After making his name at fine-dining heavyweights like the French Laundry, chef Eduardo Jordan is returning to the Southern cuisine he grew up with at Seattle's buzziest new restaurant, JuneBaby. The 37-year-old tells us why he chose to serve pulled pork and buttermilk biscuits—with a side of history.
You grew up in St. Petersburg, Florida, but this is your first Southern restaurant. Why?
I kind of ran away from Southern cooking because that was the only thing that I knew. I was chasing the dream of learning the culinary arts from the best. And the best at that point in time, the best were all French chefs or American-French chefs. The most talked-about restaurant in the country was the French Laundry.
Did you find a lack of diversity in that world?
There aren’t many people like me in the industry. The few [black chefs] out there aren’t getting recognized. And those who are always need to be Southern chefs. I guess [my first restaurant, Italian-French-Southern–inspired] Salare was kind of me saying, "Look, I can do more than Southern food." Plus I was trying to build a foundation. I needed to hone my skills, develop them, build character, understand the industry, and appreciate various cuisines. I continually bring all of that to the more simplified Southern food that I’m making at JuneBaby.
Why do Southern food now?
I had an opportunity to embrace who I am and the food I grew up on and tell a story that’s been missing. It was a chance for me to have a big voice for my food, for its history, for chefs who are similar to me and act like me and talk like me and came from the same places that I came from. I understand the significance of this restaurant and what I'm doing.
It’s not like Southern food isn’t popular. It seems you’re saying the cuisine’s origins have been divorced from the food.
Yeah, they’ve been diluted. They also have rarely been told, at least in the media, by black chefs. There are dishes that people avoid, like chitterlings [a dish made from small intestines of a pig]. I have chitterlings on my menu. That’s a dish I grew up on. I don’t think of it as a poverty dish, but it is. We made something out of nothing, and that’s the food I’m presenting here at JuneBaby. I’m also touching on heirloom ingredients. I’m trying to teach the history of rice, to talk about cornbread and corn in general, the Native American influence on Southern American cuisine. This is a story bigger than me, but I at least want to be part of that story, you know?
Is that why you wrote a glossary of Southern ingredients for JuneBaby’s website?
When I started, I realized, oh man, I’m in the Northwest and I think a lot of people don’t have a clue what some of these ingredients are. The menu is always going to change, so there's more and more definitions as we go on.
How do you balance telling a story with showing people a good time?
First and foremost, we're here to feed people good food, which happens to be Southern food. When they ask questions, we’re here to answer those questions, too. We’ll go through the spiel when a guest wants to be more informed—like, what chitlins are, where Sea Island peas come from, and why we get our rice from Florida. That is our job as service staff, as a team, as cooks. But we’re not preaching to them. Our menu definitely speaks Southern without us talking about each thing at the table.