By Leslee Komaiko
For dineLA.com
The recession may not have been good for the bottom line. But according to Ben Ford, chef-owner of Ford’s Filling Station in Culver City, the slow down gave him and his crew the chance to create the restaurant he had envisioned from the start. The unofficial local poster boy for the head-to-tail movement and avid forager talks about his commitment to craft and teaching and his flirtation with another Ford’s.
What’s new?
I’d say the exciting thing is there’s actually some consistency. The team we have has become a little more senior. The restaurant is finally achieving my expectations.
Which are?
My expectations are still on the line of what Chadwick [the Beverly Hills restaurant Ford operated with Govind Armstrong from 2000-2002] was, just doing it on a more casual level. The kitchen has matured to where we’re handling nothing but whole animals. We bake our own bread, make our own butter, our own ice creams. We’re getting involved in the roots of our own food now even to the point where we’re sourcing our animals locally.
So no chicken breasts or rib eyes are coming in?
The only thing we have to go for a quartered part of the animal is the cow. We can’t handle cows. Maybe with the next restaurant.
Sounds like you are actively thinking about the next thing.
My guys are ready for me to get out of the way. It will be another Ford’s Filling Station I think. I’m not one to give up on something that has a great concept. I learned a lot looking at David Chang’s Momofuku concept. He has the ability to put his restaurants within reach of other ones. I’ve been apprehensive to go east or to put a restaurant within our pull.
But you’re starting to be okay with that idea?
Yeah. I would love to put a restaurant on the Westside, maybe Venice. And Los Feliz is interesting to me. It’s hard. I think about the communities I’m going into and them effecting me especially when you’re coming from as great a location as Culver City.
Do you ever wish you could go back in time to when you were among the very few restaurants in Culver City?
It still feels like we’re one of the few to tell the truth because of our relationship with our community and the regulars. When the first few restaurants came in, we were very kumbaya with each other. Nobody was stealing the other guys’ staff. Everything was working out in a good way. We spoke about this kind of ideal. It got a little out of control when we lost the ability to control that. More parasitic type owners were coming in. They didn’t see the neighborhood. I never want to dictate to these people what they should be eating. I didn’t want to seem too elitist to the community when I first came in. If they wanted to eat grilled cheese I would make grilled cheese and I was going to grow with them. Then a lot of people came in and didn’t share those beliefs. They moved a little faster and cared a little less.
Have you found it hard to maintain the same enthusiasm for the restaurant and food in light of the economy?
Yeah. There’s a lot of pride when you are able to make the hard decisions at the right times and keep things in perspective. For us, we were so busy that the economy brought us down to what we wanted to do in the first place. We finally had the time. We were still doing decent numbers. The big problem for us was slowing down the machine from being so busy. In a weird way we found our customer during that time. The concept was almost built for a recession prior to it. We were already doing whole animals, doing a lot of braising. I kind of felt for once in my career I had made the right decision. It comes down to the whole exercise of going from fine dining to this type of restaurant, to open my eyes to the craft of cooking and the realities of the restaurant. Everybody is playing with someone else’s money and creating this dream; they are building showpieces, not restaurants for Angelenos. The idea of being less of an artist and more of a craftsman, more focused on the things that are important, I like the sensibilities of this type of restaurant.
So no more frou frou for you?
I’m not going back. I think there’s as much cooking and as much craft and teaching in this form as there is in fine dining. In a weird way the people I know working in fine dining it’s starting to become more apparent that it’s hard to build soul into that type of cooking. Modernism and those types of things are not doing the cooks a lot of favors right now.
How has Ford’s Filling Station evolved since it opened?
The culture of the restaurant is different. We have a junior sous chef program in the kitchen, teaching young kids how to cook. It’s more nurturing in the kitchen.
Is this apparent to the customer?
I think everything we do is intuitively felt by the customer. I use this whole metaphor. I’m a Paul Bertolli protégé on this one. It’s the effort that goes into the food that translates onto the plate. All this other peripheral stuff going on in the restaurant is meant to create an atmosphere for good food.
You mentioned “kids.”
I’m talking about thirty year olds. Teaching was already a really important aspect for me. I got into this type of restaurant because I wanted to be able to affect the people I was working with instead of trying to manipulate something and over think something. When I worked at Chez Panisse, I thought it was great they created an environment to cook in that was beautiful. The business man in me says you can hire someone for a dollar less if you create an environment that’s beautiful. We’ve got a nice kitchen and maybe [the chefs] make a little less. I thought it was important to add things like windows to a kitchen. We started there. Then you hear stuff like culinary school teaching butchery with Velcro kitchens. I want people connected. Most of these kids have been either lead line cooks at other restaurants or sous chefs at other restaurants. We cook extremely unbridled. It’s the kind of cooking not taught in other places. It’s a difficult kitchen and takes time for people to learn it.
I imagine though it’s liberating once they get it but also makes it hard to move on to the next restaurant where they don’t cook that way.
