Next Door – Memphis Flyer

Zach Thomason knew exactly what he wanted to be when he grew up.

Sort of.

“When I was seven years old, I told my dad, ‘I want to be a Northern Italian chef, a rock star, or a doctor,'” says Thomason, 31.

Cooking was appealing. “It looked like magic. There was that science. It just popped out of a pan. I put in these ingredients, and it just developed into something really cool.”

Thomason, now a chef at Next Door Eatery, wanted to go to cooking school, but his dad nixed the idea. So, Thomason studied creative writing at the University of Tennessee in Chattanooga. He and his brother, Ben. who lived with him, worked in the kitchen at a local restaurant.

One night, Thomason covered a shift for his brother. “I was sending him these texts like, ‘Where are you? I’ve got stuff at school to do. This is ridiculous.’ I’m starting to freak out and there’s just something going on in my stomach that said, ‘Something’s off.'”

He began calling hospitals. “I finally got in touch with the Police Department and I said, ‘Sir, is Ben Thomason in your custody?’ He says, ‘Yes, sir, he is.’ And I say, ‘Well, may I speak to him?’ He said, ‘No, sir, you can’t.’ I said, ‘Well, has he been arrested?’ He said, ‘No, sir.’ I said, ‘Well, if he hasn’t been arrested and he’s in your custody I have the right to speak to him.’ He said, ‘Son, your brother is dead.'”

Thomason was stunned. “My brother borrowed my car in order to go get some dope. And on his way back, he flipped the car over the interstate and killed himself.”

He grabbed a bottle of Jameson from the bar. “My knee-jerk reaction at the time was to drink. I took it to the back dock, and it was on. It was not pretty, and it continued for a good while to come.”

Thomason continued to work at the restaurant. “I learned how to do the dance in the kitchen at that place. There is a dance when everything is working right. It’s this orchestrated movement. There’s no bumping into each other. You know what everyone is doing. It’s really beautiful.”

But, he said, “Problem was I learned this dance and I learned how to work drunk.”

He hopped around restaurants in different cities. “I think it started out as this desire to fill my brother’s shoes because he seemed to be going in this direction at a young age.”

But he “grew really passionate about it.”

Thomason went through homeless periods. “Living out of the back of a car, losing the car, living in a tent in Nashville.”

He felt “destined for death. But there was something — God, whatever, the great cosmic muffin in the sky — deemed there’s something better for me out there than what I was doing.”

Thomason went into recovery and, with his fiance, moved to Memphis. David Krog, who was executive chef at Interim, said he’d give him a job if he remained sober for six months.

“That kitchen was run as ‘We are good people first, and that’s how we are going to behave. As good people and caring people.’ I’d grown used to seeing these very cut-throat environments and sabotaging and backstabbing. I was only six months sober after years and years of drug abuse. My hands still shook. I had these people who were willing to be nurturing. They were probably getting very frustrated with me, but they nurtured me to a point where I can do things now. I can take care of myself.”

After Krog left the restaurant, Thomason went to work at the Gray Canary. He moved to Next Door, so he could work a daytime shift to spend more time with his fiance and her daughter.

“Eventually, I could want to open a pizza place. But, at the same token, I really am an artist. David has been teaching us how to do this tweezer food and make things very pretty. One day, whether it be with him or on my own, I would like to be a part of opening a restaurant that is geared toward very, very small, tight, pretty palate-encompassing plates.”

Wherever he lands, Thomason wants the kitchen to be like Interim’s when he worked there. “Be a part of a kitchen again where there is this genuine sense of care that we have for one another. It was really astonishing the way that everyone treated one another and was connected with one another. I don’t even see it outside in the real world on a normal basis let alone in a high-intensity kitchen. If I can manage to be a part of something like that again, I would do that in a heartbeat.”

“Man, these farmers are so green,” mutters Ryan Trimm, “you’d think they’d use paper bags, right?”

Moments later, he smiles and accepts a plastic bag full of plump Tennessee lady peas from Yang Farms in Toone, Tennessee. It’s Saturday morning, and we’re up bright and early, shopping for lunch at the Cooper-Young Community Farmers Market. Trimm’s daughter, 3-year-old Emma Kate, has gallantly agreed to come along and help.

