Chef Hosea Rosenberg Talks Top Chef And Sustainable Beef - Exclusive Interview

Really excited to talk to you today about your partnership with Teton Waters Ranch. How did you get involved with this company and why did you decide to team up with them?

Well, I think they did reach out originally, but I think the reason was that we have a butcher shop here at Blackbelly. We sell a lot of meat, a lot of beef in particular, so we're very focused on sustainable, naturally raised quality beef products and that's their thing. So it was a good fit. And they sent us a bunch of samples to see if we would like it. And we did, we liked it a lot.

Their mission and their kind of intention with what they do is kind of something that we align with — that it's humane, they treat their animals well, that they care about what they raise and what goes into their ingredients, just like we do at the restaurant. So it was an easy thing to say yes to.

Teton Waters Ranch is very much an industry leader in this 100% grass-fed beef and certified humane cattle ranching, what does that mean?

It really boils down to the ingredients in the food. So we have that same philosophy here at Blackbelly where we don't put things on the plate just because they're cheap. We put things on the plate because they... Well, number one, it has to be delicious. And I do think that their products are really tasty. But secondary to that is that the animals are treated well. They're humanely raised. They have proof that it's not just buzzwords, like "all-natural" or whatever. They actually can show how their animals were treated, what they were fed, how they were raised, where they were pastoring. Grass-fed is just a really great thing because it's definitely a more sustainable way to raise cattle. So we really liked their story and we liked what they were all about, so we thought it would be a great partnership.

From a journalist standpoint, I've very much seen in recent years this shift of consumers caring more about where their food comes from and especially their meat. Is that something that you're seeing as a chef and a business owner?

Absolutely. It's been something that's been a driving mission for us because every ingredient on our plate came from somewhere, and if we can explain where all those ingredients came from, or at least most of those ingredients, people really appreciate that. And they don't mind paying a premium for something if they understand why it costs what it costs. We're not just going to charge more for our beef because we're fancy people and make fancy food. We support ranchers who treat the animals the way we expect them to treat them. And if that means paying a little bit more for sustainably raised grass-fed beef, then let's pay that money. And let's hope that our customers appreciate those decisions.

What is the best way for consumers to get the information that they need in terms of buying humane and quality beef, and what factors should they be looking for?

Well, I mean the easiest answer is the internet, right? And you can find anything you want on the internet these days, but if you're buying a product from someone, they should have their information out there on the web for you to find. So if you go to Teton Waters' web page, they explain where all their beef comes from and they talk about their impact on the world and their whole mission and what they're trying to do. And I think that's true for anything. I think everyone should know where their food comes from.

So here at Blackbelly, we can tell every customer that comes in and buys our food where everything came from. We know the farmers who grew the produce, we know the ranchers who raised the meat that we sell. And if we didn't get it locally, we were honest about that. We tell everybody that we're not buying local olive oil here but we're buying really good organic olive oil to cook with our food. And so again, with a company like Teton Waters, they have a very good website that explains where their beef comes from and how it's raised and what they do to get the product into the store.

The menu at your restaurant, Blackbelly, is very unique and it's very eclectic. Where do you draw the inspiration from to create the dishes?

The menu is based on the fact that we have a butcher shop next door. So we start with these animals and we're bringing in whole pigs, whole cows, whole lamb. So we're trying to feature those on the menu, and use everything nose-to-tail. Wrapped into that is seasonality. We try to be a hyper seasonal restaurant so we work with a lot of local farmers as well. We're trying to highlight the bounty of the season with these amazing animals we're getting in.

Our cuts of beef change every single night, depending on what part of the animal we've been using. We also try to use a lot of the off parts. So we have pig ears on our menu, we have bone marrow, we have beef tartare, we have all these great products that highlight ... trying to be full utilization and trying to be as sustainable as we possibly can knowing that we're a restaurant and restaurants aren't necessarily as sustainable as I said, as like just growing your own food and making it at home. But if you are going to go out to eat, we want to be a business that is having the best possible impact on the environment and on the world as we can. And that means eating every part of the animal. That's kind of what makes our menu exciting. People that have never had pig ears, they end up ordering it every time they come back because they're so good. That's something that they never would have thought of eating before coming into our restaurant.

I want to talk to you a little bit about your time on "Top Chef." What was that experience like? Are there any memorable moments that you can share?

Plenty. Well, the experience was really difficult. It's really stressful. It's one of the hardest things I've ever done professionally. But it definitely helped me advance my career, got me in front of people I never would've gotten in front of. Got me a lot of exposure. And it's also created a lot of connections for me. And even people that I wasn't on the show with, I've become friends with.

To me, the best part of it was meeting some of these hero chefs of mine, like Jacques Pepín, the man who gave me great advice. It was just really cool to be in the same kitchen with him, and cooking for these really famous people. My season was in New York City. So we were kind of around the best of the best. Jean George [Vongerichten] ... and just all these people who ... I don't feel like I would have cooked for in my career if it wasn't for that. So that was definitely the best part.

The hardest part was, it was incredibly stressful. We were sequestered for six weeks, we didn't have any contact with the outside world. They take your phone away, you're not allowed to be online, you can't listen to music, you can't watch the news, nothing. So you're just totally separated from reality for a very long time. That made it incredibly hard. Very surreal. 

