We’re here with Chef Jabari Wadlington, the executive chef at Mount Ida. Can you tell me a little bit about how you were raised and that may have impacted or influenced your culinary world?
I’m originally from Los Angeles, an only child to my mom, about five generations from Los Angeles. We’ve been there for a long time, lived out there in the early nineties and we moved from LA to northern Virginia about a year and a half, two years after the riots–The LA riots and the big 6.6 earthquake. And my mom was a single mother, so she worked for the government at the time. She had an opportunity to take us out of the hood, essentially. And that’s how we ended up in Virginia. Back in ’96, we moved out here and we ended up moving to Fairfax.
Food was something that was always on the back end for me, but it was never something I thought that I would be doing for a career. I followed in the footsteps of where my mom was at. She worked for Halliburton and Boeing and the military- air force, civilian and contracts like that.
You thought you were going to go into government?
Yeah, I was going to go into the Air Force, become a pilot. That was my whole thing. I was literally obsessed with planes. Obsessed.
You said food was always in the picture. At what point did that overtake the…planes?
It changed in college. My grandmother always cooked for the neighborhoods in LA. She made pecan pies, carrot cakes, all sorts of stuff. And our family wasn’t the typical African-American-style soul food, southern cuisine thing. My grandma cooked Chinese food. She’d bring out the wok and all that stuff where she would be making all different types of food. I was her little sous chef and doing little fruit carvings and things like that. It was sick. I always cooked with her.
Your grandma was your primary influence as far as getting into the kitchen?
Food was always something that brought our families together. Whether she cooked or we went out to a restaurant, Mexican food was my comfort food. Mexican food ended up being the first cuisine. My first cookbook that I ever bought was El Cholo, which is a restaurant in LA. And my grandmother went there all the time. Since I was a little kid, we’d go there. Birthdays, all that stuff, we would go to El Cholo. Even to this day I remember how, if it was busy and it was an hour wait, and they saw my grandmother they were like, “Oh, Beverly, come on in, we got a table for you.” I remember that place, they loved my grandmother a lot.
Was there one special dish that you enjoyed more than any other, or just the whole of Mexican cuisine?
Enchiladas are my thing. I would always change up from time to get the green sauce or the mole sauce. And I always get an extra enchilada because it’s never enough. In LA, the beautiful thing is they have burger stands and burrito stands everywhere–this was before the food trucks and the taco carts and everything, so everyone had their burrito stand spot. And everybody’s burritos were different. That’s always something that always stuck out with me. I remember as a kid having the ice cream trucks come around and getting the Chamoy treats. [Mexican food] is what makes me comfortable, and that’s how I always gauge whenever I come into a new area, I look to see, where’s the Mexican food? When Michoacán opened up, I was, this is as close as I’m gonna get, you know? And then that ice cream place, the one on Fifth Street. It had all the treats and I thought, oh, I’m at home! And I’m seeing the piñatas on the ceiling, that’s everywhere in LA.
[Mexican cuisine] has always been my goal–especially when it comes to comfort food. Then I branched off into Cajun. I really got into it, because when I started looking at food, it was Paul Prudhomme and then it was Emeril Lagasse. Because that was what we were seeing a lot. Paul Prudhomme is a chef out of New Orleans. He was one of the chefs that worked at Commander’s Palace. Which worked with the Brenan’s–I think her name was Ella Brenan. She’s basically the godmother of Cajun even as far as service, the whole process of having a busser, a food runner. That was her. The whole [way of] utilizing people to run food–that was all her and that was at Commander’s Palace. Eggs Benedict was her creation, in New Orleans.
So, that was Commander’s Palace. Then, I started looking at Emeril Lagasse. My next cookbook after the Cholos cookbook was one of Emeril’s books.
I started learning about Cajun cuisine and started practicing and doing a lot of that type of food. At that time, I was just doing it for fun. You know, there’s this one of my friend’s mothers. Oh man, what’s her name? Oh, I called her mom because she always had my back. She bought me my first pan. Whenever I was wanting to do any recipes, she’d be like,”Come over. I’ll buy the ingredients and you can come cook.”
