Cooking In Marfa | Virginia Lebermann and Rocky Barnette
Cooking In Marfa: Welcome We’ve Been Expecting You
By Virginia Lebermann and Rocky Barnette
Intro : Welcome to the number one cookbook podcast, Cookery by the Book with Suzy Chase. She's just a home cook in New York City sitting at her dining room table, talking to cookbook authors. Hi I'm Virginia Lebermann and I'm Chef Rocky Barnette of The Capri and we've come up with a book called Cooking In Marfa: Welcome We've Been Expecting You.
Suzy Chase: Dusty ranch land surrounding a tiny rural town near the Mexican border and an internationally renowned art mecca far off the beaten path is Marfa, Texas, 200 miles South of El Paso "with its ethereal high desert landscape, cavernous blue skies and views for 50 miles" as the artist Donald Judd once put it. Hotelier, philanthropists, and Ballroom Marfa co-founder, arts pioneer, Virginia Lebermann along with your partner, chef Rocky Barnette have written this wonderful tribute to your restaurant, The Capri but before I go on, let's talk about how Marfa put a shelter in place, right when COVID began and how has that affected you, and the restaurant and your life?
Virginia & Rocky: We shut the restaurant March 17. Yeah. Officially started the talks on the 13th and we have not reopened. When we initially shut due to mandates, we had a big staff meeting or a series of staff meetings really and just came together and talked to everyone about how they wanted to handle it. Yeah, it was kind of a democratic process because we were concerned first of all, about their health and then second about West Texas in general and then third, we wanted them to be a part of the decision making process. And the general consensus was that we would ride this thing out as long as we needed to and just keep everyone safe. So that's how we handled it. So nine months later, they're on their second shelter in place. The nearest hospital is 26 or seven miles away in Alpine, Texas and that hospital has two ICU beds and two ventilators and the Midland hospital and the El Paso hospital have stopped taking transfers so it's been very, very touchy for that small town.
Suzy Chase: The Capri was originally intended to be a cultural arts project housed in one of the three Adobe and steel army airfield hangers, which you bought in 2007, along with The Thunderbird motel across the street. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Virginia & Rocky: My dear friend, Fairfax Dorn and I had started Ballroom Marfa. We opened our doors in 2003 and we were bringing in artists from all over the world and commissioning new work and bringing people in to see that work. It became difficult to house people. And so I became a partner in The Thunderbird Capri Project and then ultimately bought everyone out. And we ran the Thunderbird hotel with the intention, really of focusing on housing artists for the Chinati Foundation, for Judd, for the Lannan Foundation for all the foundation projects that were bringing really serious people into town so that's how the motel happened and The Capri was actually a sister motel and we renovated it in such a way that it became more of an event space and we would have our first program there ever with ballroom was we had Sonic Youth come and play for a Chinati weekend. It was wild.
Suzy Chase: Back in the day when things were wild. I love to hear your vision to connect the food to the region, to the culture and the design of the restaurant.
Rocky Barnette: I think at the beginning, I guess with the food to the region is Virginia's mother has a ranch, seven miles West of town and going out there, there are still spots along the ranch where you can see where fires were built and there was a series of caves where you can still find arrow points and tools for grinding, cooking and cutting and so some of those have been carbon dated to be 10,000 years old. I'm like, okay, people were here 10,000 years ago. The landscape was a little different weather patterns are a little different, but what were they eating prior to dairy queen or, or
Suzy Chase: Shoney's?
Rocky Barnette: Um, so that started this line of questioning. And then Virginia inspired me greatly about this because she would say, well I used to live in Terlingua and down there and we would make prickly pear wine and we would make some bread out of mesquite bean flour and I'm like, what is all this stuff you're talking about? And so it just kind of opened up my mind to start trying to rediscover or reinvigorate a sort of way to eat in the desert without flying in seafood.
Suzy Chase: Most cookbooks that are affiliated with restaurants don't mention the design aspect at all and that's one of the lovely things about this book is you describe it in great detail. How do you create spatial fluidity in a perfectly rectangular box? That's the question of the day?
Virginia & Rocky: You section a little bit of it off because it's a large box. When we called Sean Daley, who is a very dear and very old friend to ask him to participate in the project. I had a little narrative that I had woven in my own head to share with him about where we wanted to go with the space and it was about the old mercantile stores on the border and in Southeast Texas, where I up were really the center of social activity for these ranchers and farmers. I think in the book, I say, you could buy a can of Folgers coffee and maybe a broom if things are flush and some twine to tie some things together, but really it was all about sitting on the front porch and talking about your neighbors and talking about the weather and that's sort of the feeling that we wanted there, a historical reference with some modern edges to the texture, to the materials.
