Zach Pittman’s biological father was a chef, taking him to work and plying with him with sweet gooey desserts – and perhaps it’s from him that Zach inherited the love and joy of cooking. But Zach’s adopted father and grandfather were architects, designing buildings intended to last and bring beauty to generations to come. From them, he learned to set his sights on excellence and greatness.
Pittman got his first job as a server in high school because he desperately wanted a car. One day a cook didn’t show up and he volunteered to fill the spot.
“And I loved it!” he recalls. “It was the joy of making someone happy. They eat, they smile – you don’t need to know language to know you’ve done good work.”
And he was hooked. Years later, he was accepted by the Texas branch of America’s premier cooking school, the Culinary Institute of America. After that, he worked for several of Texas’ finest restaurants, learning just how much work it takes to reach a true level of excellence.
“To be special,” he says, “you must be able to do work other people don’t want to do.”
Now, Pittman has reached the level to which he aspired. He works for chef Lisa Becklund – who is currently a semi-finalist for the James Beard Award given to the best chef in the United States. Pittman is chef de cuisine at Tulsa’s FarmBar, responsible for the daily operation of a restaurant whose ten course tasting menus have received national attention.
“What we are doing at FarmBar,” Pittman explains, “is using produce grown exclusively in Oklahoma and its six neighboring states, and highlighting their fullest potential. It’s mostly vegetables; we’re very produce-forward. We gain our inspiration from Oklahoma’s culinary history, from all the different peoples who have lived here.”
Talk to Pittman and it quickly becomes apparent that FarmBar employs – and indeed, revels in – culinary techniques and combinations that most chefs couldn’t dream of. If standard fine dining restaurants are producing waltzes and sonatas, these guys are playing jazz. What makes that happen?
“It’s my team,” explains Pittman. “Lisa and I cultivate a work experience that makes people care. So I’ve got a bunch of people nutty about food getting together and geeking out for hours. When that happens, it’s jazz, it’s beautiful, and you’re never going to miss.”
The hallmark of a great chef, Pittman says, is simplicity. He told me about a pasta dish he’s made with only six ingredients: beef, flour, eggs, onions, herbs and cheese. And while the ingredients are simple, the process is not. He slow-cooks beef heart and tail in simmering tallow. He makes a mousse of the liver, and a sausage from trimmings. He blends all the meat to create a stuffing for the pasta, which he makes by hand using beetroot. This is served with smoked onion broth and topped with cheese from a family dairy in Missouri. This, all for one course on a tasting menu; it’s evident they love what they do at FarmBar.
Becklund and her team are opening a new restaurant on Cherry Street, called Cow & Cabbage, and Pittman will be chef de cuisine. It will serve the same kind of locally sourced cuisine as FarmBar, but you won’t need to order a tasting menu.
And the quality? Pittman points to something his grandfather wrote about architecture, a sort of family motto which, if you substitute “produce” for “product,” applies equally, he says, to his approach to cooking.
“We want to do what’s right for the land, what’s right for the project and what’s right for the client,” he shares. “If we go into it with that in mind, we always end up with something beautiful.”