I used to see how food brings people together. I remember one day all my friends were at the pool and I was like, oh, let me spark the grill up. And I made ribs and barbecue and I brought it over to the pool in the summertime and everybody came out–because at that time there was no phones, right? So, it was word of mouth for you to smell it as you’re walking down the street. And then people would talk about it. “Oh, you’re missing it! Jabari brought all this food over.” Even to this day, if you talk to a lot of my old friends in Northern Virginia, they always say, “Jabari knew how to cook.” It was not so much that I knew how to cook. I just used it to have fun and bring people together. Even when it came to trying to break the ice with the ladies, “Hey, you want to make some chocolate covered strawberries?” Just breaking the ice. I’ve used that throughout my career and life. Even though I cooked a lot, I never really thought of doing it as a career.
My original goal was to–I went to Tuskegee University, studied aeronautical engineering, I was in the Air Force ROTC, and then something just clicked. I was a terrible test taker. I barely got into that university, and I talked myself out of it after the ASFAT test. A lot of times the Air Force makes you take an ASFAT–which is basically an entrance exam– and based on how you place, that’s your job. So if I want to be a pilot and if I don’t pass 95 or above…
That’s just it for you?
It just messed with my head a little bit. And I always said, after I retire out of the Air Force, I want to open a restaurant. And that’s when a lot of things went on. And serendipitously, I was online, I was just browsing culinary schools. And I was like, what’s the best culinary school? And then that’s when I looked at where did Emeril Lagasse go to school? Emeril Lagasse is the chef that was on Food Network. He was–I don’t know if you remember–the chef that always saying BAM! BAM! He was really big on Food Network. And he had a lot of restaurants in New Orleans in the French Quarter.
I looked at where he went to school, and I thought, you know what? Let’s go there. And then I ended up transferring from Tuskegee to Johnson and Wales in Charlotte.
Did you get to work under Legasse?
I did not, but I did get a chance to work under his old sous chef that had a couple restaurants. At Johnson and Wales you have to have an internship, and I did my internship in New Orleans. I worked in the French Quarter for a couple months and that was pretty fun. It was a lot of fun.
I can imagine getting your shift drink on Bourbon Street…
We’re literally in the quarter and you can look out the window, you just see people. It doesn’t even have to be Mardi Gras. Saturdays, Fridays, Tuesdays–it was just amazing. And New Orleans is what solidified me with food. I was there probably about two years, three years, after Katrina so people are still in FEMA trailers, people are still–they’re holding on, you know. Food and music in that town is so strong. The way that it just brings people up despite everybody being displaced and living in trailers, and everyone still has a smile on their face, and everyone’s still cooking.
Your belief about food bringing people together that you had already seen.
And so having that too, I stuck with those two styles. Mexican food’s always been my main foundation. I’ve branched into Peruvian a little bit. My favorite place in town is Inca Grill, on the [UVa] Corner. And it’s probably the closest to [authentic] Peruvian food I’ve ever had. The pulpa, they have this octopus dish that is just, oh my god, to die for and they make their own chicha morada. It’s a purple corn drink.
Oh, yes, I’ve made that before!
It’s so good. The Lomo Saltado, Huancaina–all their different flavors. So, I started learning a little bit more about different Latin cuisines. Peruvian, Venezuelan, Colombian, Central American and learning. I grew up on Mexican tamales, which is just meat and masa, and then, in Central American tamales, they put the whole damn chicken wing in there!
Raisins, potatoes, everything!
I’m learning all these different nuances. My mom’s husband is from Jamaica, so I started learning from him [about] Caribbean food and Jamaican food and that’s where I started taking my cuisine. I’m New Southern, and the way I describe it is “southern food with roots.” So it’s from when we were here and the influence that makes what soul food and southern food it is today.
Cajun food is a mix of Native American, French, West African and Caribbean influences all merged into one so what I took it is all the stuff that I’ve learned throughout the years and highlighting that so learning a little bit more West African learning a lot more Caribbean and seeing the difference between Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Jamaica, and understanding they all have rice and pea dishes they’re all different. Puerto Ricans make it a little different, the Dominican Republic makes oxtails but it’s different.