It's very mental. I tell people that a lot, that the people who make it to the top on that show, you have to have skills, you have to be a good cook, but you also have to be a good problem solver and really understand the challenges. It's not just being a great chef. It's being able to handle all this added pressure and the time restraints and all the rest of it. It's not just the cooking.

What are the most valuable lessons that you walked away with?

I say this to anybody who ends up doing the show — I've coached a couple of people before they go, they will reach out — do the food that got you there. It seems very simple and straightforward, but a lot of times people end up on the show and they think they have to prove something or they try something that they're not familiar with because they've seen other people on the show do that. We all have our own style, we all have our own training. Lean into your strengths. And more than anything, you have to keep your head on straight. A lot of people just panic, lose their minds while they're on the show. You have to stay levelheaded. And that's just a good lesson for life. As things come up, if you get really stressed out, you're not going to make good decisions.

You have to be able to calm yourself down. We have a 4-year-old daughter, Sophie. We try to tell her all the time, "Breathe, focus, calm down, stop crying. You're going to get through this." Something we tell our staff all the time here. You know, the nights get hard some nights. Running a restaurant is very, very stressful. You got to know that the day will end. It's going to be over soon. Calm down. Being on "Top Chef," same thing. And you may win, you may lose, but either way, you got to keep your head on straight.

I can't let you go without getting some cooking insights from you. What do you think are the biggest mistakes that home cooks are making when it comes to cooking with beef?

Cooking beef? Well, I'll say like, you know, especially right now it's grilling season. We do a lot of fundraisers for our daughter right now. She's got this rare disease and we're doing this cooking demo last night. It was a zoom, kind of like we are right now. And I tell people this all the time. Don't move the meat around on the grill a lot. A lot of people are like, constantly poking and prodding and turning and flipping it. You've got to let the food cook and leave it alone. And obviously overcooking beef is a big scare. You don't want to overcook something. So you can always cook it more. So if you think it's done, take it off, let it rest.

So yeah. Let me rewind here. To be concise. A couple big pointers I'll give people for grilling or searing steaks is always let the meat get to room temperature before you cook it. It will cook better if it's not ice-cold, season well but don't overseason. There's two things you can always do more of. You can always add more salt and you can always add more heat. You can never take those things away. So if you overcook or you over salt, you're done.

Be patient. Let the grill cook the meat, don't keep moving it around. Cook one side and then cook the other side — you're done. And then a big thing for steaks, in particular, is you've got to let it rest after it's cooked. The general rule of thumb is however many minutes it was on the grill, that number divided in half is how long it should rest before you slice it. Steak doesn't need to be sizzling hot when you serve it. It should just be warm. The more you rest it, the better it'll be. It'll stay more juicy and more tender if you don't cut it up right after coming off the grill.

I would love it if you'd like to talk a little bit about Sophie's neighborhood and the work that you guys are doing and how your daughter, Sophie, is doing in general.

She's doing great. She turned four just about a month ago and she's a sweet little girl. She's very funny, she's got a great sense of humor, she wants to dance and sing. She's dealing with an incredibly rare disorder. It's called MCTO. It's a genetic disorder that only 30 people in the world have ever been diagnosed with. And because of this, there is no cure, no treatment for what she has. And what it's doing, there's this one, it's literally one little protein in one gene that's the wrong letter and it's causing all these issues because of effectively what they call downstream effects. Like there's a problem in this one kind of center that creates all these proteins that build your body and her bones are being broken down quicker than they're being built back up. And what that does is make her bones disappear over time.

So all the little carpal and tarsal bones in your wrists and your ankles are the first to go. And that's why it's called MCTO. It stands for Multicentric Carpotarsal Osteolysis. Osteolysis is the breakdown of the bones. So her bones are disappearing, and it's already happened quite strong in her wrists and ankles. So she has to wear braces on her legs. And she sleeps in braces on her hands at night. Her hands are weak and she has trouble walking. She's very wobbly. She can't run, she can't jump, she can't ride a bike. But she finds other ways to have fun. And she's still upright. She's still on her feet, but she's just a little wobbly. Unfortunately, most of the kids that we've met that are older than her that have this are in wheelchairs. They can't really use their arms or legs.

And so our mission and our goal with this foundation is to find a cure or at least find some treatment that will slow or stop the disease. And it's really, really sad and it's really awful. And there are days where we're both very depressed, but we got to live in the moment, like I said, and she's happy and she's not in a lot of pain. And so we just live day to day and we just ... We're there with her in the present. Meanwhile, our foundation is raising lots of money for research and we've got this amazing scientific advisory panel. And we've got these researchers that are doing work right now in the lab, kind of studying the genetics of this, but this is a hard thing to figure out. All genetic disorders are really difficult and in particular, a rare disease, which this counts as a very rare disease, there's just no research money into it.

And so as parents — and we've met a lot of other parents of other kids that have rare disorders — it's on us. So we have to raise the money, the government's not going to help us. Medical institutions, insurance companies sure as hell aren't going to help us. So we have to do this on our own. And that's what we're doing. We're just raising money for our own child's future, which is not something we ever expected to do. And it feels really awful sometimes to have to beg people to help us out, but that's what we need. And any other parent, I think, out there would do the same if they were in this situation.