ken atchity door to door: Q&A: Jarrett Stieber Starts 2014 With New Pop-Ups

Q&A: Jarrett Stieber Starts 2014 With New Pop-Ups

People took note of Atlanta chef Jarrett Stieber in 2013. The guy left his fine-dining jobs to head out into the shakier terrain of do-it-yourselfism, and quickly established a following thanks to his creative, attractive and locally sourced dishes. His semi-permanent pop-up restaurant in the back of the Candler Park Market produced some of the year's more delightful dishes, and his involvement in the series of restaurant-within-a-restaurant projects at Gato Bizco maintained that sense of playfulness. 2014 sees Stieber's CPM project wrapped up, but he's setting up shop behind the deli counter of The General Muir on Wednesdays through Fridays, from 10:30 AM to 5 PM, beginning today, with a focus on Israeli food (fingers crossed for sabiches). Sunday evenings beginning in February he's relaunching his dinner service at Gato from 7 to 11 PM - diners in the know should also ask about a possible speakeasy nearby featuring different bartenders. We chatted with Stieber about his new projects, all of which fall under the moniker Eat Me Speak Me he's adopted.

Zagat: How'd you celebrate the New Year?

Jarrett Stieber: I just went by Kimball House. Couldn't think of anywhere better to ring in the New Year - I love it! Stayed there until just after midnight, got a smooch, headed home to rest up for 2014.

Zagat: Talk a little about what you have planned for your time at The General Muir.

JS: I wanted to make sure to get some new stuff for myself lined up for the start of the year. Last year there was a lot of flux in my job. I was leaving Empire State South where I'd worked, and was planning on moving to Asheville, but that didn't work out - the restaurant where I was going to work didn't open in time, so I moved back to Atlanta.

The General Muir - it's always busy at lunch, and their chef Todd Ginsberg had approached me about doing a pop-up at some point. I guess they've been open for a year now, and restaurants always change a lot in that first year. They wanted some more interesting food out of the deli. And while they focus on things inspired by New York Jewish delis, they wanted some things that are more Israeli Jewish using seasonal ingredients, brighter colors, brighter ingredients

Zagat: What's going to be on your menu?

JS: i'm going to open with a menu the way I want a lunch menu to be. I haven't ever permanently cooked in a lunch-service environment, so i don't really know what to expect. I'll make my opening menu the way i would want to eat lunch and see what it sells, and then adjust from there down the line.

We'll have soup at all times, probably different each week, usually some sort of warm grain dish with veggies and different condiment, probably staples, and then one composed meat plate that'll be still veg-heavy but still feature some sort of kosher meat. I think we'll also have a tofu dish and one completely vegetarian dish. i want to keep everything at app-sized portions and easy to take with you, kind of in line with the to-go nature of a deli. It's super, super important to me that my food is locally sourced. I can't stress that enough. And my dishes will reflect seasonality. I cook with a sense of humor and a little irreverence, so that'll play into it, too.
We want to make the deli as exciting as the rest of the restaurant.

Zagat: What important lessons did you learn from your time at the Candler Park Market?

JS: Candler Park was great for a semi-permanent pop-up. Doing it five days a week really gave me a great understanding of ordering food, prepping food and of just being myself, working, and how to share space with people. We had agreed that it would be temporary - Candler Park Market has a lot of great things planned for the coming year, so this was the best time to go in new directions.

it definitely was a huge benefit for figuring out what works, what doesn't, finding out a way to develop my own food. And reacting to what people like to eat, too. That's been really important to keep that in mind.

Zagat: And what's the plan with Gato in the new year?

JS: Gato's going to be awesome as well. I think it'll be a little more of an adventurous menu, fun things, a bigger menu, and without the dietary restrictions like no pork or no shellfish like at the General Muir. It'll be Sundays starting the first weekend in February, so it's still kind of coming together, but people can keep up with it at EatMeSpeakMe.com

Zagat: What's the appeal of doing pop-ups?

JS: What I like about this is that any form of art is constantly evolving and changing. Food is no different. Food is a trade and a skill set, but also a medium for expressing artistic license that comes with interesting food. In the confines of a brick and mortar place with four walls, things can be kind of rigid. Pop-ups give me the freedom to try a lot of different things. You know, once you establish a place's identity, it's tough to play around with it, it's structured and rigid. There's something to be said for predictability… but right now I want to play.