I take what I’ve learned from Mexican and Caribbean and Cajun, I create my own style now so you see even on my menu, I had tacos on the menu at farm bell but I would make our own tortilla but I would add sweet potatoes to it to make it southern so it would be a sweet potato masa and I would make that and then put braised oxtail in it, so I would bridge the gap between all the cultures. I’ll do variations of it to create different dishes.
I’m really big into sauces. [For] Valentine’s Day we did an osso buco and before that, for restaurant week, we did espresso braised short ribs with guajillo demi glaze. We take the demi from short ribs and incorporate the guajillo pepper so you get that smokiness from the guajillo and then add that into the espresso braised short ribs, so you have a little bit of that Latin flair and the southern flair all together. That’s my style now. I branch into a little Asian influence once in a while because that’s fun, too.
A lot of our dishes, our menu here, it’s eclectic if you were to break it down. One dish, my cauliflower dish, it’s more Japanese forward, as we make Karaji flour, which is a Japanese flour that has malt powder, potato starch, tempura flour, soy powder, and it’s very light, crispy.
And we get yuzu and kosho–which is a pepper–and then we make a sauce out of that with ginger and garlic. So you see Asian influence. We have one of our burgers–the Southern Smash, where we make a chow chow–which is a South Carolina southern food of preserved vegetables with cabbage, turmeric, mustard, ginger, green tomatoes, jalapeños. We braise and make our own jerk pork belly, and then we smoke it, slice it, and then make a jerk bacon. We put our beef, jerk bacon, chow chow, all on the burger.
That sounds amazing. So, with culinary trends and styles that are always changing, what do you think is something that will never go out of style or something that’s more timeless?
What’s probably going to slowly go away is just the standalone cuisine–French, Italian, Korean. I think now you’ve seen such a fusion of flavors that have slowly made their way into our cuisine. If you go to Italy, you’re cooking for a lot of Italians. If you’re going to Japan, you’re cooking for a lot of Japanese. You come to America, you’re cooking for Indians, Africans, Central Americans, Spanish, Mexicans–a melting pot of different cultures.
To be successful you have to be versatile, and constantly learning and adjusting is something that I think will happen. We have a Hawaiian restaurant on Fifth Street, so learning how to make dishes with spam that everyone in Hawaii eats. So that’s where I feel it’s going is more the fusion route and just being not complacent to one thing.
A lot of food trends change every year and what I noticed is with the trends is that it’s getting more rooted. People are going back to fermenting, to pickling, making their own bitters, making their own syrups– things that they did years ago. Everyone’s become more awake to how things are being processed. So now people are learning–not just the guests and the clientele—people have got [sourdough] starters in the house. People didn’t know how to make a sourdough starter before.
Going back to your roots.
Yes. Learning how to be versatile and showcasing that is what’s going to set you apart. Saying “Hey we make our own ice cream here,” people will be able to acknowledge “They’re getting ingredients from there, they’re getting this from there, and they’re making it.”
Ten years ago it was farm to table this, farm to table that, but at the end of the day we’re all doing it anyway…
That’s not quite enough anymore?
Right. You don’t even have to say it anymore because you have to be able to be versatile in that type of cuisine, constantly learning.
I’m never complacent. I am pretty humble as a chef. I never feel like I know everything. I feel I’m constantly having to learn something else or learn from someone else. I always find myself online looking at other countries, what they’re eating, what kinds of comfort foods they make. That’s how I put the dots on a lot of things and go, “Oh shit, I didn’t know they had a rice dish just like they do.”
Finding the similarities as well as the differences. How dishes are made differently, what spices they are using to create those differences…
And if you’re able to utilize that and learn, you’re able to grow your clientele, because then you’re not just getting one type of person to come try your food. You’re getting a multitude of different types of people, “Oh snap, what’s he gonna do this time?”
So that’s always been my thing, I have fun with the food, and I don’t like doing what everybody else is doing.
Keep them guessing.
Exactly.
What’s it being Executive Chef at Mount Ida? How do you manage running a kitchen while developing new dishes and cultivating your creativity in the kitchen?
