Chatting with Chattanooga's own celebrity chef Charlie Loomis
It’s a busy Saturday afternoon on the Southside at Feed Co. Table & Tavern. Executive Chef Charlie Loomis moves through the kitchen like a maestro, overseeing the cooks with a keen attention to detail, a soft smile stretching across his face.
The clattering of pots and pans, the scattered conversations between the cooks and the servers, the background hum of happy diners all create a symphony of culinary bliss.
He is exactly where he loves to be.
And probably the only thing that Loomis loves more than cooking is talking about cooking.
Taking a break, we sat down in a back room where college football fans were gathering to watch their beloved team play on a wall of a large-screen televisions. But today, the conversation wasn’t about Feed Co. or football. It’s about the most culinary-oriented of all holidays: Thanksgiving. It’s the most American of all holidays, where past and present live together.
“Growing up, Thanksgiving was hands-down one of my favorite holidays,” Loomis says, his ever present smile growing wider. “Everyone in my family has always been real competitive as far as cooking goes. We had my aunt against my other aunts’ stuffing, for example. It would be the turn of one aunt to make the stuffing and then another aunt would turn up with her cornbread dressing. It was always a contest to see who was doing better, who had their game on.”
That familial competition is part of what drives Loomis to this day. This competitive experience held him in good on his turn on the Food Network’s “Cooks vs Cons” show in 2016, as he prevailed and took home the $10,000 grand prize for best professional chef.
“Cooking has always been an emotional thing for me,” he explains. “If I can nail it and bring myself back to a special time, it’s a win for me.”
Thanksgiving itself has always been as much about memory as it has been about food. Childhood memories of holiday feasts have long played in a part in how we all prepare for Thanksgiving today. Loomis likes to draw a lot of his holiday cooking inspiration from his childhood.
“Thanksgiving has been about 50-50 for me,” he says. “It’s either I’m going out to do something completely different or I want to mimic something I remember. One Loomis family tradition is my mom’s sour cream potatoes. She uses buttermilk, sour cream, and lots of butter. She’ll boil the potatoes off and whip them, put them in a pan and cool them for a day, then bake them off. They don’t have that nasty texture of a re-heated potato and it’s just unbelievable. Me and my brother would fight over the leftovers.”
Just don’t expect to this on the Feed Co. menu anytime soon, as Loomis admits that’s he’s never been able to duplicate his mother’s recipe.
“I can’t do it the way she does,” he says wistfully. “She’ll show me how to do it, but she doesn’t use a recipe…she just throws things in there. It just drives me crazy because I can’t mimic it.”For many, if not most, people, Thanksgiving is all about the turkey. And even though Loomis is a big fan of dark meat, he surprisingly turns out to not be as much about turkey as he is about everything else on the table.
“I’ve never been that big of a meat eater,” Loomis explains. “I enjoy it, but I always treat it more as a condiment. I really like all the different things on the plate and how they play together. Having that many different things, picking and choosing, playing with a little bit of cranberry sauce with the gravy and the turkey, that’s what makes it fun.”
That’s not to say he doesn’t have plenty of ideas of how to change up the “turkey filled with stuffing and roasted in the oven” that is the traditional method.
“Turkey breasts are just kind of boring to me,” he says. “Sometimes I’ll braise the legs off, take the breasts off, splay it open and stuff the breast with the dark meat and roast that off. And then do a cranberry barbecue sauce with it.”
His mother, whom he obviously inherited his love of creative cooking from, had her own interesting take on roasting a turkey.
“My mom would like to cook a roux and smother that on the outside of the turkey and then roast it like that,” he recalls. “The oil from the roux would interact with the skin and crisp it up a little bit, but it would have this kind of cakey texture on the outside. It was unbelievable. That was like a game changer for me.”
As a chef, a large part of Loomis’ success over the years has been his creative takes on many traditional dishes. Naturally, this extends beyond the restaurant and into his own holiday cooking. For example, his love of cranberry sauce.
“I’ve got to have cranberries,” he says. “I buy them whole and then cook them down with water, sugar, a little bit of orange juice, and a little bit of ginger until the berries begin to pop. Then I stir them vigorously to break them up, taste them to see if they need a bit more sugar, and then they gel right up.”
One of the more interesting facets of Thanksgiving food is how regional it still is. What many people think of as a standard dish may be all but unheard of in other parts of the country.
“My grandmother used to make a baked pineapple dish with cheddar cheese and butter and Ritz crackers on top of it,” Loomis remembers. “Every Thanksgiving it was on the table. I loved it. But everyone I’ve told this to, out of ten people there may be one who has heard of it. And we also used to always have a can of those cheap black olives that I put on the ends of my fingers.”
But even as many of us still view Thanksgiving in the classic Norman Rockwell all-the-extended-family-around-the-table fashion, the truth is many people are going small. Smaller meals, smaller groups, smaller thinking.
Which means an ever-larger number of people are now in charge of preparing the Thanksgiving meal themselves instead of just showing up at the family house. And even the smallest of Thanksgivings still involves more than a regular sit-down meal, which can be a bit daunting, especially for first-timers.
“My biggest advice would be to plan ahead, get a really good game plan in place,” he says. “Get your shopping done three days ahead of time, at least. More times than I can tell you I’ve been last-minute and showed up and there were no more green beans at the store. Or cranberries or something like that. Oh, and when cooking, use a lot of herbs. That’s one thing a lot of people don’t take advantage of. I absolutely love a lot of rosemary, a lot of thyme, a lot of fresh parsley. It’s something that really sets things apart and adds so much.”
In addition to getting a game plan together and shopping well in advance (don’t forget the fresh herbs), Loomis says that actual food prep work can and should be done in advance.
“I enjoy getting all my prep done the day before and being able to enjoy myself on Thanksgiving,” he explains. “If I can just focus on the turkey then it’s not necessarily a bad thing to open the wine a little early and not worry so much about messing things up.”
Ah yes, the wine. For those of us who enjoy a nice glass or two on Thanksgiving, there are many choices. Loomis says it’s really up to your own preferences, as there isn’t a specific “right” answer. He’s a personal fan of an oaky Chardonnay but also doesn’t mind a Rosé. For many, a nice dry white such as a Sauvignon Blanc, a Pinot Gris, or even a dry Chenin Blanc are well received. For others, a semi-sweet wine like a Riesling, a Gewürztraminer, or a classic White Zinfandel hit the spot.
But the most important question of them all, even beyond roasting vs frying a turkey, dressing vs stuffing, or mashed potatoes vs sweet potatoes is the debate that has separated entire families for generations: pumpkin pie of pecan pie?
For Loomis, the answer is a bit more complex. “I grew up in Virginia and we had three different pie shops in town that were just pies,” he remembers. “We grew up in apple country, so apple pie was a big focus, and one of our favorites that we still do is chocolate chess pie. And blueberry pie is also a favorite. Even when it’s just me, my wife and our two kids, we’ll often bake up three pies just for the four us. And yes, that includes pumpkin and pecan.”
But when pressed on the question as to which is the best, pumpkin or pecan, Loomis has a simple answer
“Both,” he says with a huge smile.
Spoken like a true chef of the people.