Big Easy does it
Santos brings New Orleans inspiration to Buttermilk & Bourbon
Chef Jason Santos is ready for his second act. “I feel more passionate and focused now than ever before,” Santos said. The chef has been a fixture in the Bostonarea dining scene for years, known for his food and his brand-name recognition: Santos' trademark blue hair has graced everything from food TV shows to merchandise, such as an upcoming line of jarred sauces.
But as he prepares to open his new Back Bay restaurant, the Southern-inspired Buttermilk & Bourbon, Santos is also selling a sense of renewed energy and enthusiasm. Personally and professionally, he's riding a wave: He's newly engaged to be married, he's just kicked off a recurring television role, popping up to dispense advice on Spike network's “Bar Rescue,” and Buttermilk & Bourbon is his first restaurant opened without partners, giving him full creative control.
The result is “some of the best food I've done in years,” said Santos, who has stocked Buttermilk & Bourbon's “playful” menu with nontraditional bayou-style bites: Think pork belly cracklings, shrimp and lump crab soup dosed with absinthe, and Cajun spiced guacamole heaped with crawfish. He's sourcing as many ingredients as possible from below the MasonDixon line, from Anson Mills grains to Duke's mayo, a brand originally invented at a South Carolina sandwich shop.
A Big Easy-evoking bar pumps out fun drinks like frozen hand grenades, best imbibed in the restaurant's black-light-illuminated Voodoo Lounge. And the interior's impressively designed dining rooms, each named for a different New Orleans neighborhood, are loaded with whimsical details: There's a walk-up oyster bar, seating made from reclaimed church pews and mismatched China tea sets used for pouring shareable cocktails. When it's time to pay up, your bill comes pinned to a miniature voodoo doll.
Buttermilk & Bourbon is slated to open Friday, just in time for Mardi Gras.
Santos has already partnered on two other restaurants, the Theater District's heavily trafficked Abby Lane and neighborhood joint Back Bay Harry's, both people-pleasers but neither highly conceptualized. Buttermilk & Bourbon, by contrast,
is loaded with pops of Santos' personality — and it's the culmination of years of experience gleaned since he first achieved star chef status as runner-up on the 2010 season of the hit show “Hell's Kitchen.”
“I like to joke that I've built a career out of coming in second,” said Santos, chuckling, who has parlayed his food TV fame into everything from morning chat show appearances to globe-trotting chef gigs. Fans can even stuff a Santos-branded MasterCard in their wallet.
It's the day and age of celeb chefs, and Santos makes no apologies for mass-marketing himself. He's transparent about measuring success, in part, in brand building. “I love that I can give people jobs and make people money,” Santos said. “I pride myself in being able to pay a sous chef more than he's ever received.”
But the gusto with which Santos is approaching Buttermilk & Bourbon seems designed to refocus fans' attention away from his public persona and back to his work as a restaurateur. It's probably the most excited he's seemed about a project.
“In my career I've done many things just to do them,” he said, citing his first restaurant as a chefowner, Blue Inc., a Financial District flame-out that opened at the peak of Santos' post-“Hell's Kitchen” notoriety but closed only three years later. Perhaps tellingly, its name, chosen from reader submissions in a Herald-hosted contest, stressed culinary commerce more than art.
Buttermilk & Bourbon still doesn't take itself too seriously. “It's a fun place. We're not looking for a Michelin star,” said Santos, whose funky menu includes mac 'n' cheese with a hot sauce-spiked Cheetos crust. Santos is certainly taking the work seriously, though, offering a fleshed-out idea that asserts his personality through food, drink and design more effectively than any trademarked merchandise can. This restaurant is unabashedly his own — and opening the doors feels like a celebratory act, like donning colorful beads during a Mardi Gras melee.
That's just as it should. “I know it sounds cliche, but my favorite thing about New Orleans is the energy,” Santos said. “I believe that passion is infectious.”