Zagat: Any plans down the line beyond these pop-ups?

JS: This thing with the General Muir is open ended, so it'll just keep going until it seems like it's time to stop. Like any other ambitious cook, I have visions of my own place. But I'd like to learn more about my voice as a chef and learn more about being a businessman. Nobody wants to fail, so until I feel like it's 100 percent the time, that's not going to happen.

Reposted from Zagat.com

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Yoga Gives Back

Written by Kayoko Mitsumatsu

From Posture To Power: Microcredit Changes Lives On Both Sides of the Ocean

We can talk about making change. But affecting real change in the world comes from impacting the lives of individuals. It comes from empowering people to be independent and able to make a living on their own while at the same time being fully integrated in our interdependent global community. Sometimes it takes something that seems to be radical to make this change, but these shifts can be deceptively small. They can be even as small (or as large) as the cost of a Los Angeles Yoga class.

How could this be? In the practice of microcredit, lending seemingly small amounts of money to small-scale entrepreneurs allows them to succeed and change their circumstances. This is the fundamental basis of microcredit’s transformative power; it’s a revolutionary concept in finance. This practice shifts the emphasis from financial transactions being focused only about large loans and large scale businesses, which are out of reach of many one-person operations, institutions and organizations – to lending practices that actually make a positive difference in a person’s life. Microcredit practices based on social justice and empowerment operate through a combination of small-scale loans based on trust and community support, with structured repayment plans and programs that encourage savings. In these situations, people actually have the opportunity to solidify long-term change in their lives.

Dr. Muhammad Yunus and the Yoga Gives Back Team: Joel Bender, Leslie Hendry, Dr. Muhammad Yunus and Kayoko Mitsumatsu (left-right)

In 2006, economist Dr. Muhammad Yunus and the institution he founded, the Grameen Bank, were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. This award was in recognition of their revolutionary efforts to create this micro-credit model, support sustainable economic practices, and provide an alternative to what were exploitive norms. When a person is caught in a cycle of poverty, they may become trapped in the system, particularly since large banking institutions have historically ignored people without assets or credit histories, who are just starting out and who may not have already proven themselves. Most banks prefer to lend large sums of money that represent a greater profit margin and are set up only for large loans in order to make a profit themselves. And even making it more challenging, people at the bottom of the economic scale worldwide have had to rely on moneylenders charging usurious terms and interest rates to obtain funds to plant the next crop, buy inventory of new equipment, or upgrade a business in any way. Institutions such as the Grameen Bank and their affiliates are offering another approach. It’s one that has significantly impacted millions of people.

As Dr. Yunus described in an exclusive interview with Yoga Gives Back in May, 2009, “We started in 1976, and today within Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, eight million people borrow micro loans, ninety-seven percent of them women.” This represents an enormous potential for change and empowerment that just did not exist on a large scale in this form prior to 1976.

There is a social cycle in economics, and Dr. Yunus explained this: “Poverty is not inside the person. Poverty is forced from outside. Poor people are as capable [a] human being as anybody else. They have the same power and energy, same potential. But they are denied such facilities. They cannot express themselves. Money is one of the most important items missing in their lives. You need a dollar to catch a dollar. You cannot catch a dollar with an empty hand. So, that first dollar, nobody has given to her. So she remains dependent on someone else. She has to be hired, to slave; she has to work to make food available on the table. What we have done, we have put that first dollar into her hands as a banking proposition. Conventional banks never come to the poor people. They go to rich people to make more money. The person who does not have a dollar – she cannot get it. So we did it. We did it in a way that is affordable to her. Because we do not insist on collateral. There is no collateral.”

While that may seem like a radical concept, the Grameen Bank has proven that their success is much more than ideological. Dr Yunus cited statistics for us, “The repayment rate is almost 100%, without collateral or anything. This is the strength of microcredit which is now spread all over the world. There are by now at least 150 million borrowers in the world today. Bu it is still very small comparing to the need. We need more microcredit organizations in the world so that more people can be reached.”

Yoga Gives Back is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization begun in LA, with the goal to provide a way for Western Yoga practitioners to give back to India, the birthplace of Yoga, which has given us so much. We’re heeding Dr. Yunus’ call to reach more people through expanded opportunities for and awareness of microcredit and have targeted India and Indian families, women, and would-be entrepreneurs, who would be otherwise stuck in the cycle of poverty that Dr. Yunus described. Yoga Gives Back supports microfinancing operations in India, through the Grameen Foundation, headquartered in Washington, DC. Donations go directly to Grameen Koota, Bangalore, South India and our YGB awareness campaign focuses on the real stories of how poor women are changing their lives with small loans from Grameen Koota.

