The Restartup
A 1" sourdough-starter crisp with cultured butter and black garlic — an eighty-nine-year-old company rebuilt from a living culture
He became CEO in August 2020, when a $2.5 billion business was running monthly revenue in the single millions. He named the next chapter a restartup.
Why this bite? He restarted an 89-year-old company from what survived. A crisp built from living starter.
The Story
He calls that year brutal, scary, heartbreaking, stressful — and then adds the word most executives leave off the record: liberating. Running a successful business at a successful time, he argues, would have paralyzed him into not screwing anything up. Instead he had a pre-revenue startup with thirteen thousand people attached. This bite is made from a starter: nothing in it is new, everything in it is alive, and what looked like the end of the loaf is what raises the next one.
Read Full Story →Ingredients
- Sourdough starter discard
- Cultured butter
- Black garlic purée
- Flaky salt
- Micro chervil
Preparation
- 1.Spread starter discard thin and bake to a shattering crisp; break into 1" squares.
- 2.Whip cultured butter until light and pipe a small crown on each square.
- 3.Add a bead of black garlic purée.
- 4.Finish with flaky salt and micro chervil.
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People — Ben Erwin
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A 1" cube of smoked brisket on a griddled potato coin, passed by hand — the CEO standing in his own booth
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A 1" slate-grey charcoal cracker with whipped goat cheese and thunder-honey — the ledge everyone was on when the storm rolled in
The Last Person They See
A 1" warm gruyère gougère filled with truffled béchamel — served by hand in the wings, thirty seconds before the walk-on