Suzy Chase: In the book you wrote. "There's a magic that bar stools can make when they're all lined up perfectly and make a sculptural statement."
Virginia & Rocky: That is my Virgo coming out. I love to walk in to the restaurant and these beautiful turquoise leather bar stools in a line, make my heart swoon. If they're not lined up she starts twitching and screaming about centipedes. A part of the design too was that Sean Daly pulled a lot of colors from the landscape, like he pulled colors from not the foliage in the spring when it was bright and vibrant but the foliage in the winter when it was a little dull and so that would be some colors of the curtains and then they were brightened up by the barstools themselves. And so it's a really good contrast.
Suzy Chase: Where exactly did you two grow up?
Virginia & Rocky: I grew up on my family's ranch in Southeast, Texas on the Gulf coast, went to school in Austin, which is certainly the bastion of progressive thought in the state of Texas. So that's where I am proper Texans. I'm seventh generation. And I, well, I was born in Asheville. I was part of a military family. So I also lived in Fort Huachuca Arizona for four years, and then Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and then back to Hendersonville area and then went to culinary school, Asheville.
Suzy Chase: So Virginia, you went to Nepal when you were 19. Did your family think you were crazy or were they all for it?
Virginia Lebermann: They thought I had absolutely lost my mind. That was pre cell phones. So I would send a postcard home that would take three or four weeks to get there. They thought I was absolutely mad, but I went through a program with Brown University and it was a life changing experience on every level for me, as you might expect.
Suzy Chase: Then in your twenties, you spent time in Africa and then you traveled around Europe and did all the things, but you say your travels in Mexico have always had the most profound reverberations for you. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Virginia Lebermann: You know, I think that the antiquity that exists in Mexico is so much more vibrant to me personally than even the antiquities of Greece or Rome and it is on the same landmass that I grew up on. You know, you can sit on the back porch at the ranch and you're looking down into Mexico and that connection to the land, but then the real mystery for me of the Mayans and the Aztecs and what they were eating before the Spaniards came has just always been really exciting to me and I think it has to do with proximity a lot of it, you know.
Suzy Chase: And you wrote in the book "out here you can drive for hours and often never see a vehicle, I find that thrilling" you wrote and I imagine it was the same way in Mexico.
Virginia Lebermann: Oh yeah. And Nepal and Africa, there's definitely a thread. There's something that I love about that feeling that you're the first, albeit an illusion let's be clear, but that you're the first to be there sort of.
Suzy Chase: Rocky, I want to hear all about Evelyn Juanita Barnette.
Rocky Barnette: That was my great-grandmother. So I'm from Appalachia. Everybody starts procreating very young there apparently. So my mother had just turned 16 when she had me and so she was working a lot and still trying to go to school and so I was essentially raised by my great-grandmother for the first three years of my life and then from the time I was seven til she died when I was 20. And so she was an old Southern lady. She had 13 siblings, grew up in the great depression through every single war and she and my great-grandfather, the front of the two-story house was right on the highway and they turned it into a produce stand because it had a giant garden in the back, and that was their business. He was a mechanic across the street at a truck line, and then he, and she would both run the produce stand on a daily basis. So it was like a mini farmers market.
Suzy Chase: Was she a good cook?
Rocky Barnette: Yeah. Pretty good.
Suzy Chase: Do you think that's where you got your culinary skills from your innate culinary skills?
Rocky Barnette: Yeah, sort of like inspiration because my mother is going to be ashamed said this, but she's not the best cook in the world but I was inspired by my great-grandmother and what I started doing... She started getting sick when I was a teenager because she was old. So I started trying to recreate things that she would make before I went to culinary school.
Suzy Chase: Before culinary school, your mom finagled a job for you at Shoney's when you were 13. Right. And Shoney's is so much better than Denny's.
Rocky Barnette: Yeah. It's funny that that Shoney's that I've worked at then got bought out by Denny's and I was like, I don't want to work there anymore.
Suzy Chase: So you made money to buy Nintendos and sneakers, and then you moved on to Chico Tacos and Henderson, North Carolina, where you were hired by the German owner, Kurt Markel, who sort of took you under his wing and suggested books for you to read. Then you made your way down to Mexico with a friend of the family's name, Ray who owned a fruit packing business, apple orchards, and a trucking line. Fast forward to your first culinary epiphany in Mexico. Can you tell us about that?
