Racine native’s businesses aim to change food chain
When Alex Seidel started as a chef, his sole focus was on creating the perfect plate. Now, he sees chefs as agents of change. His focus is not only what is on our plates but also how it gets there.
Seidel, who received a 2018 James Beard Award for Best Chef: Southwest, grew up in Racine, attended Park High School, and played soccer as a college student at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where he met his wife, Melissa.
After working his way through Western Culinary Institute in Portland, Oregon, and restaurants in California, he headed to Denver. Twelve years ago, he opened his first restaurant, Fruition. Now he’s at the helm of a growing Colorado-based food empire that includes sheep’s milk cheese and yogurt with Fruition Farms Creamery, Mercantile Dining & Provision, the wholesale baking operation Füdmill, and his new quick casual concept, Chook.
Seidel lives in Lakewood, Colorado, with Melissa, son Jack, 11, and daughter Emery, 8.
When he returns to Wisconsin, chances are you’ll find him catching up with his cousin, restaurateur B.J. Seidel, or spending time at Browns Lake with family.
His next visit will be Oct. 2, as part of the monthly visiting chef series at EsterEv, 360 E. Erie St. Dinner is $80 per person, reservations required.
Question: Tell us about the upcoming dinner collaboration with DanDan and EsterEv, and how you have come to do several collaborations with Milwaukee chefs here and in Denver.
Answer: My cousin is B.J. Seidel at Burnhearts and Goodkind. He has the craft beer bar, and a couple years ago I invited them out and they did a dinner with us. I’ve been doing events with Justin Carlisle around the country. I met the guys from DanDan.
There’s just a great group of chefs in Milwaukee, and it’s home. I had my mom’s 65th birthday last summer, and all those guys cooked for it. It is a really good community of chefs. I love being part of it, even though I live here in Denver. There will always be a piece of me there.
Q: You started with just one restaurant, Fruition. How has your focus changed?
A: Fruition is coming up on 12 years, Mercantile is going to be 4. As you grow older as a chef, more things become important to you. I’ve tried to use my voice in advocating for our food systems. That’s what starting the farm was all about, to make a small dent.
That small dent when I started the farm nine years ago has steamrolled. It has helped me build great relationships with the medical field and agricultural field. it is an opportunity to work with great people and make change.
Q: How does your newest restaurant venture play into change?
A: I certainly didn’t need another restaurant. Chook is a new concept into quick casual. I sit on these panels and talk about food access. My (other) restaurants are $50 to $60 per person to eat, which I always had a little pit in my stomach about. We’re trying to bring affordable food, to feed a family of four for $40. This is charcoal-fired chicken, sides, trying to create some good food systems around the poultry industry…
There are certainly poultry farms here in Colorado, but none that I found like what Steve Ells, founder and former CEO of Chipotle, what he did for heritage pigs in this country. I think you can thank him for the reasons chefs have access to the heritage breeds now. We’re trying to do the same thing with poultry, to create better systems.
Q: What is the idea behind your other project, Füdmill?
A: A lot of my growth is about solving problems. We started making croissants and Danish at Mercantile. It took off beyond our projections and I had to find a building. You have to sell a lot of $2 croissants to pay the mortgage.
We now service seven Whole Foods in the Rocky Mountain region, and all of our restaurants. I’m just putting my cheeses in Whole Foods now, and they are available in Milwaukee by shipping. We’re just starting to get distribution outside of Colorado. Six or seven years ago we didn’t even know how to make good cheese.
Q: Is food a part of your story with Melissa?
A: It has really evolved. I can’t say it has always been that way. We met at 17 and 18 years old at UWM. … Now, I hear her talking about us eating leftovers. She’s like you got me into this no-waste thing, so don’t look at me. She’s really gotten our family to change our eating habits. She’s completely cut out gluten and sugar over the last year and a half.
Q: Does that influence your own menu focus?
A: I do have a personal connection to the gluten thing. My chef Matt Vawter … just last year Whole Foods wanted to do a focaccia bar. We were testing recipes for weeks. He was starting to break out, couldn’t figure it out, now he has to be completely gluten-free.
Here’s a chef, we’ve worked together for 10 years, and now he can’t try half the foods we make. I’ve championed him to research that area and he’s blown my mind.
We talk about our bodies and aches. I’m approaching 45. My hip hurts, my foot hurts and he’s trying to educate me on foods that create inflammation.
I spent time with a farmer in Wichita two weeks ago and we talked about glyphosate, and he brought up another chemical. He was raised as a wheat farmer, and felt he had to go against his parents and become an organic farmer.
Again, it is all part of creating change. That is what food has taught me to do.
Table Chat features interviews with Wisconsinites, or Wisconsin natives, who work in restaurants or support the restaurant industry; or visiting chefs. To suggest individuals to profile, email nstohs@journalsentinel.com.