Story & photos by Jeni Wheeler
Real food, good food, matters, and so do the people who make it, so each issue we spotlight a local chef and feature a couple of their recipes along with one or two of my own recipes for additional dishes you can make using some of the same ingredients, thereby reducing food waste. Not all food is created equally, and it matters, because healthier people create healthier communities!
This is an investment in us! So let’s get cooking!
Meet Jeremiah Reardon, the Chef/Owner of Red River BBQ. Jeremiah was born and raised on Cape Cod in the restaurant world. Jeremiah spent his early childhood years in Provincetown before the family moved to Orleans. He feels cooking was woven into his DNA. His parents built and owned the Governor Prince in Truro (now Outer Reach Lodge), so he was dishwashing by age 11 and began line cooking at 14, but his love of food began even earlier. He had a significant sweet tooth, so he started baking early on.
His focus on reducing waste came from an early lesson that has stuck with him ever since. As a boy, he was exposed to archery and hunting, and he killed a rabbit. His parents told him that if we, as humans, killed something, we needed to use it. It could not be wasted. So, at the age of 10, they made him prep and cook it. This became Rabbit Marsala. He describes the event as somewhat traumatic, but it formed his belief that nothing should be wasted. He also notes that was the last time he personally killed any living creature. His passion for good food, however, was ignited.
Coming up, he worked at Katie’s Clam Bar, the Captain Linnell House, and the Eastham Lobster Pool. A friend was going to culinary school and encouraged him to apply. He enrolled in the French Culinary Institute in New York – now known as the Institute of Culinary Education. After graduating, he went to work for Chef Gray Kunz at Lespinasse in the St. Regis Hotel in New York City before heading to San Francisco to cook with Wolfgang Puck at his first restaurant, Postrio. He also worked with Nancy Oaks at Boulevard and the Hotel del Coronado, before moving back east to work at Aujourd‘hui in Boston and Striped Bass in Philadelphia. He returned to the Cape in 1999 where he worked at the Brewster Fish House. From 2002 to 2007 he served as the Executive Chef, during which time they received James Beard recognition. He then worked at Enzo in Provincetown, now Local 186.
For two weeks each year, he would stagiaire (work an unpaid internship) at 11 Madison Park in New York City, just to keep learning and growing. This was also when he decided his lifestyle wasn’t conducive to actually living the life he wanted to live, so he got sober. He joined Vers in 2016 when they moved from Chatham to Orleans as co-executive chef and was there until 2019, producing what he believes was some of the best food he’s ever created. Jeremiah opened Grill 43 in 2020.
As for many others, the pandemic created challenges, but also, opportunities. He began asking himself if he was making sustainable decisions, both personally and professionally. He was newly married. Pricing and access to high quality ingredients became incredibly inconsistent. So, after leaving Grill 43, he decided to go in a completely different direction, and Red River BBQ was born. As a classically trained French chef, he has followed the rules his whole career, and they have served him well, but now his inhibitions are gone, he says.
He sticks to sourcing only the best of ingredients. For beef, he uses a ranch co-op in the Midwest, all antibiotic-free, and everything is scratch made. He said he’s always most creative when he’s overtired but also acknowledges that working around the clock is part of who he is (how every chef/owner is). So, how do you make it all work?
When asked what the best part of what he’s doing now is, he said, “first is that I work with my wife. I light up when I see her walk through the door. If you’re going to be a bit of a workaholic, working together makes it all better, at least for us it does, and secondly, I finally get to see some of my friends. They weren’t just ‘dropping in’ to the previous places. Now they do,” he shares. “It’s about quality of life now: mine, my wife’s, my employees.” He still gets obsessed with whatever he’s learning about right now, and for the last three months, that’s been brisket. I think we all might benefit from this obsession.
He believes everyone has talent for something, but hard work – that’s different. It’s harder to teach. How does he overcome that himself, when he’s having a hard time finding the path, finding the motivation? “I say to myself, ‘just shut up and work’”. He strongly believes that if he does the work, the path always shows itself. And I think you can taste that in each bite.
In addition to the restaurant in Harwich Port, Red River BBQ also has two food trucks. One regularly serves up tasty treats at Cape Cod Beer and periodically at Truro Vineyards. And they’re just getting started: stay tuned for more developments.
Red River BBQ
787 Route 28, Harwich Port
RedRiverBBQHarwichport.com
Jeni Wheeler is the Executive Director, Co-Founder and Creative Mind behind the Family Table Collaborative, and Owner and Chief Culinary Artist of Jeni’s Joy, a boutique private chef/catering company. Through her collaboration with local partners and over 20,000 hours of manpower annually from their dedicated army of over 500 volunteers, FTC have served over 190,000 nutritious, delicious meals to the Cape Cod community and rescued and put back into our community over 80,000 pounds of fresh produce. Jeni is passionate and dedicated to creating sustainable change through making nutritious, delicious food more accessible, as well as addressing the education necessary to make cooking easier and more fun. Jeni has her MBA, with a focus in Social Entrepreneurship, from Babson.