Rocky Barnette: I think my only understanding of Mexican food at that time was like TexMex sort of things and even though I worked in what I thought was a Mexican restaurant for three years, but I was high up in the mountains, like the Sierra Occidental Mexico and we were eating beans every day and they were firing fresh tortillas at every meal and you would have a salsa or onions or something with it but when I was at home growing up with my grandmother your traditional Appalachian meal is pinto beans, cornbread, and chopped up vidalia onion and you wound up eating that a lot because it's inexpensive. So I felt right at home. I was like, well, I must be Mexican.
Suzy Chase: So, this cracked me up. So you get back to North Carolina three months later and your mom is freaking out.
Rocky Barnette: Oh yeah. So this was also the time when there weren't cell phones, no nothing there's no police, running water, postal service, phones, like you'd have to drive an hour down the mountain to use a payphone.
Suzy Chase: Did she think you just died or something?
Rocky Barnette: Yeah. She she was beside herself. She was like trying to call the national guard and they're like, yeah, we, sorry, can't help you.
Suzy Chase: Oh, your poor mom.
Rocky Barnette: She thought I was going for a week and I thought I was going for a week or two and then it turned out to be about three months.
Suzy Chase: We just talked about how you started your culinary career at Shoney's. So did it blow your mind when you got the internship at the famed Inn at little Washington in Virginia?
Rocky Barnette: It was so new and so refreshing and so foreign and so exotic to me that I was just so happy to be there, that I was willing to do anything that they told me to do like go wash the dog, wash somebody's car, go do this, polish this, work 16 hours a day. Yes, yes, yes. And I don't mean any of that as a bad thing. I was so excited to be there and I found it so thrilling, no matter how hard the work was or how long the hours were, because I'd never smelled things like that and never seen things like that. I mean I never tasted French butter before. My grandmother loved produce and she loved food and she was a great cook, but we didn't use fresh herbs in anything. I'd never tasted fresh herbs and I was 20 years old. And so I learned what they call the traditional brigade system it's like the chef is the chef and then everybody trickles down from there. And I was happy to have just been able to start anywhere. And I started as a dishwasher.
Suzy Chase: Then you wind up catering shows at The Capri, really thinking about something that you could do for the community you wrote in the book, you had no courage or capital only compunction. How did the idea come about?
Rocky Barnette: Well, I'd spoken to Virginia like a few years before, cause I was doing catering events for Ballroom Marfa or I'd like deliver some soup to her house. I had a job at the time, but it was boring to me so she started talking about how she originally intended to have a kitchen at The Capri and we talked about it and I looked at some plans and then we started dating and then she had a captain who could exact your plans. And she intended to do that. That's what I say. Yeah.
Suzy Chase: Yeah. In the book Virginia wrote "eventually it all came together we had a classically trained chef on the loose in the culinary challenged town of Marfa we had a town with a lack of great restaurants and incredible adobe structure sitting empty without its next story, we had a match made in heaven" Virginia. Can you tell us about that?
Virginia Lebermann: The Capri had been used for some music shows and things like that with Chinati Foundation and Judd and Ballroom, and then people had rented it here and there for events, but it's such a gorgeous building and sits on such a beautiful piece of property in the middle of town. I just felt like ballroom needed its extension and it needed to be a culinary extension, sort of a laboratory to think about where we live. And Rocky seemed like the perfect person, the force to do that with me.
Suzy Chase: Like you two have complimentary super powers that when they come together, it makes for something crazy amazing.
Virginia Lebermann: And that's very generous of you to say.
Suzy Chase: Virginia, the subtitle of this book is Welcome, We've Been Expecting You. And that phrase is sprinkled all throughout the book. What does that phrase mean?
Virginia Lebermann: So that happened when I did call Sean Daley, our friend and designer of The Capri to tell him this crazy story of mercantiles along the border and what we wanted it all to feel like I spoke for, you know, seven or eight minutes. And without missing a beat, Sean Daley had just responded from dead silence to welcome we've been expecting you. And I said, yeah, you get it. And he's like done I'm on board. I want to be a part of it. So it's on the matchbooks that we have at The Capri. We kind of use it. It's the spirit, the essence of what we're trying to accomplish and what we're trying to have the space feel like that you walk in and you take that sigh of relief because you know, somebody is there who is interested in taking care of you.
