Now that we know the outcome of the 2009 Capital Food Fight to benefit D.C. Central Kitchen, we have to wonder whether Chef Michael Mina was laying it on a little thick last week when he said he was scrambling to try out some recipes that he could whip up in 10 minutes. Mina wound up the big winner at the Iron Chef-inspired cooking competition, seizing the title from former two-time champ Barton Seaver and out-slicing, -spicing and -dicing the likes of Bryan Voltaggio, Mike Isabella and others. When he sat down to talk with DCist earlier that day, however, he was just hoping to make it past round one.

“10 minutes is short. I will tell you, I usually never do cooking competitions that are timed, because it’s not my forte and I hate to be rushed like that when I’m cooking,” said Mina, who has opened 16 restaurants in hotels around the country, the most recent being Bourbon Steak in the Four Seasons in Georgetown. “I might get knocked out in the first round.”

Mina said he was just glad to be able to participate, after he missed last year’s event because it fell smack in the middle of the final push to open Bourbon Steak. He often participates in similar programs in San Francisco—which he calls home—and just finished teaching a class to recently-homeless and rehabilitating students hoping to work in the restaurant industry.

“It’s an amazing cause,” he said of D.C. Central Kitchen. “Feeding hungry people, sure, but also people helping people to get into this profession. It’s great to see a charity that has multi-layers that all weave together.” Mina sat down in the lounge of Bourbon Steak last week to talk with DCist about the first year in D.C., restaurants, the recession and his local favorites.

Bourbon Steak has been open for almost a year now. How’s it going in D.C.?

Everything about it—D.C., the space, this restaurant—has exceeded my expectations. When you’re coming into a market that you’re not in ... There’s many things that you hope for when you open up a restaurant. The first thing is that the restaurant all flows together, the design, style of the food, service, everything down to the uniforms. There isn’t a piece that you’re not worried about. All of those pieces have come together really well. The clientele couldn’t be better, the staff couldn’t be better, and everything has come together really well. We’re far from finished, and being exactly where we want to be, but as far as how the start has been, it’s been great.

You say you’re not finished. What’s still to come from Bourbon Steak? Where would you like to take it in the future?

There’s always a train of thought with a restaurant, and that is that a restaurant is either better or worse every day than it was the day before. So, you have to start there, by making sure that everybody understands that. Where does that come from? It comes from your leaders, from your general manager, and your chef. I couldn’t be happier because I feel like I have a great chef and a great general manager. Every day they’re starting with a platform of ‘we’re going to improve today.’ So what does that mean? Each day we learn another thing that we can do to make this restaurant better.

We’ve got great seasonality, we’ve got return clientele. That’s a big one. When you come into a new market, you always open with a menu that—well, you try to be bold, but you also need to not overshoot. You need to find that balance and then you start to understand your clientele, and they start to trust you, and then you can continue to push the envelope. I feel like that’s where we are now, the chef [David Varley] and myself are at a point now where we can start to push people, because we’ve established a good group of regulars. We’ve really had some fun introducing new, fun things, like in the lounge, the lettuce cups. We now have a completely different lounge menu than we opened with.

What drew you to D.C., and the Four Seasons?

It’s a great restaurant market. When you look at a market, you look at great chefs that are already there, and their success rate. You have amazing chefs that are here. One of the chefs I’ve been following since the beginning, since I also started as a pastry chef, is Michel Richard. What he’s done here is brilliant. You already had chefs here that were at the very highest level of the country. So, there obviously was already that clientele. Between the amazing chefs here locally that have built their own grassroots restaurants, and then chefs like Eric Ripert, Jean Georges, Alain Ducasse coming into your city—I’m fortunate to be able to come in!

You opened right as we were plunging into this economic downturn. How has that affected a restaurant selling $50-$60 steak? How do you address that?

You address that by ... well, we don’t just have $50 steak on the menu. People say to me ‘you come to a restaurant like this and let’s say you order the skirt steak. Does that get perceived wrong in the restaurant?’ Absolutely not. If a chef didn’t think it was a great cut of meat, they wouldn’t put it on the menu. And so, obviously, you have to have a variety. With most major cities there’s a variety in the clientele as well. We focused a lot on the lounge menu as well, and having some things that are affordable in the lounge area. You do have two completely different menus here.

Also, the most important thing with what I do is I partner up with hotels. So you have to pick the right partner to be successful. Opening at that time in D.C., if you take those facts by themselves, it might not seem like the perfect decision. But then you layer in Four Seasons, Georgetown, the history, and what was going on here before. Where we sit today was already a great bar business, so I already knew that there was a clientele.

You’ve won acclaim for both your steak and seafood restaurants. Is seafood the next on your list for D.C.? Are you interested in pursuing any new ventures here?

Right now we’re not actively looking at anything except for Bourbon Steak. And Bourbon Steak is so much more than a typical steakhouse. The menu is so vast, the chef is obviously trained in many different areas. We have all the tools here to do great fish—wood burning oven, all the bells and whistles—and the menu has a lot of fish.

So where do you eat when you’re here—other than your own restaurant?

For sure, Michel Richard. I’ll tell you where I am a lot of times is over there for a lamb burger at the bar. That big basket of fries, that lamb burger ... those are definitely not helping me. And then, all of Jose Andres’s places. Rasika, I’ve been there like five times. Unfortunately, I have to admit, I’m a little bit a creature of habit. I need to venture out, and I will more and more when I’m here, but every time I’m here I end up convincing myself ‘I want to go to Rasika’ or I want to get that lamb burger, or go to one of Jose’s places.

Let’s say you’re sick—battling swine flu or something. What’s your big feel-better food?

Well, first of all, I try to avoid battling swine flu. But no, really, I eat the same thing almost every time I’m sick, and it’s dashi broth, with a little sushi rice and a lot of herbs. I eat that almost every time I’m sick, and I give it to my kids when they’re sick ... it’s our household under-the-weather dish.

Filed in Food and Drink and tagged bourbon steak, chewing the fat, michael mina

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