Hello friends. Yeah yeah, I know it’s been awhile since I last posted and I am sorry about that, I’ve been swamped with the soul sucking job I use for health insurance and rent money. Also, Jerry and I watched one too many documentaries lately about longevity and the importance of what you put into your body and have become a little neurotic about where our food comes from. Being the new health freaks that we are, we’ve been spending less time and money going out to eat and more time at the Farmers’ Markets and working on our new garden. 

Spending more time at the Farmers’ Market has really put into perspective, not only how amazing the produce and agriculture in North Carolina are, but also how great the people who run our neighboring farms are as well. I really do recommend taking some time to muck it up with the local farmers next time you are at the market; you learn a lot and you can tell how much they care about what they are doing.

Fortunately, being a little more particular about where your food comes from doesn’t mean you need to become a hermit, or drive a Subaru covered in deranged bumper stickers. There are still a lot of amazing restaurants that share the same sentiment. There are a few chefs here in Charlotte fully utilizing that amazing North Carolina agriculture to bring an elevated dining experience of seasonal menus that fully embody what our land has to offer. One of them is Andres Kaifer, owner and head chef at Customshop in the historic Elizabeth neighborhood. I sat down with Andres to better understand how he became the amazing chef that he is today, what brought him to North Carolina, and how he is helping level up the Charlotte food scene through all locally sourced ingredients. 

Chances are if you live in Charlotte, you are familiar with Customshop. Either you’ve already been there or you’ve seen it topping every “Top Restaurants in Charlotte” list on the internet. So before we get into what the mastermind behind the menu recommends you eat when you stop in Customshop, let’s first get to know more about Andres and how everything came to be. 

So who is this Miami native trying to bring a Michelin Star to the Queen City? To better understand the renowned chef of today, I think it is helpful to rewind the tape and understand what influenced Andres to start cooking in the first place. 

Andres: “So, I was very fortunate. My mom always took it upon herself to cook at home. We didn’t eat out much. She was very structured, she always had menus for the week. She would go shop accordingly and get everything she needed and then execute these menus to a T, all while being a single mom, and working, which can be tough. 

She is also an amazing cook. So it definitely started from my experience at my house. The older I got the more interest I had in what my mom was doing in the kitchen, so learning from her is where it all started. From there I started watching the Food Network and realized I could do this for a living. After that I started working at several restaurants starting at 15, before going to culinary school.”

Zanzibar: You also worked at Crawford and Sons in Raleigh before coming over to Charlotte and taking over Customshop – talk to me a bit about the influence Scott Crawford had on you.

Andres: “That was hands down the most influential experience I had in the kitchen. From the culture in the kitchen to how he carries himself as a leader and a chef. My first shift there, Scott was there in the dishpit washing dishes at 8:30pm on a Friday. And I was like, wow,  here is a guy who could be standing out front at his restaurant or even stay home and his food empire would still run seamlessly, but here he is helping out his solo dishwasher. It was very influentially humbling for me.” 

If you are like me, you are probably still picturing the beautiful beaches, vibrant culture, and amazing cuisine of Miami and wondering, “Andres, how the hell heck did you end up in North Carolina?”

Andres: “I have a twin sister who went to UNC for grad school. And farmers’ markets always blew my mind here. Like especially the Raleigh farmers’ market. That thing is the size of a football field. We just didn’t have anything like that in Miami. To me that was eye opening – the produce and agriculture scene here is just top notch. And you know I ate at a couple restaurants in Raleigh; Poole’s and Crawford and Sons and realized how good of food there was here. I mean, I tell everyone to this day- Crawford and Sons is the best restaurant in the state. 

On top of that, my sister bought a house here and once she did that it was like, “Alright cool, bye Miami.” I mean you just can’t buy a house for 300k in Miami, so the cost of living here is incredible. 

The cost of living plus the agriculture really drew me here.” 

Comparing the farmers’ market to the size of a football field is an understatement. Both the Charlotte and Raleigh regional farmers’ markets are so expansive and full of such variety, it is hard to wrap your mind around. Jerry and I truly do all of our grocery shopping at the Charlotte Farmers’ Market now from handmade crushed red pepper tagliatelle to hand churned Amish butter. It has honestly made us better cooks because you have to learn how to get creative within the confines of whatever ingredients are available to you that week. It is manageable when you are cooking for two, but how does a massively popular restaurant serve up over 1,000 meals a week based on only locally sourced ingredients? 

Andres: “Really it all starts from going to the farmers’ market and developing relationships with those farmers. Freshlist does a great job as a middle man for chefs. It connects you with farmers in local areas, like small towns outside of Asheville for example. Not necessarily hyper local, but still local, like 2 hours away max. But it is really all about developing relationships with those farmers. Like for example, I have 3 farmers that text me what they have for the week, every week and whatever they have is what is going to be on my menu. 

