His newest outing is POE-Lenta at Time Out Market Boston, where he and longtime Tip Tap chef de cuisine Guillermo Guzman prepare yak and bison Bolognese.
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Tell me about the Time Out Market Boston project.
It came out of nowhere, which is a lot of times where the best ideas come from. The GM of Time Out, Michael [Minichello], and I met and he said, “Hey, let’s do a tasting,” and next thing you know I’ve got POE-Lenta, an Italian cafe. It really happened that fast, probably in under 30 days.
But Time Out provides so much. There’s so much already there. You’re not waiting for the big company to deliver the stove. I never thought I would enjoy concessions as much as I do, actually. It’s so much fun to get in there and play. We’ve got a fun little menu. Basically, Tip Tap is my wheelhouse. It’s always been that way. We were talking about the Italian idea, and I’m joking around: ‘There’s a Po River in Italy,’ and all this other stuff.
Then, we started looking at dishes that I’ve done throughout the years at Tip Tap. What’s fun about the Tip Tap Room is I can go all over the world. It’s always been like that. [Guillermo] Guzman is chef de cuisine at the Tip Tap Room, and now he’s become involved in all my concepts. So he and I got together and wrote a menu. It’s got my nuances — I like to play with wild game. It’s got the nuances of the Tip Tap Room, and the nuances of Italian cuisine.
Why cooking? How did you get your start?
I’d gone off to college for landscape design at Auburn. I fell into cooking, for the high-ranking salary of $4 an hour. Then, I started getting more professional and serious about it. Instead of working at the local college bar, I got a job at Auburn University’s hotel conference center. I started reading Harold McGee’s “On Food and Cooking.”
A friend of mine was going off to work at the [1996] Olympics in Atlanta. I was born and raised in Georgia. Why not go back there and do that? I went and worked the Olympics in Atlanta and became lifelong friends with that group.
One of those guys called me and said, “Buy a car and head out west.” So me and my cat, Gizmo, loaded up in a little Mercury Tracer and drove across country.
I took a job at Steamers Oyster Grill in Arizona. With that, I was researching every bit of New England cuisine, oddly enough. It was Ipswich clams and oysters and what not. I really fell deep right there, to love travel and cooking. It just consumed me, in a good way. I love cooking, I love food, and I love researching. Ever since then, 38 states and 24 countries later, I have a little Italian place called POE-Lenta. The long and short of it is, I fell in love, and it went from there.
What were your early impressions of the Boston food scene?
It was summer in Arizona. In the second week of July, there was a GM call with the Millennium Hotel group in Boston. They needed a chef for Restaurant Week. So I was like: “Sure. It’s really hot here.” Arizona was like 110 at that point.
I lived in the hotel for three months. Next thing you know, I’ve been here for 21 years. But it was fun. Back then, it was I think 10 or 11 restaurants that were doing Restaurant Week — a different model. I have some customers who still call me and say, “Can you do the filet and lobster that you did for Restaurant Week 2003?” And I’m like, “No, I can’t afford to do that right now!”
I was scheduled to go out to dinner with everybody, thinking it was a farewell. I came down and luckily I had put on a shirt and tie. I sat in the office with the general manager, the HR director, the director of sales, and the food and beverage director.
They said, “Why would you like to be the executive chef at Seasons Restaurant?” I was like, “Is this an interview?” They offered me a job!
Wild Game Bolognese at Poe-Lenta.handout
The South has such a rich culinary history. Was there any culture shock when you moved here?
Actually, no. I was lucky enough to come through as people were still doing five-course wine dinners. I cooked 125 wine dinners in my career, mainly during that time. Because of the Bostonian, I was welcomed. That title and that restaurant already carried you. You better be good to get here.
One of my first phone calls, actually, was with Lydia Shire. I said, “Thank you for building such a great reputation for this restaurant.” She goes, “It’s your job to keep that reputation.” And she said it very sweetly. She’s always very kind.
Let’s talk about meat. You’re a meat specialist, and Thanksgiving is coming up. What’s your favorite meat of all time?
I love a big, fatty rib eye. I throw it on the grill to the point that the neighbors are like, “Do we need to call the fire department?”
