Chef Brooke Williamson talks whiskey, latest conceptsChef Brooke Williamson talks whiskey, latest concepts

Los Angeles chef Brooke Williamson has a fine-dining background, but she has found a more casual niche for her own restaurants.

Having trained at such high-end restaurants as Michael’s in Santa Monica, Calif., and Daniel in New York City, Williamson and her husband Nick Roberts currently operate two gastropubs — Hudson House in Redondo Beach, Calif., and The Tripel in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Playa del Rey — as well as a four-in-one concept in Playa del Rey called Playa Provisions that they opened last June. The 8,000-square-foot space houses a seafood restaurant called Dockside, a whiskey bar called Grain, a creamery called Small Batch and a coffee shop called King Beach.

Williamson has also appeared on several television programs. She was a runner up in Season 10 of Bravo’s Top Chef, and has also appeared on Top Chef Duels, Esquire network’s Knife Fight, MTV’s House of Food and elsewhere.

Williamson recently discussed her latest endeavors, including food-and-whiskey pairings and plans for a retail shop, with Nation’s Restaurant News.

What are you working on these days?

We have this beautiful, big office space in the back of The Tripel that opens into the estuary in Playa del Rey, and we never did anything with it because it’s not licensed for alcohol service, and what we do at The Tripel is craft beer.

The Tripel. Photo: Brooke Williamson

So now we’re in the process of reconfiguring that space and moving our office out of it and turning it into a retail store. It’ll be a store for cookbooks and kitchen small wares, but cool esoteric stuff. We’ll have a little kids’ section with kids’ cookbooks and aprons and lunchboxes and thermoses and stuff like that, but it’ll mostly be cool bar equipment. We make our own bitters; we make our own hot sauce, stuff like that.

And pickles?

We don’t make pickles. We’ll sell cool, craft, really tasty pickles. We have a lot of friends who make stuff and who have cookbooks, and so we felt like this was a really great use of that space, and we’re going to build in a sort of lounge area where people can do cookbook signings.

There is literally not one cookbook store left in Los Angeles. Yes, it’s very easy to order cookbooks online, but it’s also really nice to go somewhere and look through things before spending $89 on a cookbook. Or maybe you just want to hang out in a cool atmosphere and look through some stuff and gain inspiration.

We’re also looking into a new concept in a new development in Playa Vista, which is right across the street from The Tripel and Playa Provisions that I’m not going to go into much detail about. The lease is in the works and I don’t want to jinx it.

Playa Provisions. Photo: Brooke Williamson

Grain has whiskey from around the world, and the food there is really meant to be eaten with whiskey.

Do you have recommendations for pairing whiskey with food?

Scotch and Japanese and American whiskeys pair very well with food — surprisingly really well with sushi and seafood. It’s really cool to open people’s eyes and show people that whiskey can do the same thing that wine can in terms of a dining experience.

I can imagine wasabi going well with the spiciness of some whiskeys.

Yeah, a little bit of oak and a little bit of peat sometimes.

Or whiskey and mackerel?

Absolutely, or some slightly toasted barracuda or other oilier fish. It goes really well, and people never expect it. Especially with Japanese whiskeys, it’s like a match made in heaven.

We do a Scotch-cured salmon, which totally makes sense. Cured meats and cheeses and the richer saltier foods also go great with whiskey.

What are you doing at the creamery?

In the creamery we do a coffee-and-milk ice cream. We cold-steep whole-bean coffee in cream for a couple of days.

So you get a lot of the fat-soluble flavors you wouldn’t get otherwise?

Exactly, and it’s a creamier flavor. There’s no acid whatsoever, it’s just a really beautiful, mild coffee flavor. And it’s white, so it doesn’t look like coffee ice cream, so it really surprises you. It’s beautiful.

Hudson House. Photo: Brooke Williamson

Was being on Top Chef a good experience?

It was a phenomenal experience. If you had asked me while I was doing it, it was awful, but I’m so glad I did it. It turned out to be a wonderful thing not only for my career, but me personally.

In what way?

Fears of doing things unknown and needing to constantly be in control. You do something like [Top Chef] and you have no choice but to accomplish something while being completely out of control and terrified and nervous. I feel like I can do anything now. It was ultimately a really wonderful experience.
 
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