It can be a challenge sometimes because the weather can change and force you to audible for the week, but it is still very fulfilling. I’m always going to opt to give the local farmers my money as opposed to the big box store.”

The magic of Customshop is Andres creative and thoughtful approach to making North Carolina’s produce, seafood, and specialty items shine through an ever changing menu of Spanish, Italian, and French inspired dishes. By relying on locally sourced ingredients the menu is always changing, so even if you’ve been before, the next time you go will be a completely different tasting experience. That said, I asked Andres how he recommends diners tackle his menus.

Andres: “Our pasta section is super strong. Especially right now, I’d say it is the strongest it has ever been. The pastas hit hard.

And for sure any of our crudos. I take serious pride in ensuring we have a strong crudo program and we have the ability to source great seafood here which helps. We are constantly trying to make our crudos interesting and complex.” 

Jerry treated me to Customshop for my birthday last year and I can confirm, the pasta and crudo options are unbelievable. But, I’d be remiss if we didn’t talk about my favorite dish at Andres restaurant – the duck. It was unlike any duck I’ve ever had in my life and the reason behind why is an interesting one…

Andres: “The duck is my favorite dish on our menu. We use a Rohan duck, which is proprietary to D’Artagnan. Which is probably my main meat and poultry purveyor. The Rohan duck is a hybrid between a pekin duck and a mallard, which essentially yields this super duck with thick breasts and great fat content. Pekins are known for their fat content and crispy skin, whereas mallards are known for being super tender.

My good friend, who is like a brother to me, Michael Beltran, owns a Michelin Star restaurant in Miami called Ariete. We did a collaboration dinner right after we took over Customshop and he really instilled in me that at Ariete, everything is the duck. It all revolves around the attention they put into the duck. And it was like the Last Dance scene where “I took that personally” so we strive to always improve our duck here. We currently get the ducks in and age them in a cooler and let them dry out, and then lightly cold smoke them with hickory, and then slowly render it throughout service. So, if you get a duck, it has been slowly cooking the whole time. So we slowly render the skin out so it is super crispy and the duck is perfectly cooked. Aging it delivers a more tender mouthfeel and then slowly rendering it yields this perfectly skin super crispy on top. And the light smoke from hickory is incredible. And then we take the bones and roast them off with a little tomato paste and reduce that down to make a sour cherry duck jus that we pour on top of that. 

We are currently serving it with a sunchoke, which is a Jerusalem artichoke. It is kind of like if a potato and artichoke had a baby, so it is super creamy. We get sunchokes from Boy and Girl Farm which is one of the farms we get a lot of our stuff from. So it is a super creamy delicious puree the duck sits on top of and then we garnish it with a candy and walnut crumble that has a bit of heat to it.

So there is a lot of love that goes into that dish. I mean it is like 5 days of work that goes into that dish.”

The food scene in Charlotte has been changing a lot as the city continues to rapidly expand. The sprawl of the city bred your classic suburban big, boxy, chain restaurants, and Uptown bred corporate steakhouses to appease Bank of America and Wells Fargo’s soulless bankers for years, but as historic neighborhoods like Elizabeth (where Customshop is located), NoDa, and Wesley Heights have had a life breathed back into them, new and creative chef driven restaurants have started to pop up, showing Charlotte residents what’s possible with all of the amazing resources the land around us has to offer. Andres is one of the many incredibly talented chefs revolutionizing the Charlotte food scene and I can’t recommend Customshop enough. 

With all of the success Andres has experienced since taking over Customshop, it’ll be interesting to see what he does next, so I had to ask – “What can we expect from you in the future?”

Andres: “So we don’t have a name yet, but should soon. It all just happened super fast. We really just thought about what the Optimist Hall needs and what the city needs and it’s like – no offense to anyone in this city, but it needs really good Spanish food. I mean I am fully spanish. My mom was born in Cuba, raised in Spain, my dad was born in Spain, raised in Spain. My whole family lives there and I go back once a year. So for me it was a no-brainer to do Spanish food in Optimist Hall, so we are going to try to make it a no-frills, really straight forward traditional Spanish tapas bar where we have seasonal rotating tapas that are just solid. No pretentious bullshit, just quick good tapas. I’m thrilled about it” 

You heard it here first, well you probably already heard it on Axios, those guys are so quick to the new restaurant announcements, but anyways, rejoice Charlotte we have a new tapas spot coming that is sure to be amazing. Start mentally preparing yourself for the Optimist Hall crowds and jockeying for a seat because this new spot is sure to be a hit. And in the meantime, go treat yourself to a nice meal at Customshop, supporting local farmers while enjoying an outstanding meal thoughtfully prepared by a very cool chef.