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Today we're going to talk about cattails.

A good measure of any food scene is the cultural diversity of its food.

Take St. Louis, for example.

You can find food from all over the world represented here.

St. Louis itself can certainly claim to have borne some of its own unique foods.

But what about before that?

Before toasted ravioli?

Before there was a food scene, when the land wasn't settled like it is today, and people lived closer to the earth?

That's something you probably never thought of, right?

The food being eaten by the people in the Ozark region before modern times, it's kind of like a lost heritage.

I mean, what kind of food was it?

Cattail has been eaten by Native Americans for many years, and modern foragers like it because it's so prolific.

As diverse as the food scene is here something would be amiss if native foods, the foods of the Ozark region, weren't somehow represented, celebrated, maybe even elevated.

But then again, what is Ozark cuisine And what would compel someone to build a restaurant around it?

As a chef, I need to stay curious in order to evolve.

For me, that means looking beyond a good meal to learn more about who made it and what inspires them to cook.

Every great city has great food.

I'm going on a journey around the world right here in St. Louis.

I'm on a quest to find passionate chefs who cooks from the heart.

to prove that food is love.

"it's going to be delicious!"

Food is love.

Love your food.

One of the interesting things about great food cities is there's always new people coming in or people that have left St. Louis are coming back.

Rob Connoley, I heard a lot about him.

Originally from St. Genevieve, he has decided to open a restaurant in St. Louis where they explore cuisine from the Ozarks.

What is Ozark cuisine?

To find out, I'm having dinner at Bulrush, with the prefix menu and forged ingredients, it promises to be interesting.

I can't wait to see what he has in store for me tonight in here.

My immediate impression walking in is the aesthetic, the low light, the central food station, and low bar style seating.

It all feels really well thought out.

It's cozy in here, kind of like you at a friend's house for dinner, a friend who is really serious about his food's origin story.

This is chef Rob Connoley, part historian, part woodsman, conservationist, and another part chef.

Rob's restaurant, Bulrush, is single handedly representing an era of food that would likely never have had a voice without him.

Welcome to Bulrush We're looking to define Ozark food or Ozark cuisine.

And for us, that's the late 18th, early 19th century.

And we picked that time period because that's the time when we know the Osage Indigenous people first encountered the settlers.

The settlers often would bring the enslaved.

And those three cultures are the cultures that all contributed to the food that we eat in this region today.

And so we explore all those cultures to honor them.

And specifically, we do that through archival work.

We look at letters and journals from the time period, and then we supplement it with archaeology, paleoethnobotany, and some of these other scientific disciplines that will show us things that were eaten that may not have been documented.

Rob claims there's at least three years of research behind every dish at Bulrush with historical reference to its use in the Ozarks.

And so I thought, wouldn't that be interesting to take these ideas, use them as the launching point to create new food, not something that's just random and new, but tied to this past, to be able to tell the story of these people who gave us what we have today.

That's what I thought would be interesting, because we don't serve it unless we can prove it.

Even if we think or know that it was there, we have to have the evidence.

Think about this.

In only using ingredients from the Ozarks, Rob is making his job as a chef decidedly much harder.

For example, why the bar doesn't get to have lemons at the bar.

It doesn't make sense.

It's not in the history.

Yeah, that's true.

but this isn't a classroom.

You're here for a nice meal.

So your first course tonight, this is a roasted onion broth.

And that's in the little pitcher and on the plate is minced vegetables, primarily carrot and radish with pickled mustard and fresh mint.

And that little pillow again, that's a thing called a purry or pani puri in Indian cuisine.

Here we're going to Ozarkize it.

And so take your little finger, pop a hole in the top without breaking through the bottom, and then use your spoon to fill all those minced vegetables into the pastry.

Pour a little bit of liquid, pick it up, and enjoy.

All right.

Yeah.

I'm born and raised in this area all the way through high school.

And then with school, I went off to other places and came back about five years ago for family.

Okay.

And my family roots are in St. Genevieve.

Those "other places" includes New Mexico, where Rob found success, and even a James Beard nomination for his restaurant, the Curious Kumquat.

So your next course is a roasted sunchoke bread.

It's griddled in butter, and that's on top of sunchoke puree fresh Granny Smith apples, a mushroom mousse on top and hazelnuts.

This is a fun dish for a couple of reasons.

One, this is the first dip into talking about the Indigenous people, and it's the hazelnuts.

We don't think of hazelnuts as being part of this region.

But when we look back to 2000 years ago, 3000 years ago, to the Hopewell tradition or Hopewell culture, which are the Indigenous people that preceded the Osage, hazelnuts were prolific.

