training. I do private dinners at people’s homes. And I also manage a stable of chefs who work at high-end hunting clubs.”

While at The Vault, Winters brought “some New Orleans flair” to the menu. “I did the Louisiana crab claws with spicy chili agrodolce. We did a ton of stuff. We did a four-hour roux on our gumbo. And it was traditional gumbo with homemade andouille.”

After The Vault, Winters and his wife bought a home in Germantown. He went to work at Sur La Table, which specializes in high-end merchandise for home chefs. “I have five chefs that work for me. They’re culinary instructors. We teach classes every day. They’re not just basic classes. We’ll do ‘Exploring Thailand,’ which is homemade pad thai, spring vegetable green curry over lemongrass-scented rice. Coconut lime sorbet.

“It’s a couple of hours, and you get to eat what you’re making. And you get to play around with everything we have.”

Learning to make French-style macarons is one of his most popular classes. “We did them with a cassis buttercream and lemon curd. We just do those standard macarons. And we dip them in chocolate ganache. And then roll them in pistachios. We then put cassis buttercream around the edge like a little moat, put lemon curd in the middle, and close it up like a little sandwich. Roll it in lavender. Delicious.”

Sur La Table is the right place to be, Winters says. “We’re in the Food Network generation now, where a lot of people can cook better than most of the restaurants out there.”

Winters sounds like a natural for a TV cooking show, but he will say only, “There’s one in the works.”

Sur La Table, 509 Poplar Suite 106 in Germantown, 758-3691

Tags Aaron Winters, Sur La Table

Food & Wine Food & Drink

Now Open Downtown: The Vault and Lisa’s Lunchbox

Post author By Lesley Young
Post date April 30, 2017

Say you want to grab a nice meal and glass of wine, and your boyfriend wants to watch the game. Or you’re looking for some good music. Or you want to bring the kids along.

Business partners Michael O’Mell, Tyson Bridge, and John Kalb have spent the last four months putting all the right bells in all the right places and all the right whistles in the other right places so that you may do any or all of these things.

The three men purchased the property at 124 GE Patterson, formerly the site of the Double J Smokehouse, back in November and debuted the redesigned spot as The Vault mid-March.

Aaron Winters is now at The Vault.

“We were looking to do something, and we love the South Main area. You can tell it’s growing, and they’ll have the new movie theater and hotel coming in,” O’Mell says. “This space became available, and it was the right opportunity at the right time.”

After acquiring the space, which was originally a bank in the ’50s, complete with a still-standing vault, they stripped everything down to its bare bones, even taking out some columns and resupporting the building. They completely redid the kitchen, extended the bar six feet, repainted, and amped up the stage with new lights and new sound.

They installed TVs with their own remotes at every custom-made booth, made available an app to listen to the television on personal devices, installed charging stations along the bar, and offer the only Frost Rail in Memphis — a three-inch trough full of snow-like frost for to keep your beer cold.

And yes, they still have that killer upstairs patio in the back.

But their real secret weapon is the man behind their made-to-order pork rinds, their Cornish Game Hen, their Bacon Wrapped Chicken Roulade, and their Steak and Pommes Frites.

That would be Aaron Winters, of Porcellino’s and Miss Cordelia’s fame.

“I tried to come up with an eclectic menu with roots in Southern cuisine,” Winters, who was classically trained as a butcher in Italy, says.

He brings in produce from Wilson Farms, beef from Claybrook Farms, and catfish from Lakes Catfish.

“We’re so close to the farmers market, they’ll swing by here when they’re done, and I shop off the back of their trucks,” Winters says.

In addition to the entrees mentioned above, he offers a flat breads menu, sandwiches, starters including a daily selection of charcuterie, and an oyster menu.

“We’re getting in some really good oysters from around the country,” Winters says.

Plans include hosting crawfish boils during season and pig roasts in the fall, as well as Memphis’ favorite meal — brunch.

“Brunch is forthcoming,” O’Mell says. “We want to make sure we do a few things really well, then add more.”

Look for the building with a silver vault door on the front.

The Vault, 124 GE Patterson, 591-8000, vaultmemphis.com. Open 11 a.m. daily for lunch; dinner 5 to 10 p.m.; late-night menu 10 p.m. to close.

What’s that quote about “The day I got sacked was the best thing that ever happened to me”?

Whatever it is, it rings true for Lisa Clay Getske.

After working for Houston’s for 14 years, she went on to manage a chain restaurant that, after two years, ended up letting her go “for a less expensive, younger model.”

Clay Getske took it upon herself to leverage her experience and do her own thing.

That thing has grown into the empire that is Lisa’s Lunchbox.

And in mid-March, the empire spread to the downtown area into the former Tuscany Italian Eatery at 116 S. Front.

“It’s fantastic,” she says. “AutoZone is a big customer that’s right across the street, and it’s been fun being down here during all the festivals.”

The move had everything to do with a ServiceMaster devotee, her managing business partner, and a little luck.