I actually hung up on the Food Network at the Rattlesnake because I thought somebody was pranking me that they wanted to feature my wild boar burrito. I’m sorry!
But at my age, with lowering your cholesterol and whatnot, all of a sudden you’ve got this perfect world to kind of go: “OK. I can’t have the fatty rib eye, or I’ll have to have a lecture from my doctor again.”
So I tried a bison ribeye. Let’s do it. Where does the bison come from? Where does it grow? What do elk eat? It’s turned into a whole new research project for me. Elk eat onions and chive-type things and sniff around the trees and eat mushrooms. Instead of pork ribs, I’ve got antelope ribs. There’s adventure in that.
How do you prepare your Thanksgiving turkey?
I go to my friend’s house. They cook the turkey, and I make the turkey stock. At the Tip Tap Room, turkey tips are sage-and-peppercorn-marinated. We grill those and serve them with a turkey gravy and creamed-corn mashed potatoes. So I’m in charge of the creamed corn mashed potatoes and turkey gravy. And usually I help carve the turkey. They hand me a beer, and I keep going.
Any secrets to preparing turkey so it’s not too dry?
We found that putting them on the flat top of the grill was drying them out really quick. You know the little crushed red pepper flake kind of shakers, those little glass jars with a silver top? We put baking soda in that and then, every time, as we go to put the turkey down, we’ll season it with a little touch of baking soda. And that keeps it from taking all the moisture out.
What was your biggest dining mishap?
Do you have a lot of time? I almost want to just go read Devra’s article about the Tip Tap. That first couple of months was tough. I had opened one restaurant and we were opening another one at the same time: Tip Tap and Estelle’s. I was going a little too fast. I look back on that. We definitely could have pivoted and mapped that out. But it was the first time doing that, and now I see why people don’t try and do [a restaurant] every two months. It’s brutal.
I did a dinner for Merryvale wine. They had written a cookbook. I took from the cookbook and wrote the five-course dinner. It was a phenomenal idea, and I’m still best friends with my food and beverage director and chef who were at the dinner with me. I had this thick book on festivals. We would fly out to California, we’d meet with all the winemakers, and then we would write 12 months of menus so that the marketing department at the Millennium Hotels could get it out there for us.
I did a pheasant and red wine and fig sort of soup, with 100 people, including the person who wrote the cookbook: But I didn’t peel the Fava beans. There were all these people looking at me. I think I cried that night.
What makes a restaurant endure?
Gosh, it’s hard to say that these days. The past four years, I’m just amazed any of us are still standing. I think it’s been such an ebb and flow, but I think the greatest part of it is a good relationship with your neighbors.
I know everybody on our street on each side, and they’ve been friends for 12, 13 years. It’s the type of thing where a friend of mine was out of town in New York for several months. I said, “Hey, throw me the key. I’ll keep an eye on it.” Right?
I don’t know if you picked up on this, but I’m madly in love with my family. And here I am, a 52-year-old chef walking out on Temple Street. I know every person on that street, and I’m walking out of a 41-year-old woman’s apartment at 3 in the afternoon. And I’m like, “Geez. I love my kids. It looks so wrong coming out of here!” But she was in New York — and, the fact of the matter is, everyone already knew that.
When the marathon bombing happened, we had a State House rep and several neighbors who offered to come down and help bartend if we were able to get open that day. When snowstorms happen, we have a neighbor skiing down to be with us. I think it’s that kind of environment.
Cheese tortellini at POE-Lenta.HANDOUT
There was a snowstorm that never happened in February where they shut down the whole state. To see that happen on Valentine’s Week was like, “Oh my God, it’s just affected everyone’s bottom line. Who’s going to survive?” And you start hearing about places closing. You have a whole lot of empathy for those guys. Everybody bought and planned for Valentine’s, and now it’s just a rainstorm. Is that too dark?
Not too dark. But on a lighter note: Where do you eat with your family, close to home?
Honest to God, I love what Alex Pineda is doing at Qué Mas in Beverly.
Anything he sends out, whatever they have on the menu, I’ll take it. He’s just such a kind young man, and he doesn’t have to be kind. [His mom] is the biggest, baddest, greatest chef in the city: Lydia [Shire]. I don’t know how I’d behave if I was her son. “You know who my mom is?”