Suzy Chase: And I heard your drinks come fast, you don't have to wait long for a drink.
Virginia Lebermann: You don't, we impress that on the boys for sure and the ladies.
Suzy Chase: Virginia Food & Wine said you're at the heart of the more recent design and hospitality movement in Marfa. Do you think design and hospitality as a concept will change post COVID or do you think it's going to go all back to normal the way it used to be?
Virginia & Rocky: I think that is such an incredibly profound and wonderful question and it's so hard to answer. I think it's what everyone in the restaurant business and the design world are. Everyone's talking about that right now. What has become superfluous? What is still sort of mandatory for the essence of our human spirit in terms of design and culinary endeavors. I have a handful of chef friends from restaurants throughout the United States at this point, and there's one thing that there's this epiphany that they've had where it's like, you know what? I kind of liked this model of people pre-ordering and then we go put it out on the sidewalk and they just like drive by and pick it up without stopping like logistically it's easier to control in a certain sort of way doing delivery where it's like the reinvention of the takeout window but at the same time, what you worry about is when you grow up in restaurants and you love going to restaurants, there's the possibility that, well, you're absolutely going to lose a bunch of restaurants that used to love to go to. And there's a possibility that if it changes too much, you won't be able to go to a restaurant in the way that you did before. And it's not a natural chain of evolution. I don't think it's good for restaurants like Daniel Boulud's restaurant at restaurant, Daniel in New York like I think those things have a purpose in life and Jean-Georges and La Bernadin but these places with these tablecloths, these things like 11 Madison Park has its place, but also every single dive bar and every ethnic restaurant in Queens, like everything has its place in the grand scope. But if it all becomes about the bottom line and how to control inventory and staff hours and all of that, then you've lost the community aspect and the human aspect. Can you imagine all of the ideas? The only design will be what kind of box you get your food? Right? I mean, all the ideas that have happened from the community of restaurants, the poetry that's been written, the paintings on the walls, restaurants and design, and all of these things are such a steadfast place. Spilling sauce on a velvet chair.
Suzy Chase: I know I miss going to this bar here in the West Village and listening to the jukebox, sitting at the bar, talking to some rando who probably has an amazing story and listening to some Lynrd Skynryd.
Rocky Barnette: Where are you going Blue Smoke?
Suzy Chase: No it's called WXOU on Hudson.
Virginia Lebermann: Fantastic. Well, I miss that too.
Suzy Chase: There's that scene in the movie giant where Elizabeth Taylor is welcomed to town with a huge party of barbecued meat. What principles of West Texas hospitality do you to embrace?
Virginia Lebermann: The largesse of it all. Though certainly the excess is a trademark style of any Texan who entertains. We talk about that in the book where you walk in and if, if you are a known quantity and loved by Rocky, he comes out of the plating room and has the entire restaurant clap for you.
Suzy Chase: I love that.
Virginia & Rocky: It's really fabulous and it is embarrassing and very warm and funny at the same time. That's really an appropriately posed question cause you say welcome to town. The last thing you want to do as a guest is to arrive somewhere and feel like, what are you doing here? So you want people to say here put this down your gullet, sit down.
Suzy Chase: I saw the Donald Judd exhibit at MoMA last week and I got to thinking, did Donald Judd influence Marfa or did Marfa influence Donald Judd?
Virginia Lebermann: I'm not a Judd scholar. So I'm always a little bit anxious about speaking to a few, simply about what I think happened with Judd but you know, he was influenced by the landscape. It was there where he had the space to create these enormous bodies of work and have them installed in a way that had a relationship with a forever landscape. And conversely, he put Marfa on the map very slowly. You know, when I first started going to Marfa as an adult who was sort of aware of the art world, the people who were there to see Chinati and the Judd installations they were from Germany, they were from all over Europe we never saw a Texan, hardly ever, and a flash of New Yorkers. It's been a very slow process. I mean, if you, if you're touched by the art world at all, you know who Donald Judd is. And so that in turn affects the tourist base in Marfa and the tourist economy there,
Suzy Chase: The construction and design of this book is a work of art. Speaking of art can you tell us a little bit about the look and feel of the book
Virginia & Rocky: I happen to be holding in my hand right now. We were introduced through a friend, Jess Hundley who was sort of an external advisor and editor on the book. She's from Los Angeles and has worked on many, many, many books. And she introduced us to a designer called Brian Roettinger, who also based in LA and is actually quite famous for his album covers and wins Grammy's for those and we loved Brian's work. Then we asked Phaidon if they would break with protocol a bit and use a designer that we introduced them to and they very patiently and kindly said yes and so Brian came out to Marfa. I understand is quite different from many books where usually the designer is far away and perhaps doesn't ever see the space or the restaurant or the town or the region. And so Brian got to come out and this is where I think he created a journal. It's a travel journal, the quality of the paper Douglas's photography, which we haven't even touched on yet it's just amazing. The incredible food styling by Rocky Barnette but Douglas the photographer who is also a dear friend. It was a wonderful project because we were also close, but Douglas has a house in Marfa and he has become quite a famous photographer in his own right but did this project very much out of love for all of us and for Marfa and we worked on this photography for a year, we would work on it every time he came in to town just to come home from being on the road. So I think it has that feeling of, oh, it's very personal. Yea Doug is one of the most incredibly effective and professional people I've ever worked with.