And I had a researcher at Washington University who said to me, never before and never since have hazelnuts been such a food item in this region.

I mean, it's really looking at a lot of ingredients and then be very creative with what you have to work with and it kind of pushes barriers.

That's what makes it so interesting to me.

Each dish on the fluid seven course pre fixe menu comes with a historical tie and an origin story.

So this is a soup that has venison meatballs.

There's roasted root vegetables, including celerac and radish, among others, and a venison broth.

The fun thing about this course is the venison is from Florissant and it's served with wheat berry.

And the wheat berry comes from a farm that the same deer had been eating out of.

And the farmer provided both items to us to serve you.

This is great.

Thank you.

Let me ask you about the name Bulrush.

Yeah.

So the two ingredients that I most forage are acorns and cattails.

And I serve cattails, really from late April all the way until the beginning of October.

A cattail in Europe is called a bulrush.

Here we think of cattails as the weed on the side of the highway.

And so that doesn't quite have the same glamorous feel that I would want associated with the restaurant.

But it's such an important part of the food that I serve.

And so I thought it would be much more fun to use the European word to talk about an agreement that we serve.

Quite a bit of the trust and believe you had in yourself to start.

This is fascinating to me because when I heard about the restaurant the first time, I'm like hmm..and now I'm here and I'm experiencing it it delivers much more than I thought.

It's amazing.

Well, one of the things that motivated me early on no one coming into this restaurant could give me a positive portrayal of the Ozarks.

And to this day I say, give me one positive portrayal in mass media and no one has one.

They talk about the TV show with Jason Bateman.

That's not a positive portrayal.

They might talk about Winter's Bone.

That's not a positive portrayal.

But it's a culture with a lot of history.

It's a region with tradition.

Not all of it is good, but that's no different than anywhere else.

This is our chance to say, you know what?

We're going to make this food food that has never been given its due day in the larger the national, international culinary community.

And we're going to elevate it and say, you know what?

Ozark cuisine is special.

It's worthy of its own tasting menu, and not just for my family, for the whole world.

If I brought somebody in here that weren't interested in the history behind it, they would still sit down with me and have a great meal.

Yeah, I think they'll have a great meal.

And if they don't engage us in the history, I think they lose 50% of the experience because you miss the context.

You don't understand any longer why we're serving it, why it's important in the grander scheme of things.

And I've had people who have eaten at all sorts of tasting menus around the world, and they come here and we don't serve truffle or caviar, and they think, well, this isn't fancy.

Isn't there something to be said, especially in this modern era where we look at climate change, where we look at the economic struggles of midwest farmers to saying, instead of flying things in from around the world to make it special, why don't we take local foods and make them special?

And to me, that's a much bigger challenge and much more exciting.

And for the people who ate in New York and just can't allow themselves to imagine a meal without truffles being special, I say, well, there's lots of restaurants that serve truffles.

So you also do foraging, right?

Yeah.

I mean, are you yourself foot on the ground looking for stuff out there?

Yeah, we never buy forage.

I do that for ethical reasons, to know that the land was properly cared for.

And that just goes back to when I was in New Mexico.

I was taught and mentored how to forage by indigenous people.

And so the respect of the land was very significant.

And so it's pretty much me and anyone who will go with me.

I want to go with you.

Take me.

I would love it.

Let's do it.

Okay, let's do it.

It's going to get warm here soon, and we'll go out and try to be out before the ticks and chiggers get out there.

Yes.

I'll take you deep in the woods and make sure I bring you back, too.

Yeah, I appreciate that.

Without going into detail, for everything that was served tonight, the food was incredible.

So now that I know what Ozak cuisine is, the next question is, where does it come from?

I'm Rob Connoley, author of Acorns and Cattails, and today we're going to talk about unexpected surprises to find out what's going into the food at ullrush, I'm on a little road trip following Rob Connoley to family land, where he forges ingredients for dishes in his restaurant.

Well, we're going foraging with Rob Connoley, and we're somewhere south of St. Louis in the St. Genevieve area.

Ive got my boots.

He told me it's going to be challenging, so I'm excited.

Right now, the challenge seems to be keeping up with Rob's car.

But as the two lanes turn to gravel roads the scenery is more and more beautiful the closer we get to our destination.

This is Rob's family cabin, a place where he spent time as a boy and generations of his family has come to be with nature.

Today, it's one of the places he forges.

Upon arrival, a fire is built and Rob begins to prep some meat to slow cook over the fire while we forage.

I've got a paw paw mole, and this is braised pork belly.

Already it's looking and smelling like it's going to be a great day.

This area is small enough, guys, that we're just going to walk.

