The concept of the restaurant is everything old school, using what they had and doing as they did before the break of the industrial revolution: approximately 1850. This was the last time that food was honest. There are no blenders, mixers, choppers, ice cream machines, deep fryers, burr sticks, nor anything else with a motor--nothing with a plug. Food machines with motors made possible an imbalance of diet that had never occurred before: we could suddenly fry enough food to make ourselves sick, we could preserve food longer than its last dangling vitamin. Refusing food-enabling machines is another way to keep the food honest, and in reasonable balance. No perishable ingredient may travel further than a good, strong horse. The menu will move absolutely in lockstep with the seasons, as okra and eggplant taper off and leafy greens move in, we must change ourselves to suit the product--not the other way around. What is outside is inside. Gwendolyn was Chef Michael's grandma. She lived with him in his family home in Robstown, Texas, when he was a child. She was a pig farmer in Oklahoma, and grew up during the Great Depression. She taught him to eat gristle off of chicken bones. She drove a farm tractor and could throw haybails all day on a cup of coffee. Grandma smoked like a chimney and swore like a pirate. At a glance she could tell you what was wrong with your horse, and help you get the medication tube down his nose to fix it. She drove a green 1954 Ford Fairlane--the kind with the rocket tail lights--until it would not roll anymore, because grandfather built it and she loved him. She was the only person we knew who could calmly reach into a bucket full of live crabs. Grandma was the last of an era shaped by limitations. You ate what you had, you did what you could, and took pleasure in small things. She exemplified a kind of simple strength, that durable old-school "make do" attitude that we want to uphold in
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