Interview: Gabe Gordon (Beachwood BBQ chef + beer pro)

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Craft Beer Los Angeles

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Would you rather be better known for food, as a chef, or for beer?

I don’t know. I’ve never given it any thought. I guess I just want to be a good restaurateur that does a good job at the whole thing. It’s the overall package that matters most. When you have a sit-down restaurant with service, you can’t be one without the other. You can’t have great food and shitty service, and you can’t have shitty service and great food. That’s not what the customer pays for. The customer pays for high levels of both. We’ve always been a restaurant with a beer hobby. I’ve been a little pigeonholed by calling it Beachwood BBQ. In hindsight, I would have just called it Beachwood. That way, I can do whatever I want.

Does that motivate you to do some different concept?

Yeah. My next concept will most likely not be barbecue. If it’s up to me, it won’t be, but opportunities arise. I sit here saying today, “I want to open something else before I open any more Beachwoods,” but if some developer shows up tomorrow and says, “I’ve got this package deal for you,” obviously I’ll go that route for awhile.

Now that you’re producing your own beer, how does that change the dynamic?

I don’t think it does. We produce just enough beer to do a little distribution and service the two restaurants, which was always kind of the idea. Eventually we’ll open a production brewery. That happens when it happens. We have to get to the point where we can’t deal with the demand.

What originally brought you to Los Angeles?

Lena was in grad school at USC, and my sister got me kicked out of my apartment in Santa Barbara.

What happened?

She had a party while I was gone.

You met Lena in Santa Barbara?

Yeah. We started dating senior year in college. She went to grad school at SC, so when I got kicked out of the apartment, I was kind of unhappy. I was working at the Four Seasons Biltmore. The chef was kind of a jerk, and I didn’t like working in hotels. I just wasn’t happy there. The two restaurants I wanted to work at, I’d go in like every day for a year and they just weren’t hiring. When I got kicked out of my apartment, I was like, “What am I going to do?” I hated my job and had to find a new place to live, so I moved down to L.A.

Where did you start working once you moved to L.A.?

I worked at Buffalo Club for a bit in Santa Monica and got a sous chef job at the original Blue Palms.

On La Cienega?

Yeah. I eventually took that over when the chef left a year-and-a-half later. That’s how I met Brian [Lenzo].

Did you always have an entrepreneurial streak?

I didn’t know that people were chefs forever. All of my heroes were all chef-owners, so I just thought if you worked really, really hard for other people, you learn, and then made them money, learned about business while making them money, picked everybody’s brains for every little tidbit of knowledge they could offer you, and when they could offer you no more, move on to the next place. And eventually, when you have enough money saved up, or a business plan figured out, somebody would give you money, or you’d buy your own restaurant. I just thought that’s what people did. I didn’t realize there’s this whole field of people totally content just working for owner-operators their whole lives. It just never occurred to me that there were any other options. A lot of it wasn’t necessarily about – I had to be a good chef, but I also had to be a good business owner – how else was I going to make payroll and negotiate prices with vendors and deal with insurance companies? I had to learn all that stuff. Probably my stronger suit, really, is being a chef-driven restaurateur, than maybe being a chef. I don’t know, because six years ago I quit the quest for fine dining to open Beachwood. I kind of feel like, once you’re out, you’re out.

When it comes to selecting your beers, what does a beer have to be to end up on your taps?

Made properly. That’s it. No blatant fermentation flaws. No blatant packaging flaws. Unless specified, true to style. I don’t care if it’s not true to style, but don’t call something an American pale ale, and have it taste like a Belgian tripel. Call it a Belgian tripel. It’s okay. I know APAs sell really well, and I know you want to sell beer, but if it doesn’t taste like it, it’s not that. That’s it. I don’t care how much hype you have. I don’t care if nobody’s ever heard of you before. I just want your beer to taste good and be well made and not show tons of corners being cut. That’s it. And I don’t need to be the first guy to have it. Especially hoppy beers, I don’t care if I’m the first guy, but I want it fresh. That’s the other thing. We send back beers that are two, three weeks old that are hoppy. We’ve got kegs that are two, three weeks old, IPAs that are made locally, I’m sending it back. I don’t want it. I sell IPA here, I sell it two days old. IPAs should be fresh.

Most of the beer that’s cellar-able, it comes in and goes into the rotation, it can be for cellar. If it’s an Imperial stout, I might want to hold on to that, so I’ll put it away and put on an Imperial stout that came out two years before, I’ll put that on tap instead. I don’t care what your brewery name is, if your beer is good and it’s well made, I would like to serve it.

Is there any style that you always have to have on?

You have to have IPA on. Double IPA. Something in the pale, hoppy family, you have to have on. You have to have IPAs on, because that’s what everybody’s drinking right now. I always like to have lighter styles of beer on. I always try and have a breadth of styles on with repeating styles based on either something interesting, or something interesting about the beer that will allow the customer to understand the style better. It’s always great, for example, to have a Pilsner on, maybe a Czech Pils and a German lager, so they can see they’re not the same styles of beer. Or have a Vienna lager and a lager on, so they can see what a dark lager tastes like, versus, if you have a regular lager first, then you can move into a dark lager. It’s slightly heavier in mouthfeel, and if you close your eyes and drink it, you still think it’s a light beer. It has some roast to it. Things like that are really cool.

Or popularity of style. IPA, we have multiples on. People who drink IPA often times only drink IPA, and they want to bounce around a lot. Since that’s the most popular style right now, that sort of sits at the base of your beer pyramid, for what you have on your board. IPA sits at the foundation of your beer board, and then you play from there.

Is there any style you’d like to see develop more of a following?

Well, I guess since I own a brewery now, I’m supposed to say a session beer. I’m really happy that gose has become popular. I first had it five years ago at GABF, I had Herkimer Gose, and it just blew my mind. I couldn’t believe that beer existed, and I didn’t know about it. At the time, when I first had it, there were only seven breweries regularly producing gose. Now it’s substantially greater. My rare beer style is starting to gain popularity.

What have your most satisfying moments been in working with craft beer?

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Joshua Lurie

Joshua Lurie founded FoodGPS in 2005. Read about him here.

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[…] once his DeLorean reaches 88 miles per hour. At the two branches of Beachwood BBQ, chef-owner Gabe Gordon has installed state of the art controls, which he calls the Flux Capacitor, that regulate […]

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