“At my original location at the Ridgeway Business Center, ServiceMaster is across the street,” Clay Getske says. “My friend works at the ServiceMaster downtown, and he kept saying, ‘Hey, there’s this spot downtown.'”

That spot was Front Street Deli, which didn’t work out for Clay Getske, but thanks to her business partner, Matt Reisinger’s, thirst for water, they found the space at 116 S. Front.

“We had the keys to the Front Street Deli, but we hadn’t signed the lease,” Clay Getske says. “They were feeling a little nostalgic, and didn’t want to change the name. When Matt was down there, he went into Tuscany for a bottle of water and got to talking to [owner] Jeremy Martin, and he said, ‘Why don’t you buy this place?'”

Lisa’s Lunchbox specializes in “really good, fresh, real food,” such as her Chicken Club Panini, her “massive” BLT “with real bacon, and we’re not stingy with it,” and her spicy pimento and cheese. She also offers frozen meals to go, which will be included in the new location in May, and breakfast sandwiches and smoothies.

“We go before the beer board this week, and I think that’s something I want to offer downtown for the tourists who are walking around and want something to eat and a beer,” she says.

She also plans on staying open later eventually.

Lisa’s Lunchbox, 116 S. Front, 729-7277, lisaslunchbox.com. Open 7:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Mon.-Fri.

Tags Aaron Winters, John Kalb, Lisa Clay Getske, Lisa's Lunchbox, Michael O'Mell, The Vault, Tyson Bridge

Food & Wine Food & Drink

Aaron Winters turns Miss Cordelia’s meat counter into a craft butcher shop.

Post author By Chris Davis
Post date May 2, 2016

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

Russell Smith, Miss Cordelia’s general manager, was impressed with the store’s history as a leader in the locally sourced food movement, but felt it had missed some key opportunities.

“Having a local meat source is something I was always interested in,” Smith says. “We had the equipment. It was just a question of figuring out how to shift from conventional beef and pork that comes in a box to bringing in sides of beef and whole hogs.”

To that end, Aaron Winters is one of Smith’s secret weapons in the campaign to enhance his store’s image. Winters has been charged with transforming the store’s meat counter into a craft butcher shop stocked entirely with locally sourced meat in addition to a range of house-made sausages, salumis, and smoked delicacies ranging from bacon to spicy tasso ham.

“With his background as a chef, Aaron’s been an awesome fit,” Smith says, describing the shift from buying primal cuts to sides of beef and whole hogs. “His cooking ability allows us to use all the animal — especially with hog because of the things you cure and things you smoke.”

“We only use farmers we know,” Winters says. He’s spent time working at Claybrook Farms, Newman, and Homeplace to determine whether or not the operations are truly sustainable. “I want to know the animals have had a happy life,” he says.

Even the humble ground beef at Miss Cordelia’s is currently being processed from a dry-aged cow. “So it’s not the yuck and the trim that’s been sitting in a bag for six months,” Winters says.

Justin Fox Burks

Aaron Winters, Miss Cordelia’s secret (meat) weapon

It may not always be evident on grocery store shelves, but there’s so much more to a cow than ribeyes, strips, chuck roasts, and tenderloin. Winters’ array includes lesser-known cuts like the bavette, inside and outside skirts, and spider steaks — the stuff people don’t know because it usually ends up in grind. Similarly, Winters, who trained in Italy, breaks his pigs down in a more European fashion. Nothing goes to waste. Soup bones not being frozen and sold are roasted and turned into rich, house-made stocks. Smoked ham hocks, bacon, and maple breakfast sausage are available all the time.

“I love tasso,” says Winters, who’s made his own version of the South Louisiana delicacy a staple of Miss Cordelia’s meat counter. “People think of it as a super spicy, smoked little chunk of meat that they throw in greens or red beans. My method is a little bit different, so you can slice and put it on sandwiches without completely blowing your head off.”

Beer brats and sweet Italian sausages are kept in stock due to popular demand, but Winters is always making specialty flavors that rotate in and out and run the gamut from Cajun spice, to an Argentinian chorizo.

“I’m making head cheese, pork terrines, capicola, and chicken liver mousse pâté,” he says, announcing plans to add even more specialty items like house-made ham, finocchiona, and lardo di Colonnata.

Winters and Smith are working together to build synergy between Miss Cordelia’s meat counter and its deli. Although only a few items are currently available, a new sandwich menu is on the works. Future offerings will include a pressed Cuban sandwich with cured Cuban-style pork, sour orange, cilantro, peppers, house-made ham, and pickles.

“I want people to tell me what they want,” says Winters, who enjoys preparing custom sausages and other items for his customers.

“It’s an interesting challenge to make people forget what they think they know about us,” Smith says. “Fair or not, this store has always had a reputation for being expensive. What I’m learning, the longer I’m here, is that the thing we can’t compete on are conventional groceries. I can’t sell Cheerios the way Kroger sells Cheerios.

“But we can do stuff like this that just blows other groceries out of the water, and we can be very affordable about it.”