Bay Area Bites: What do you think about Greek food in the Bay Area?
Symon: I fly out tonight, so no eating on this trip. I went to Kokkari five or six years ago and it was good. Greek restaurants in the United States are incredibly bad. [Laughs.] It’s one of the mothers of all cuisines yet you don’t see that in restaurants. There are great spots, like Cleopatra’s Needle in New York.

Bay Area Bites: What’s your connection to Rich Table? [Knob Creek hosted a bourbon dinner at Rich Table in December 2012].
Symon: I haven’t been before. This is my first time. It’s a beautiful space, with nice people. You can kind of feel the love in the restaurant, which is nice.

Bay Area Bites: You say that your focus is on meat-centric cuisine. What does that mean? What kind of meat do you use and value? What meat would be essential to have in a “desert island” type of situation?
Symon: I am a Midwestern guy and a chef that grew up in the Midwest and opened his first restaurant in the West. When we opened our first restaurant 17 years ago we could get walleye perch. It was tough to get great meat, fish and vegetables back then. Early on in my career that’s what I focused on in my cooking. I was able to establish fantastic relationships with farmers. We would bring in what they had, and they’d say, “Take it, this is what I got,” and we had to learn how to use the entire animal. I was never really thinking of it but doing it for all this time made us very sustainable and farmer friendly.

My favorite meat to work with is pork. It’s just so versatile. That's would be what I would lean towards for my desert island animal. There’s so many parts you can cure and make last. You can make things for immediate results and versatility. I have a pig tattooed on my chest. I got it at Voodoo Monkey, 17 years ago.

Bay Area Bites: What are current food trends?
Symon: The farm-to-table movement continues to go in the right direction thanks to the work of Alice Waters. But cities like San Francisco really drive that and it’s continuing to take a real foothold with anyone that really loves food. I continue to eat Korean and Vietnamese and Chinese food. Those are cuisines that I wasn’t trained in and I don't cook often. I’ll go to Mission Chinese and chow down because that’s not something I would make for myself at home.

rich tablerich table

Celeb Chef Michael Symon Does a Butchering Demo at Rich Table and Shows Off His Angelic "Got Pork" Tattoo