Suzy Chase: So Rocky, I'm dying to hear about your famous guac.
Rocky Barnette: What do you want to know about it?
Suzy Chase: Well, why is it so famous?
Rocky Barnette: I don't know. I guess people really like it. I think, I guess it tastes good. I grew up mostly in Asheville, North Carolina, and there are a lot of vegetarian restaurants and they're really good and there's a lot of good produce around there. When I first started going to school, we were going to vegetarian restaurants or Mexican restaurants and I've learned about what foie gras was seared foie gras I was like why couldn't I do that with an avocado? And so then I was like, well, I'm here in Texas 20 years later might as well grill these avocados. And the strangest thing is that my Italian sous chef at the Inn at Little Washington, his name is Raphael De La Huerta is the one that taught me to make guacamole. I never knew how to make guacamole, but he taught me things like sneak a little cumin in and use some really fine extra virgin olive oil. And well maybe I'll add some extra lime juice and finally grill the avocados like my vegan foie gras dream and then it turned into guacamole and everybody wants to eat it all the time. And it's painful to have to produce. And in Texas if you don't have guacamole and a steak, you're just in big trouble.
Suzy Chase: I made your recipe for Watermelon Radishes with Habanero Vinegar, Aged Balsamic and Lime on page 100. Can you describe this recipe?
Rocky Barnette: We started the restaurant in November and we started serving food in January. We're in the middle of the desert and the only thing that I could get that was like resembling a vegetable was watermelon radishes and we had habanero's and we had pickled watermelon rind that I've made before and balsamic. So it was like, well, I'm gonna try to recreate a carpaccio. It pretty simple in my mind, but it just turned out to taste pretty good. The locals got sick of it after about six months to a year. By June, still the only vegetable we can get is without mail ordering something was a watermelon radish, but it was just kind of a sort of take on watermelon on watermelon on watermelon in terms of a carpaccio and just trying to bring out as much flavor as possible.
Suzy Chase: Now for my segment called Last Night's Dinner, where I ask you what you had last night for dinner.
Rocky Barnette: So glad that I can tell the truth. I made Crab Fried Rice, my new thing that I like to do with Nantucket Bay Scallops. Now that we're not in the desert anymore for this moment. And Nantucket Bay scallops are in season right now. And so I use sushi grade rice, and then I just try and chop up every kind of vegetable that I can find and then folding in the crab meat. And then I like to cook bay scallops with just fresh parsley, butter and fresh squeezed lemon or pink lemons, which we had recently and I don't mean to be a show off, but, um, and I call the crab fried rice, the mashed potatoes and the Nantucket Bay scallops become the gravy and so you put one on top of the other and it's just really light and refreshing cooked in coconut oil and a lot of ginger and garlic and onions and everything kind of comes together if I do it right, and don't drink too much while I'm cooking.
Virginia Lebermann: Suzy, I eat a lot of Rocky's food and that Crab Fried Rice, I can't believe it. We were at a friend's house last night and he was making it for Gordon and Gordon stood up after his first bite and marched into the kitchen was like, this is legendary, what is this? It's pretty special.
Suzy Chase: So where can we find you on the web and social media?
Virginia & Rocky: So we're @CapriMarfa on Instagram. And we do not have a website at all. We still use a quill pen. haha We're pretty simple,The Capri remains a secret.
Suzy Chase: Well now I'm officially obsessed with Marfa. I cannot thank you enough for coming on Cookery by the Book podcast.
Virginia & Rocky: We are honored. You are so sweet to have us. Thank you so much. And we are indeed honored.
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