meet the chef

William Baskin, Chef

Chef William Baskin has been interested in the culinary arts since a very early age. While in second grade in West Texas, he bought his first cookbook at a book fair and helped out in the school lunch cafeteria. Farmer grandparents put a big emphasis on always cooking fresh food with the seasons. Harvest was always a family affair. Years later, he began working as an apprentice for Chef Lawerence Gaurtreaux at Chez Suzette. After traveling and cooking across the country, Baskin took a sous chef position at Lone Mountain Ranch in Big Sky, MT where he was able to mold his passion of creating daily menus with only the freshest foods from local producers. Next, he had the opportunity to continue working with sustainable foods in Portland, OR under Chef Anne Cuggino at Veritable Quandary. Baskin then took an opening sous chef position for Hilton Hotels. He assisted in creating a new concept restaurant in Omaha, NE featuring foods from small American farms and artisan producers. In the summer of 2005 Baskin met Chef Seth Bixby Daughtery and took a lead cook position at Cosmos in Minneapolis. As the chef at Red Stag, Baskin will showcase fresh food from area farmers and producers.

Throughout his career, Baskin has made an effort to continue growing as a culinarian by staging in restaurants around the world whenever possible. He has been fortunate enough to cook in the kitchens of Raymond Blanc (Le Manior aux Quat’ Saisons) , Heston Blumenthal (The Fat Duck), Grant Achatz (Trio), Barbara Lynch (No 9 Park), Ken Oringer (Clio), Melissa Perello (The Fifth Floor), Scott Boswell (Stella!) and Mark Hellyar (Blue Duck Tavern). Baskin has a Culinary Management degree from The Culinary Institute at Metropolitan Community College in Omaha, NE. His interests in food and wine have taken him to study/work in a traditional Mayan kitchen in Guatemala, a tour with KWV wines in South Africa, and take wine classes at the Culinary Institute of America Greystone. Baskin is active in local and national non profit organizations including Real Food Initiatives, Chefs Collaborative, Farm Aid, Share our Strength, and James Beard Foundation.

Recycling is fun!

For the Red Stag project, we are going to re-use and re-purpose existing materials as much as possible. Last week, we pulled some beautiful marble and some restaurant booths out of the Marriot, which is being remodeled. This stuff would otherwise have ended up being garbage. Now, someday soon, we'll be able to enjoy a nice fish fry and a cold one at the bar with our plates and glasses resting on this beautiful marble. Thanks to Marriot, and Bob, the foreman on that job, and to Byron at Walsh Bishop for alerting us to the availability of these materials. We also have received a big stack of solid core doors from the Cobalt project that weren't right for them and would have been thrown out, but now will be made into tabletops for the restaurant. Thanks to Ken Potts of McGough for those! We've gotten sinks, some lumber, tile, and a refrigerator for our job site all for free, all saved from the landfill or garbage burner.

WHAT ELSE DO WE NEED?
Lumber: 2x4's and 2x6's, anything longer than 21"/quarry or any other floor or wall tile/ leftover grout/plywood/constructions screws/low voltage light fixtures/two large turned table legs/low VOC caulk and adhesive/box fans/40" fire door with window

If you have any of these items you'd like to get rid of, or if you happen to see a perfectly fine 2x6 sticking out of the end of a construction dumpster, bring it on over to 509 1st Avenue NE and we'll happily put it to use in this project.

In the beginning

The first LEED-CI certified restaurant in MN project is underway. Red Stag Supperclub is located at 509 1st Avenue NE, in a two-story heavy timber and brick warehouse. More info on LEED can be found at www.usgbc.org. Information about our upcoming zero-waste block party featuring LOW is available at www.redstagsupperclub.com

Building a restaurant, pretty much building anything these days, is a wasteful endeavor. And restaurants themselves tend to produce too much waste and use lots of energy, resources, and water. With this project, we're trying to be mindful not only of the building process, using the LEED framework as a guide, but also of how much the restaurant will use in terms of resources on an ongoing basis. It's better for the environment and the workers doing the job than the usual way, and, it makes good business sense. More on that later. Who is we? I'll try to populate the blog as I go with some information about many of the wonderful people who are helping make this project a reality. Thanks for visiting!