We're not going to walk like you were driving, right?

I was like, holy moly, that guy's got a heavy foot.

We're going to hit the different spots.

Hopefully everyone's dressed to cross creeks.

Are you okay?

Yeah.

I mean, do I have to get in the water?

So right on the boots there, Rob?

Yeah.

Just fabric and put as much as you can on you.

So is this part of your regimen for the restaurant that you do this?

Yeah, we've been like last Monday, two Mondays ago, Namaya and I went down to Marquand, Missouri, to get morels and slaughter pigs.

The week before, Kyle, Evan and I came down past Cave Winery to some private land and did morel hunting.

You know how hard you make it on yourself, right.

You're adding another layer of difficulty to the restaurant with what you're doing.

I think that that's what makes it exciting.

Yeah.

It's harder in terms of time, but think about the average restaurant.

It's hard work.

For me, at least once a week, if not two or three times a week.

I'm out hiking, and we call that work.

It's the best thing I could ever do to keep myself healthy and keep my mind fresh for all the hard kitchen work.

I mean this in particular because this is family land for me.

Coming down here where it's memories and I know the woods and I know the trails, I just love it.

Joey, Rob's friend and mushroom expert, is here to help us today.

Rob regularly includes staff at Bulrush to be part of the forging giving everyone who works in the restaurant an understanding of where the food comes from.

Okay, this is not how I forge, so let's get off trail.

This is ridiculous.

Thank God there's no snakes in Missouri, right?

There's something about being in the woods that makes me feel young again.

Or maybe I'm just trying to keep up with Rob.

I'm more agile than I thought I was.

Despite my best efforts, Rob has left me behind to follow his foraging intuition.

Wild turkey!

Oh, hey, Chef!

Yeah?

Come over here!

Okay.

What is it?

I've never in all of my years of forging have I ever seen this.

So you missed it, I spooked a turkey.

I was right here, and the turkey was there and took off.

And I'm like, oh, that was cool i saw a turkey and I looked down and there's this nest.

So this is the dilemma as a chef, right?

No, it's not.

I don't know the legality of that so I'm not touching it.

I've never had this before.

Come to think of it, I've never had turkey eggs either.

And it has my mind racing of all the other things I haven't had.

Turkey hollandaise, turkey omlet, turkey quiche,.. Turkey balut!

Yeah,.

turkey balut!

Creme brule, turkey creme brule Turkey balut, I would be the king of instagram.

As cool as the turkey were, we must push on.

What we're looking for exactly, I'm not sure.

I would totally pick these mushrooms, and with my luck, my head would probably swell up.

We are far away from civilization, so I better not.

As the team emerges from the woods, the sun glistening through the leaves, thoughts of lost turkey eggs dancing in their minds.

You can't expect every time you come out here to find enough where you can use it, because you have to have enough to you could actually serve I don't know how many people you do in a week, but you have to have a substantial amount of anything.

Right.

Well, we will serve what we have, and so if it lasts one night, it lasts one night.

There was a meal a few years ago where I had enough, literally, for eight people, but it was a really cool dish, and so we served it.

Made eight people very happy.

Hey, guys, we're gathering paw paw blossoms, and they're going in the fish box.

They're beautiful.

They have a great texture, and I pickle them.

Now we have two tablespoons worth.

Look at him working.

Having a Tom Sawyer moment.

That's right.

Show me how you do it guys.

we're not looking for morels today.

I know.

So don't look for that pattern today.

If anything, we're going to get oyster mushrooms To forage and make a menu of it.

It's mind boggling.

It's just absolutely mind boggling to me.

The passion Rob has to have to put in the time and the effort to do this is unbelievable.

I think I'm keep getting my food from the delivery guy.

At any time I'm now pretty sure we're going to hit some kind of native tribe here, too.

Okay, I'm not liking where we are.

Not liking this at all.

So, yeah, let's get to the crest here, and then we'll walk the crest back down.

Watch it.

My foraging mentor, he loves to tell the story how he's out literally in the middle of the desert.

You can't see anything in any direction it's a salt flat.

The plants told him to go, and he just felt compelled to go in a certain direction where there's nothing.

So he walked about 5 miles.

He gets out there, and he sees a burned out tree in the middle of nowhere, and he looks inside and a freshly vacated beehive.

The whole thing was filled with the beehive.

He gathers all that comb, takes it back to his cabin up in the mountains, and it was fresh smoked desert flower bee honey.

Oh, wow.

I have never had honey that amazing.

All the complexity of flavors.

And he only found that because he felt the plants were telling him to go in that direction.

I'm not that connected with nature.

I love nature, but he's connected.