Ms. Vinatha M Reddy

Grameen Koota was started by visionary teacher and philanthropist, Ms. Vinatha M Reddy (pictured, above) in 1999, who learned about Nobel Peace Recipient Dr Muhammad Yunus’ microfinancing and immediately began exploring ways of replicating his work in her hometown. In 2000, she started providing small microcredit loans, averaging $25.00 a month, to fifty local women. Today, Grameen Koota’s work is reaching out to over 280,000 women in Bangalore, Mysore and many areas of Karnataka state, in South India, making real impact on these women’s lives as well as on the local economy.

Yoga Gives Back

The Los Angeles-based Yoga Gives Back has a worldwide reach and began out of the inspiration and dedication of my Yoga mentor Joel Bender and me. Our group has suddenly started growing almost daily and our mission is shared by a quickly expanding and loving Yoga community.

When I was growing up in Japan, which is a very middle-class society, I had never experienced or seen any real poverty, especially growing up in Tokyo in 1960s and 1970s, when Japan's post-war economic miracle was taking place. Then, I had a chance to live in Brazil in the late 1970s for two years, where as a teenager, I saw the divide between poverty and wealth, the reality of the real slums, kids on the streets begging every time you stopped the car at the traffic light, all very much like India. Social injustice hit me hard.

Once I started Yoga practice and feeling my life being so enriched by it , I felt a need to use my resources to help others. I was producing a documentary on Social Entrepreneurship and learned about microfinancing. I shared this information with Joel [featured in the teacher profile in this month’s issue of LA YOGA] who had been looking for the way he could give back to India since his first visit there – so we teamed up.

When I think about the growth of Yoga Gives Back thus far, I give a lot of credit to the entrepreneurship and volunteer spirit of Americans, willing to embrace and support a new grass roots campaign like ours.

Kayoko Mitsumatsu, co-founder of Yoga Gives Back, is a documentary filmmaker whose films deal with social justice issues, including First They Killed My Father a memoir of a Cambodia’s Killing Fields’ survivor.

A Life Changing Story of Microcredit: Jayashree

Jayashree

Jayashree lives in the suburbs of Bangalore and is married and the mother of two children. We visited her at her humble dirt floor one room home for the first time in 2007. We were touched by her warm smile and most generous hospitality, serving us hot tea and cookies.

Jayashree was born into a very poor family in Bangalore. When she was a child, her family’s financial situation became so severe that she had to drop out of school and work at a garment factory. She toiled throughout her childhood and after she got married at fifteen, her meager earnings had to support her ailing in-laws. She had two children. Her husband’s rickshaw business was not enough to pay her sons’ education or secure food for the family.

In 2007, Jayashree learned from her neighbors about Grameen Koota’s microcredit program and applied for her first loan. She was granted a first loan of 7,000 rupees ($175), and immediately bought her husband’s auto rickshaw. Owning their own rickshaw business increased their income significantly.

Jayashree was able to pay back her entire loan in one year and became eligible for her second loan in 2008. Having proven her diligence, her second loan amount doubled to 15,000 rupees ($375). This time, she bought a sewing machine and started stitching bags. The family’s earnings have now tripled and she is earning 150 rupees ($3.75) a day. In addition, she opened a small shop next to her house to sell her products which is earning her an additional 100 rupees ($2.50) a day.

She is sending her elder son to a medical school. Her son dreams of becoming a doctor and thanks his mother’s business for providing his education, their own home and daily food.

To participate in a Yoga practice where the proceeds support Yoga Gives Back and directly impact the transformation of not only your own life, but that of someone in India, start your Thanksgiving week at Yogaglo, Sunday, November 22, 10:00 A.M. - 12 noon. Some of the teachers include John Sahakian, Felicia Tomasko, Alexandra Aiken and Ally Hamilton; more to be announced. Yogaglo.com; yogagivesback.com.

For more information on Yoga Gives Back or to host a Yoga Gives Back class at your own studio or location, visit: yogagivesback.org or contact yogagivesback@earthlink.net.