“What do you want to eat, baby?” asks Trimm, boosting her up into his arms.

But Emma Kate is suddenly feeling a little shy. She blinks her glacier-blue eyes and buries her head in her father’s neck.

In addition to his many other appealing qualities, Trimm also happens to be very brave. The executive chef at Southward Fare & Libations, Sweet Grass, and Next Door, he’s agreed to be my guinea pig for the Flyer‘s very first Farmers Market Challenge. That’s where I team up with a local chef, we go shopping at the farmers market, and the chef cooks a delicious meal with what we bought.

I know, right? It’s a tough job, but somebody’s gotta eat all that delicious food.

John Minervini

Chef Ryan Trimm and daughter Emma Kate shop for peppers at the Cooper-Young Farmers Market.

Today, Trimm is taken with the peppers from Tubby Creek Farm in Ashland, Mississippi. And no wonder, these peppers are works of art. The lipstick pimentos are little rainbows, grading in color from lime green to vermilion. And the Italian sweet peppers are downright sexy, long and plump with a taut, red skin. Trimm buys a pint of each.

Before we go, we stock up on tomatoes, okra, Texas sweet onions, herbs, and a butterscotch melon. The melon — from Hanna Farms, in Osceola, Arkansas — is like a cantaloupe, but smaller, about the size of a bocce ball. It’s got a delicious caramel flavor, with a scent of gardenia.

“Smell that,” says Trimm, holding up the melon. “You just can’t find that in the grocery store.”

food Feature By John Klyce Minervini

Chef Ryan Trimm eats lunch with son Thomas and daughter Emma Kate at their home in East Memphis.

Trimm lives with his wife and two children in a spacious, two-story Georgian Revival near Park and Ridgeway. When we get to the house, Trimm’s wife Sarah is trying to soothe 3-month-old Thomas, who has been sick this morning. Sarah, who teaches first grade at St. Mary’s, says she met Ryan in high school, when she was a junior at St. Agnes and he was a senior at Christian Brothers.

“At this point, I’ve known him for over half my life,” she says, burping baby Thomas. “I still can’t get over how weird that is.”

Everybody’s getting hungry, so Trimm slices the melon, serving it with feta cheese and a bit of lemon verbena. It’s an inspired combination. The cheese is just piquant enough to balance the melon’s honeysuckle sweetness, and the citrusy lemon verbena puts an exclamation mark at the end of the sentence, so to speak.

Meanwhile, Trimm gets to work on the main course, what he playfully calls a “cornless succotash.” Succotash — from the Narragansett word for “broken corn” — is a dish that New England colonists learned from Native Americans back in the 17th century. In its simplest form, it consists of corn and lima beans, prepared with cream or butter.

Today, we’re cutting out the corn in favor of those scrumptious-looking lady peas. First, Trimm blanches the peas in boiling water. Then he fires up the sauté pan, and it’s go time. One by one, veggies start to sizzle as they hit the hot oil: pimento peppers, okra, lady peas, and herbs. Trimm cuts the heat before tossing the mixture with butter and tomatoes. (Get the full recipe at memphisflyer.com).

Finally it’s time to eat. We take our lunch in the sunroom, an airy space with a view of the family swimming pool. Alongside the succotash, Trimm serves the Italian sweet peppers, pan-roasted with parsley and garlic, and a crudité of tomatoes and onions.

“All right guys,” says Trimm, rounding up the family. “Time for lunch.”

It’s an embarrassment of culinary riches. The tomatoes — Brandywines and Cherokee Purples from Lazy Dog Farms in Bethel Springs, Tennessee — are a meal unto themselves, tangy and sweet with a perfect texture. They go well with the Italian sweet peppers, which are smoky and savory, with a hint of sweetness.

But the okra in the succotash definitely steals the show. The taste is both unforgettable and hard to describe, somewhere between eggplant and asparagus. On my way out the door, I confess that this is the first time I’ve had okra that wasn’t pickled or fried, and Trimm offers some tips for selecting okra at the farmers market.

“You really don’t want it to be any bigger than that,” he says, holding up his little finger. “Once you go bigger, the insides start to hollow out, and you get less meat for your bite.”