Being at Mount Ida is beautiful. It’s nice to have what we have here that no one else does. We’re raising our own cattle. We have our own cattle on the property. Instead of ordering beef from a purveyor where I don’t know where [the beef] came from, I know where our cows came from. I know what they ate. They partake of a lot of our byproducts from our beer. The malt and the rye and the barley that’s used goes to the cows.
So it’s self-sufficient, a farm coming full circle.
And, you know, the meats that we smoke, we smoke off of the woods that are surrounding us. We go around and we look for hickory trees that are good, we tag them, we cut them down, we dry them, and then we use them for smoking, we cut down our oak. We use hickory and oak that’s off of the property.
And then through the season, we have chestnut trees on the property. We have black walnut trees on the property. So when the walnuts are dropping and the chestnuts are dropping, we’re utilizing those in our specials. We have something that not a lot of restaurants in this area,–I would say most of Virginia–have. I think that puts us at a different echelon compared to what everybody else is doing. And it keeps us able to be able to control our costs a little bit better too, because we’re utilizing what we have.
Yeah, I mean that’s a full farm to table. That’s the selling point for me, that brought me here, that, and the view.
As the executive chef, I just look at it as a learning opportunity, to teach and just get the next generation ready because I’m not going to be here forever. So just showcasing what I do, and teaching the next chefs in the future.
The professional kitchen–back of house and front of house–can be super demanding and stressful. And it can have a lot of high pressure. How do you maintain your composure and inspire and teach your team during that rush when you’ve got 100 orders coming up?
I’ve always told myself–especially being in this industry–emotions work like dominoes. If you–especially when everything’s stressful and it’s high volume, you’re hitting everything–it’s up to me to keep my composure and keep [staff] composed. If I’m irate, if I’m stressed out, they’re going to be irate and stressed out. That’s the biggest thing with me is just maintaining patience and understanding, and not doing it the old school way and yelling and screaming all the time and creating an environment that makes people not want to come back to work.
There’s a book, Water for Chocolate, and this one part of the book, she’s cooking for the family–I believe it’s for a wedding–and she’s baking a cake and she’s going through these emotions.
Oh, her tears!
Yeah, her tears go into the cake and then everybody starts crying. And I’ve always taken that one part into what I’m doing. If I’m happy and I love what I’m doing and my staff is happy, the guests are going to have a good experience. If my staff’s unhappy, they’re stressed out, if I’m stressed out and I’m unhappy, the food’s going to reflect that.
You feel that, yeah.
And that’s going to translate into the guest’s experience. I’ve always tried to be composed. To the point where sometimes my cooks and servers will be, “Jabari never really gets upset.” If I do get upset, they’re like ,”Oh my God, something must be really wrong!”
So, you’re not a hot head, okay.
No, no, no, no.
That’s a wonderful quality to have. I’ve definitely worked with the other spectrum, the feared chef. Do not talk to Chef. Do not look at Chef.
I don’t like having to work like that because it makes people uncomfortable. I’ve probably yelled a handful of times in my career. I don’t like making people feel like that, or making them feel less than who they are as an individual. Because at the end of the day we’re all going towards the same goal. We all have that vision. And not derailing that with emotions is what I try not to do.
A little birdie told me you were in some cooking competitions, mainly Guy’s grocery games. What was that experience like?
It was a lot of fun. I won the first time and then I did a championship competition with all previous winners. The first one was a frozen food fight competition. The next one was a Thanksgiving competition, where we had to cook a Thanksgiving feast in 60 minutes or something like that. Oh my gosh. It was insane.
What was the weirdest ingredient in the first one with the frozen foods?
I think I did frog legs.
You did frog legs, and won with frog legs! That’s pretty impressive!
Fried frog legs with Cajun hash potatoes.
Had you ever cooked frog legs before?
No. I’d eaten frog legs before, but I never put them on a menu or say, oh, I’m going to go buy frog legs, we’re going eat them at home.
And then the second time coming back and being asked to come back. I mean, even if you didn’t win, that’s an amazing opportunity.
I tied for second. The first round, I messed up. I cut my hand and I was behind, and my dish wasn’t really where it needed to be. But I was still able to persevere and just keep going and I just came strong in the second round. It was just a beautiful experience.
