Humble Kitchen, Vol. 4: Chef Hannah-Ruth Joy
The newly appointment Chef de Cuisine at República on healthy kitchens, lifting weights, and accessing Michelin restaurants.
Humble Kitchen — Chef Hannah-Ruth Joy
Chef Hannah-Ruth Joy has recently stepped into the role of Chef de Cuisine at República, whose resumé spans continents and Michelin stars. Her career includes CDC and sous chef roles at some of the most lauded establishments in the world — among them Nico’s in Hawaii and the Michelin-recognized Manzano Hospitality group in Spain, whose portfolio spans Gloria, La Salgar, and Catering Manzano. Within Portland, Oregon, diners may recognize her name from celebrated stops at Kann and the late, beloved Quaintrelle. For Joy, this appointment carries a particular resonance as it is a return to the República Hospitality family; she previously served as sous chef at Lilia Comedor alongside Chef Juan Gomez.
Our conversation spans the accessibility of working in Michelin restaurants (for those who are seriously ready to commit), being the only woman in a male-dominated kitchen countless times, and the importance of acting as a team player to foster the most efficient working environment.
How to Run the Most Efficient Kitchen
Just be a genuine team player. Look around you. Be aware of where everybody is and what they’re doing and try to have a positive attitude about helping other people out when they really need it. Open your eyes a little bit and see where other people are.
Everyone in Portland Makes a Beet-Flavored Beet
I think a lot of restaurants here season beets really similarly, typically with a red wine braise, like an oven-roasted beet. It’s just the way that every single person does it, and then when you have it at every restaurant in Portland, it’s the exact same flavor profile of the actual beet itself. I wish I saw more creative ways of utilizing it, whether it’s for a sauce or a pickle or a soup.
One of my favorite things to eat in Portland is Clyde’s Prime Rib
One of my favorite places to eat Clyde’s Prime Rib, and they do it really well, plus their classic baked potato. You know exactly what you’re getting into when you walk in there.
Being a woman in any male-dominated industry will make you work twice as hard as your colleagues.
The worst experience I’ve ever had being the only female in a kitchen was the time that the chef referred to me as the girl and refused to learn my name for six months because he was convinced that I wasn’t going to make it in the kitchen.
The female experience in any workplace is that you have to genuinely try a little harder and work a little harder than your male counterparts, which is just an unfortunate thing about our society. I think it’s particularly rampant in kitchens, which always sucks.
Today, I’m just a lot more confident in my work and my ability. And I know my way around a kitchen really well. I never try to prove myself through what my resume says or my experiences. I only need to prove what my work ethic is. Because at the end of the day, I am not above the work, no matter what the work is.
It’s important to lift weights so that you can hold pans
I have carpal tunnel that I notice mostly when I’m sleeping, but when I’m working sauté, I’ll also notice it because I’m also doing a lot of pan work, so it’s constantly heavy in your hand, and then at the end of the shift it can feel pretty painful in my wrists.
To combat it, I lift weights because the stronger you are, the less likely you are to have those kinds of body pains. I feel like it helps to have general body strength, because the stronger you get in other places, the less you are compensating other places. Strength building is really important for staying at the top of your game, honestly.
The best thing you can do in a kitchen is get your mise en place dialed in
The most common mistake that can easily be avoided is the way that you set up your line and your mis en place. You should always put all the ingredients that go on one dish next to each other. It drives me crazy when line cooks put things far away from each other. There would be no point. If you need to put garlic and onions into a pan sauce, there would be no reason to put the onions on the right side and the garlic on the left side of their station.
Just keep yourself organized and clean because if your station is clean and you put things back exactly where they were, it becomes muscle memory instead of having to look for what you’re trying to make. It sounds obvious, but I think that when you get really, really good at it, it takes quite a long time of practicing every day to understand a station setup. It’s significantly easier for me now to walk into a kitchen in a space where I have never worked before and have no idea what is on the menu to be able to just look at the menu, see the items that I assume or think that I need, and then set it up in a way that’s gonna be practical.
The best advice I’ve gotten in my career is to learn how to work with people, not make them work for me.
I can learn how to manage people better than they can learn how to be managed by me. So I have to learn how you learn, I have to learn how to interact with you, and adapt to you more than I can expect you to adapt to me.
The worst advice that I’ve ever gotten is to put your head down and continue working somewhere that has a toxic or abusive environment in order to build your resumé.
When I’m learning a new cuisine, I watch videos of grandmas making food.
I read a lot about food history. I’m really interested in history, so it’s important to me to understand where things came from and maybe why they’re presented the way that they are, which helps me to understand the influence of their flavors in some ways.
I also watch a ton of videos where the grandmas prepare the food, someone who’s been making it their entire lives so that I can see exactly the way that they’re doing it and kind of mimic that process. I don’t specifically look for something with a recipe, or anybody who’s explaining the seasoning. I want to watch exactly what it is that they’re doing, even if they’re not explaining it because I can gain a lot from just visually comprehending how they’re toasting chiles, for example, or how they’re moving their hands when they wrap items like dumplings. So that’s the easiest way for me is to pay attention to the people who I know are experts and then take that in the direction that I need to.
There’s a noticeable difference between the staff at fine dining restaurants and Michelin-rated restaurants
I was really lucky to work in a Michelin-star restaurant because the environment was really wonderful. Other than the fact that we all worked a lot of hours, the team had a lot of camaraderie. Everyone who was there worked with such a sense of pride that’s hard to find in other places, especially in places that don’t have Michelin stars.
That’s because every single person who works in the back of the house of a Michelin-star restaurant is trying to become a chef that has a Michelin star. A lot of the times when you work at a place, even when it’s fine dining and it doesn’t have stars, people are sometimes just there because it was how life happened for them. Even if they’re extremely talented. But it’s not necessarily their dream to own a restaurant or to have a Michelin star. And so, at those places, I think it just takes a little bit more effort to keep your staff happy and wanting to continue to be there, and thrive to the best of their abilities.
If I could eat Cajun rice and beans for the rest of my life, I’d be happy.
My mom used to make Cajun food a lot when I was growing up. I spent some of my adolescent years in St. Louis, Missouri, so I experienced a lot of comfort Southern home cooking. She would make a Cajun beans and rice dish that was my favorite–specifically with Tony Chacheray’s, which is a Cajun seasoning. It was so simple, so filling, and amazing.
Anybody can do Michelin restaurants. It’s easy to get in. But you have to really want it in order to grow.
A lot of industry people have this thing… I’ve heard so many times people say they could never have what it takes to be in a Michelin restaurant. “They wouldn’t even let me sweep the floor there.” I’ve literally heard people in this industry say that. And every time I hear someone say that, I think to myself, well, I did it, and I did it when I was 18. And the reason why I did it was because I pursued it. And I just decided at that moment that actually, I can do anything I put my mind to.
So, if you really want to pursue Michelin, if you really want to work in a Michelin star restaurant, you can do it. And it’s relatively easy to get in. You just have to A) live with the consequences of that decision and B) decide if that is really, truly and honestly what you want before you give up the things that you have in order to do it.
Photos by Angel Medina
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