A New Comfort Zone

Chef Kristine Kittrell is on a roll. At 42, she's juggling two executive chef jobs, marriage, and motherhood, and she appears to be having the time of her life. The well-traveled Canadian chef has staged in restaurants in Canada, the U.S., and Europe. She spent four years in the Jeffrey's kitchen, training under mentors David Garrido and Alma Alcocer-Thomas before moving on to Carlos Rivero's restaurant group. Working with Rivero, Kittrell helped open the original El Chile Cafe y Cantina and went on to create an Italian eatery called Stortini on Manor Road, an homage to her maiden name and ethnic heritage. She took off a couple of years to travel (always staging) and to have a baby, daughter Greta, now 4.

Since the fall of 2012, she has been the executive chef at Mulberry, Michael Polombo's chic little wine bar on the ground floor of Downtown's 360 condo tower. Polombo hired her with only one caveat – that a few of Mulberry's signature dishes such as the Devils on Horseback and the FoieBerry Burger couldn't be changed – otherwise he entrusted menu development to her. "The Mulberry kitchen is a great place to work, small and compact, but very efficient. Really only room for two people, but there are windows you can see out of, that actually open. It's a chef's dream kitchen," says Kittrell. Her food impressed Mulberry regulars and she began attracting new guests to the eatery with seasonal events such as a fall lamb roast, a crawfish boil in the spring, and a Bastille Day celebration in July.

This summer, Kittrell turned over the day-to-day operation of Mulberry's dream kitchen to chef de cuisine Ruston Richardson, most recently of the Paggi House. The two chefs consult on menu changes, and in September they launched a monthly Mulberry Supper Club where about a dozen diners can enjoy a three-course meal complete with wine pairings for an all-inclusive $55. Richardson has put together his own team at Mulberry, and Kittrell couldn't be happier with his work. "I always say I can teach someone to cook, but I can't teach them to hustle. Ruston is very calm under pressure, he's a real clutch guy who understands the importance of getting the work done. And he's a great collaborator, the perfect chef de cuisine for this job," she reports. Kittrell continues to oversee Richardson's work and the two of them will present the monthly supper club meals and seasonal feasts together, but having him on board at Mulberry has made it possible for Kittrell to focus on her second executive chef position.

A chef having executive positions at two eateries that aren't part of the same restaurant group is something of an anomaly, but Kittrell chalks it up to a paradigm shift in Austin that encourages more collaboration and collegiality among members of the culinary community; events such as Indie Chefs Week at Foreign & Domestic, the guest chef series at the Josephine House, and restaurants hosting pop-up supper clubs such as L'Oca D'Oro are other prime examples of this local phenomenon. In the spring of 2014, she accepted the executive chef position at Weather Up, the Austin sibling of two very successful bars in New York City. New Yorker Kathryn Weatherup hired Kittrell to create a culinary identity for the popular craft cocktail bar and gave her complete autonomy over menu development.

Kittrell describes the bar's tiny cooking space under the stairs as her "Harry Potter kitchen," but despite its challenges, she turns out a series of shareable small plates that pair well with cocktails in the evenings. Weather Up also offers a monthly Supper Club where as many as 16 guests can gather on the upstairs patio to experience a multicourse meal paired with cocktails for $75. Kittrell is now building a brunch following on Sundays and expects to add Saturday brunches soon, as well.

Some friends and I dropped by for brunch last weekend and found the food fresh, flavorful, and attractively presented. The menu is small and doesn't offer lots of egg dishes, but the biscuit topped with ham, eggs, and a luxurious hollandaise ($10) will satisfy any Benedict craving. Crispy potato roesti ($12) are dressed with smoked trout, eggs, hollandaise, and bright pearls of salmon caviar, while the sweet potato waffles ($12) are paired with a rich duck confit and brandy-soaked cherry maple syrup. The kitchen was very willing to create alternatives for the vegetarian in our party, serving the wonderful waffle with tomatoes and a side of baby greens, which harmonized with the syrup's sweetness. We enjoyed fresh-squeezed juices ($4) with our meal, but the bar offers Bloody Marys, a house-recipe michelada, and several inviting Champagne cocktails at brunch time, as well. The prices were more than reasonable, considering the excellent quality of the food. I'm betting brunch will be a hit here.

These are just the things Kittrell has created at Weather Up in a few short months. She's got even bigger plans for the future, when she really steps outside her comfort zone to become general manager over the entire operation. "Our GM, Marissa Janes, is moving to Canada and I will transition into her job when she leaves," Kittrell explains. As Weather Up's general manager, she will also oversee the bar operation, so she's been experimenting with cocktail components. "There is an art to pairing food and cocktails, and this keeps me thinking about flavor combinations all the time," she says. Kittrell and her employer have collaborated on a line of bar syrups that are currently having their shelf stability evaluated at a Cornell University lab before they begin a product marketing campaign.

"I've had my eye on this property since the days when it was a sandwich shop called Azul. I think it's the most underutilized piece of real estate along Cesar Chavez," Kittrell asserts. "I'd like to change that. No one can represent my vision for this place better than myself." Hence the management and executive chef jobs. Kittrell and Weatherup have big plans for the business – as both a craft cocktail bar featuring good food and as an event venue, but it's going to be necessary to correct some problems and address some infrastructure issues first. "We've got to get our ticket times down so that guests can enjoy more cocktails, so I'm considering a satellite bar outside. We also need to get more use out of the patio, but there are some drainage problems we have to address first," she explains. Kristine Kittrell would like to see the attractive fenced property surrounding Weather Up maximize its potential. She envisions catered events and parties on the lawn, guests enjoying food and cocktails in a convivial atmosphere. Considering what she's already accomplished, she sounds like just the woman for the job.