Most of them have opened their own restaurants. This year or last year I have my own part of a trunk on the [Los Angeles restaurant] tree.
Let’s go backwards a bit. You grew up in LA.
I’m a native Angeleno.
I read that your mom was a good cook.
A very good cook. There are a couple other chefs, most notably Neal Fraser, I think he has her in his bio. She was very solid. She made roast chicken, stews, lasagna. She didn’t go too crazy. But everything she did with quality and everything she did with a lot of love. Our house was one of those houses where kids would come and wouldn’t leave for three or four days.
Let’s talk about foraging.
Right now is not the best time. I had a really good foraging season through the early part of this year. I go a lot solo. There’s a lot of hill climbing, jumping over fences and that kind of stuff.
Have you taken your older son?
I have. More so I’ve tried to teach him to understand what’s right beneath his feet. The first thing you do with someone who hasn’t foraged before is show them what’s right under their feet. I’ve taken him down an alley and we’ve made dinner. I think we move so quickly we forget about things. Foraging and wood fire is part of that. I think it’s more about an awareness. People get so wrapped up in certain aspects of their life; they lose perspective of what’s around them. [Foraging] is a really exceptional exercise about what’s around them. I go to the farmers market and see people spend $6 on purslane and walk right over it to their cars.
Is that something you have foraged?
Purslane, chickweed, sorrel, wild garlic, garlic, wild onions. We get cactus, cactus paddles, cactus fruit and mustard greens, miner’s lettuce. I’m not going to build a whole salad around miner’s lettuce. But if I can forage for eight beautiful leaves to put on per plate, that’s something I can do. I can’t go up there for ten hours and pull things. I also don’t want to take too much.
Presumably you don’t have a lot of competition.
Someone was in my miner’s lettuce.
I wanted to talk briefly about Chadwick. Am I the only person who misses it?
I miss it tremendously. There are times when I have a dish or two I’d like to take there. It was probably the last restaurant I’ll ever do that doesn’t have a bar. The restaurant was very idealistic in some ways. We had our own organic farm the day we opened, paid foragers and organic gardeners. We were sourcing with a lot of integrity. We served real loup de mer, real Bresse pigeon.
Explain the deal with the bar.
It’s just necessary to balance the concept so you’re able to do what you want to do.
All businesses run very lean and if you want to do good things on the plate, you need to have a bar there to help you do that.
Because profit margins at the bar are better?
Yes. It all works together. Nobody is getting rich off of either. Everything has a certain price point.
Let’s get back the present and your commitment to using the whole animal. You must be a pretty good butcher by now.
I love the process. Every animal is different, especially working with heritage breeds. Pigs will change a lot and then we’ll bring in a goat. And a deer has its own muscle structure. It doesn’t get boring because you’re always switching it up. We’ll bring in a 250 pound pig once a week and maybe five 30 pound pigs.
Do you have any vegetarians on staff?
I do. They’re meat loving vegetarians for some reason. They understand what we’re doing. They understand the holistic farm approach and they’re on board.
You got married since we last spoke?
Yes. We’ve been together six years. We have a boy who is one year old and a 10 year old from my prior marriage. She’s a great mom and partner in the restaurant. She handles the administrative side of the business.
Did you meet her at the restaurant?
Through mutual friends but at the restaurant right when we opened.
So do you have a kids’ menu now?
Every spring: suckling pig, baby goat. What’s more special then kids eating kids?
Wait. Do you really do that?
I’ve been threatening to. I got in trouble for putting this on Facebook: I think there are a lot of parents who retard their children’s progress with food out of convenience. I think you have to build on your palate early. What a great thing it would be if you fed your kid what you’re eating. But I’ve got a stock of Cheerios. This is coming from an elitist chef who has the ability to do this.
I take it your kids don’t eat a lot of pasta with butter.
Usually it’s a polenta cake.
Any new restaurant discoveries?
I’m trying to do more. But it’s very difficult.
Because you’re a dad?
I’m trying to parent my children as opposed to having too much childcare. I’d rather be there with the kids instead of going straight from work to eating out. My kids eat out a lot too, a lot of early dinners. We’re going to Lukshon tonight. I need to go out, one because I don’t know who the people are out there anymore. The faces have changed in my own town.
It’s true. Not to make you feel old. But you and Neal and Govind are now the old guard.
The generation before us, Nancy Silverton for example, was so successful; it took an inordinate amount of time for them to get out of the way. That’s a compliment. And I’m not saying she’s out of the way.
Are there restaurants you return to?
I’m really interested in the people who are clairvoyants in the business. They see things clearly. Nancy is one of them, Suzanne [Goin]. Anyone who can come up with the idea of grilled cheese night, the simplicity of it, they have a clairvoyance. There are a few other people. I enjoy getting out there and getting some clarity. When you’re doing three menus and constantly working that creativity, you need to step out once in a while.
Ford's Filling Station
9531 Culver Blvd.
Culver City, CA 90232
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