OmahaNebraska.com’s Interview with Katie Cochran, Executive Chef for Levy Restaurants
OmahaNebraska.com here with…
Katie Cochran
That’s quite an amazing number and a variety of ideas you have.
Yeah.
I know your team starts on it [CWS menu offerings] right away because we’ve talked about it before, but what is a brainstorming session like?
It takes all of us. It’s great because we have seven chefs, so all of us kind of come up with little things. We look for trends. I think the tortellini was just kind of a toss in the hat. To be very honest, we started with tortilla chips and we’re like, “I don’t like that.” I didn’t like the marinara on the tortilla chips, and I sat there and I was like, “What if we fry cheese tortellinis?” and everyone was like, “Oh my God, let’s try it.” So we kind of feed off of each other too. We try out a lot of things and alter a lot of these recipes as we’re trying it. Everybody helps. It’s not just culinary too, because all of our front of the house and concessions people come to the tastings. They give us feedback, they let us know what they think, too. So we’re not just getting chefs’ opinions; we’re getting our whole team’s opinions.
In order, how much notice did you get on Omaha Steaks?
None, to be very honest. Ironically, I was at the ballpark and we were in the middle of a tasting with Adam. My Omaha Steaks rep was calling me, but I was in the middle of a conversation, so I did not pick up the phone. After that tasting was done, I talked with my director of operations and he asked me if I had talked with my rep, and I said, “Oh, I missed her call.” He then told me that she was let go on that day, and we received our last order the day prior. So we got zero notice, when we’d used them for… I’m pretty sure since the building was open.
So having to pivot suddenly and all of that, what was your thought process, and how did that work? Because this kind of thing happens to everybody in every kind of business.
Oh, 100%. I grew up in this industry, so the first thing I did was call my brother, who is a center-of-the-plate buyer for Cisco in the East Coast. And I was like, “What do I do? Who can I call?” And he kind of just walked some things through with me, and he kind of calmed me down a little bit. And then we just really started talking to US Foods, who our current rep is. I had a lot of brokers come and talk to me, which obviously are Smash Burgers, that’s how we got that in. Different brokers come and try to sell me their product. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t, right? But this was amazing, like they had that Smash Burger patty, and we had just lost Omaha Steaks, and it was just perfect timing at that point, and I was like “This is meant to be.” We were supposed to move on, I feel like, and we were supposed to find something new, and that can help us move forward, and I think that’s what we did.
There are new vendors that are going to be throughout all the other products, the hot dogs and everything else.
Yes, so before Omaha Steaks did hot dogs, we had Nathan’s. So we’re back to selling Nathan’s hot dogs.
Oh, that’s nice.
Yes, it’s a great hot dog. Personally, I feel like I like Nathan’s better than I liked the Omaha Steaks’. So we’re using that now, and we’re just finding different products.
What are one of your most favorite or couple of things this time around?
This time around… I love the Curve Ball. I was telling the other reporter that it was here last year. So that’s kind of the crazy thing: nobody knew about it. I didn’t want to put it out for media. I didn’t want to tell anybody unless I knew we could execute it as a team. And they did. They sold over 1,000 last year. Surprisingly, we really didn’t feel like we were going to sell that. But bringing that burger into the stands , it was a huge thing. There has never been a cheeseburger upstairs in the seats, so that was huge: bringing something that they’ve never been able to order in those seats. I think that’s why it sold really well last year. But it’s like a juicy lucy. It’s a beautiful patty in there. It’s got two pieces of American cheese, and it just oozes out. I think I had one every year last year. So I think that’s my favorite for this year, but that ties up with tortellini. They’re so good.
But as soon as you said that, was it cheese fried? Yeah, I was like, oh, that’s got to be amazing.
Oh God, it is. And with the marinara and the crispy pepperoni and the Italian sausage, it just really brings it all together.
Is there something you want to showcase or say?
Just make sure that everybody looks at the MECA website before they come out. They have all of the new items listed in all of their locations.
Are they listed now or soon?
I think that they’re going to be listed soon. Before tomorrow they’ll be listed. They have all of their stuff today and then they’re going to input all of that.
(https://charlesschwabfieldomaha.com)
Thank you.