He's the one who mentored me in foraging.

Okay.

Really amazing.

By now, we've been foraging for a couple of hours, and we only have a few paw paw blossoms to show for it Now we start to find the dead animals.

I can sense Rob is not satisfied with how little we found so far.

But that's forging for you.

You have to be prepared to come out with no more than you came in with.

We're at the point of forging day.

I'm thinking about low value and high value, and the team is picking paw paw blossoms, which are nice, but they're more garnish than substance.

So I'm trying to go to places that are a little harder to access, that may actually have something worth eating.

This is unfriendly territory.

You can see why a lonely teenage boy might enjoy this spot in the woods.

Okay, we're going to be going left, so you don't need to follow.

I feel the need to check.

And you know what happened last time I did that?

Oh!

see?

You got to follow your gut.

I love this!

What did I just say?!

You remember what happened last time I felt being compelled to go in a certain direction?

Oh, my.

Yeah, there's a bunch of them.

You guys morels!

Look at that huge one.

Look at the base!

Off to the right, even further.

Yeah!

Suddenly, as if we were guided here, we hit the mother load of wild morel mushrooms.

A hard earned delicacy, to be sure.

By all accounts, it's far too late in the season to find anything like this, but despite the heat very little rain, here we are.

Maybe there is something to what Rob said about following your intuition.

When your gut tells you to go.

Yeah.

You listen to it.

This is so awesome.

Rob, look at this.

Oh, my God Look at all those!

I don't care how many times I do this and how many times I have success.

It's so exciting to find forage like this.

Twice on this day, I felt compelled to go in a certain direction.

Wow.

This year, my team got morel experience.

Yeah.

Just went from a nice day out to an amazing gathering day for the restaurant.

Yeah, you're going to have to send me some pictures of what you do with it.

The final stop is a small lake on the property for an easy forage Rob's favorite ingredient cattails.

You take them when they're young like this, cut them right above the water line and peel out the outer layers.

The inside tastes almost like cucumber, and it's really moist and fresh.

Just give it a smell first.

It's like cucumber, right?

Totally, cucumber.

Isn't that amazing?

Yeah.

Is that not delicious?

Wow, it is so flavorful.

Wow.

I love cattail.

In two weeks, it will be the same height again.

It grows so fast.

If you don't know the water source, don't eat the cattail, because that's what's growing the plant.

I'm hooked now.

Cattail foraged.

We end the day still riding high from our jackpot of morels, just in time to take the pork belly off the heat and have a stiff drink before dinner.

And lucky for us, Rob has brought his bar staff along.

Skol That's what we say where I'm from ojo a ojo on the Mexican border.

Eye to eye.

If I had my way, I would have a cabin here next to yours, and we could cook together every weekend.

Thank you very much for bringing me down here.

Yeah, it's been my pleasure.

This is my childhood.

This is my family's life for many generations.

So this is pork belly braised in paw paw mole using local chilies and blue corn hominy tossed in stinging nettle pesto And some of us actually have the morels from the hunt today.

Yeah.

I mean, I feel honored because I can't believe that you're actually taking these morels and using it today.

I thought you were going to take it back to the restaurant.

Well, I would, but we worked hard today.

We did a lot of hiking.

It got pretty warm, so you have to celebrate the bounty sometimes it's almost a cliche, and I say this all the time, that food is love, but I'm flabbergasted all the time and energy you put into it.

What you do is love.

Before coming here today, I spend some time pondering what would make anybody go to this extream to explore an idea like Ozark cuisine.

And several times today, Rob has talked about a gut feeling, a voice in the forest.

But one of the joys of forging is being out in wilderness and finding things that you never expected to find.

Then it occurred to me, just like the plants and the forest, speaking to the forager, that same gut feeling, that same instinct might have been what brought Rob back here to the place of his childhood, to find his heritage and maybe a little of himself.

The result is Bulrush, an incredible expression of Ozark food, but also an expression of Rob.

I'm leaving with a new group of friends and an immense respect for the work being done at Bulrush and a little bit of an itch for forging on my own.

Nature's bounty right here.

This is beautiful.

I made a little bit of head cheese.

Rob's pursuit of defining Ozark cuisine is an act of love for his roots in St. Genevieve.

These little morels.

Head cheese, Ozark style.

Food is Love.

Here's to the local restaurants, to the chefs, owner, operators, the staff.

The ones who love being in the weeds night after night when we go to work each morning, that's who we have in mind.

From where we source our food to how we deliver it.

Here's to them, the ones who are out there cooking for us every day.

Restaurants are the heart of everything we do.

We are Performance Food Service.

Proudly supporting Food Is Love.

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