Did you take anything from that experience that you still applied to your daily life or your kitchen now?
I think embracing the now and not taking the little stuff for granted. Being there, a lot of the chefs that lost were all upset. Look, we’d already won before. The fact we literally just competed against champions. The people that I was competing with had multiple restaurants, multiple awards in their cities and states. Being able to see that commonality between us and different chefs from all over the country and just putting them all in one area is just amazing, just meeting so many chefs. And Guy Fieri, who always has celebrity chefs there, and I have met so many chefs. And it’s just understanding how humble some of the ones at the top really are, you know? It opened my mind to it. I think before the show, I was over it. I was burnt out, and I was just like, I don’t want to do this anymore. And winning made me have a second wind.
Opening restaurants and trying to be successful, and trying to convince people to eat your food, and pay you money. Especially when you’re creating the menus. When you’re creating the experience. And if you’re not bringing people in, you’re not making money, it can be a little daunting, it can be a little defeating. A lot of that over the years was just beating me up a little bit and then I would always say oh no my food’s not good enough, it’s why no one’s coming in, I kept putting so much on myself.
The show definitely made me feel a lot better about myself and understanding from all celebrities. Heather B–who used to be a rap artist with Biggy Down production, with KRS One and all that–she follows me on Instagram. Basically, strangers and all these people that say “Oh we saw you [the show], you did such a good job.” Strangers that I didn’t even meet, congratulating me and things that. It’s a beautiful thing. Even after the show, I still feel down sometimes, but the show–which comes on randomly–and then it’s a second wind of people are like, “Hey, I saw you,” and it’s awesome.
If I ever won on a TV show, I would not let anybody forget it…Do you have any tips on anyone that wants to elevate their cooking or who want to pursue a career as a chef?
Now I would answer that in probably two parts. I think the first part is if you want to learn, just go out and do it. Try something different. Don’t just say, oh, this is what I like.
I think what’s made me successful is, if I see something new, I’m going to get it. Even if I go to the Asian market or to the international market, I might buy something I haven’t gotten before. And I’m going to try and learn how to cook it, and I’m going to taste it. So You don’t hold yourself inside a box. Always be open. Even if you don’t know what it’s going to taste like and you say you’re not going to like it, at least try it.
And don’t beat yourself up if you don’t nail it the first time. It took me almost eight years to solidify my gumbo recipe, but practice makes perfect. And the more you cook and the more you learn, the better you get. So don’t beat yourself up because if you don’t get it right the first time. Especially if you’re baking. A lot of people say, “My bread didn’t come out.” Try again. Keep trying, you’ll get there. Anybody that wants to pursue this career, you need to understand–and this is not so much telling you not to do it–but if you’re not passionate and this is not what you want to do, don’t do it.
It’s not for the weak. I’ve heard that from many chefs, and just in the hospitality industry in general…
There’s going to be days that you’re just crushed, and you got to hold on to that fire. Whatever is pushing you to be in this industry, hold on to that, and let that be your fuel. Whether it’s bringing people together, whether it’s creating something, whether it’s being artistic, use that as a way to drive you in this industry. But don’t do it because you see it on TV, or you think you can do it, or you see somebody who’s really successful as a chef. Don’t do it for those reasons. Because if you do you’re just going to get eaten alive. My biggest advice would be to be humble and understand that you don’t know everything, and you never will.
I think there’s a certification program. It’s a world master chef program, the ACF. And it’s basically knowing all the cuisines in the world. And there’s probably a handful of chefs that have that master chef title. And even then, they’re still learning. They’re still learning new things. Just knowing how many languages there are in the world should tell you that, hey, there’s a lot for you to learn.
That’s a good life lesson, too.
Yeah. That would be my biggest advice.
Is there anything else you’d like to add?
Come to Mt. Ida! We’re always doing events and we’re definitely trying to put Mount Ida on the map. We want to let people know we’re here and showcasing what we love and that we want to have fun. We’ll be doing an Easter brunch, Mother’s Day brunch and a big thing for the fathers, a nice barbecue for them. And we’re doing music and live events!
Thank you so much, Chef. It was a real pleasure speaking with you!