But he’s become his own man. He spread his wings. It’s great to watch him, and we have a long, long friendship. His father helped me open the Tip Tap; he was my butcher at the Tip Tap. Just to see him doing his thing is great.
Where do you go if you’re out in the city late and just want to grab a drink?
We’re just now finding our way back to that. The kids are now 4 and 5. So [my wife] Cristiana and I can kind of have a conversation about where we’d like to go. When it’s just me? I’m a half-glass of wine guy when I’m downtown.
I’d love to go check out Jamie [Bissonnette]’s new place [Zurito] right down the street from me, down on Charles Street. I really want to see what he’s got going on.
I’ve moved over mostly to wine now. Again, because I’ve got an argument with my doctor. I had to lose the beer gut. I want to get over and see how MIDA is doing [in the Fenway]. I think Douglass [Williams] is a great guy, so I’d have a glass over there — I know he’d have a good wine list.
What food can’t you stand?
With all the different meats I cook, I don’t love tripe at all.
The one time it turned on me was in Brazil during Carnival. I’m in the middle of nowhere, a little building with a little pool table. I’m drinking beer, shooting pool, hanging out, getting ready to go out for the evening. And because I’m a chef, everyone makes me try everything, which is fine.
But then this gentleman comes over with a spoon and says, “Tripe! Tripe!” And all of a sudden he takes his spoon, puts it in my mouth, and I’m eating tripe that was literally just killed. I wasn’t ready for that bold flavor. Ever since then, no.
How much of my career did I spend as a $4-an-hour cook cleaning the tentacles of the squid? I’m not a big octopus or calamari fan, even though I’ll eat it, but it’s that smell — probably because I was 21 years old and hung over, having to clean that stuff. That aroma is just not my favorite.
How’s the Crane River Cheese Club going?
It’s great. It’s exactly what I hoped it would be when we started. We started here in Danvers as just a special place for our neighbors to get good product. At the time you couldn’t. And now it’s become sort of exactly that. So you can come in and get the old-school sandwich, and not old school. We do a Brian Poe twist on everything, but you can get a great sandwich made with the mustard my neighbors make from a company they started during the pandemic. You can buy filet mignon. We’ll cut it fresh for you. If you have a beer that you like or a favorite wine, we can find it for you.
All these years in my career, I’ve written a menu for you. You’re going to come in and I’m going to feed you, and this is what it’s going to be. Now, I get people to send me pictures all the time of what things they made, what they’re cooking, what they’re doing.
What do your kids eat? What do you love to cook with them?
The best restaurant is here in our house. I have access to meat. I grow a ton of stuff here. So it’s been fun. This weekend in the fridge, there was filet mignon, salmon, cod, chicken. I did a Korean chicken for lunch yesterday, and then I did a cool lemon salmon. And today I’ll do a miso-glazed cod. They’ll eat it, and they both want to help me cook it. I give them a dull knife, and they help me cut everything.
I say, “Bella, tuck your fingers.” She goes, “It’s fine.” She’s going to tell me how to cook. It’s fun. It started pre-pandemic.
The front of our house is a busier road and the back of our house is quiet. I have strawberries in one section and the carrots and things. And it’s really cute because they’ll run out every morning looking for blueberries and strawberries.
I remember one day at a preschool thing, a reception or something, I was told how they’re able recognize things — they always know what’s corn and what’s carrots. Damn right they do. They better. That’s what we do at the house.
The funny thing is, my wife travels for work often. The first week she had to fly, I was solo for the whole weekend. I got all these to-go containers. I got meatballs. I got everything at the restaurant packed up. My menu was locked and loaded. So the grand finale was going to be this beautiful, braised lamb shank. I’m so proud; I’m going to serve it to them. And they sit at the table and go, “Daddy, I want mac and cheese.”
I didn’t know I could love like this.
What do you snack on in the kitchen?
I’ve always been grab-a-piece-of-cheese kind of guy, anywhere from American all the way up to truffle.
My doctor’s like, “Brian, you know what to do.” So I readjusted my diet and somehow dropped 50 pounds.
I’ve had to limit myself. I am allowed two ounces of bacon.
Interviewwas edited and condensed.
Kara Baskin can be reached at kara.baskin@globe.com. Follow her @kcbaskin.