Just For The Fun of It

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Cuisine - The Moveable Feast

Just For The Fun of It

Monday, 21 June 2010 12:54

foolish-frog-bob-roderer Mark Shaffer chats with Foolish Frog Chef and Co-owner Bob Roderer

A few minutes into a conversation with Bob Roderer, and a couple of things are obvious. First, he�s as easy going as a sea breeze on a spring day. I�ve known and interviewed a lot of chefs and cooks and a surprising number generally come off like Tony Bourdain � which is very cool, as long as you are Tony Bourdain. I get none of that attitude here, not a shred. Second, man I wish we had the time to crack a bottle of good whisky and listen to some of the stories this man has to tell, because I know he�s got some doosies. Roderer spent years fishing and skippering charter boats out of North Carolina�s Outer Banks before getting into the restaurant business in 1985. Jockey�s Ribs is still going strong in Nag�s Head while the new restaurant marks the culmination of a decades-long dream shared by Roderer and his long time pal, Beekman Webb (see The Moveable Feast).

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Mark Shaffer: One of your top priorities was to find sources for the best and freshest local ingredients for the menu. Coming in from an outside market, was that a challenge at all?

Bob Roderer: No. It was simple. Real simple. All you have to do is ride around the roads here and you can figure out who�s growing what. It�s real easy to get fresh local produce here.

MS: It shouldn�t be too hard to find a tomato smack dab in the middle of St. Helena.

BR: If you can�t find great produce here, there�s something wrong.

MS: Although I know of a few places that do seem to have that problem.

BR: They�re looking for the Big Can.

MS: And you�re not all that fond of cans.

BR: I�m not fond of cans. I�d rather not, you know? As for meat, I buy extremely good beef � all the beef I do is certified Angus. My pork�s real good because I�m real picky about what I buy.

MS: And then there�s the seafood, something you�ve got a bit of experience with.

BR: Before I got into the restaurant business I fished for quite a while. I�ve oystered, I�ve shrimped and crabbed, I scalloped. I flounder fished. I long-lined for grouper for a while and I sport fished for a lot of years.

MS: You know a decent piece of fish when you see it.

BR: Yeah, I�ve been around fish for a long time. When you fish and you catch fish you know what fish is supposed to be like. You�re seeing the freshest � you�re seeing it lit up in all its glory. It�s good stuff.

MS: And there�s great stuff to be had here.

BR: You�ve got to find the suppliers and you�ve got to let them know if you�re not happy, then you get great stuff. All this winter we were serving local single oysters on the half shell. Not clusters. Singles.

MS: That�s pretty rare around here.

BR: That�s very rare. You�ve just got to know where to get them and if you�re well established in the area and know everybody like Beek, it�s easy.

MS: And having a partner like Beek�s very key because it seems like everybody in the Lowcountry either knows or knows of Beekman Webb.

BR: You can�t talk to 50 people without finding somebody who knows him.

MS: I�ve just recently met the man, but I�m pretty sure we share about a dozen mutual friends and his name comes up constantly. You two go back a ways.

BR: 1974. We met in Wanchese, North Carolina at Phillips Boat Yard. He was working in the yard and I was working on sport boats at the time. It was the spring season and that�s where you�d come in and make ready for the summer, get [your boat] all painted up and polished and wait for the tourists to come and charter it. Since 1974�s a long friendship.

MS: The idea for a restaurant has been bouncing around for a while, then?

BR: I remember coming down and hanging out for a while at different times, cooking and drinking wine and just talking. I already had my restaurant in Nag�s Head going and he thought that was really cool, and I told him it was a lot of fun and I had fun doing it � the most fun I�d had in a long, long time. I don�t really do a lot of stuff unless I have fun at it. Life�s too short, man.� Have a good time.

(Laughter)

MS: Amen to that.

BR: Eventually we started talking about a restaurant. At one time we considered the bottom floor of the Elliott House in Beaufort, but that just didn�t work. And then a few years down the road Beek called me up and said �Man, you�ve got to get down here. I think I found it. I think I found the restaurant.� So I came down and it�s this old cinder block post office that didn�t look like much of anything.

(Laughter)

We tromped all around it and as soon as I walked out back and saw that [marsh view], I said, �Man this is cool. This is real cool.� I�ve always loved this little area here. And Beek said, �Can you see a deck here?� and I said, �I can see it all.� It took five years to do and during that time I got sick, had to go on dialysis and had a kidney transplant. But Beek was in no hurry so I hung out and got better and here we are.

MS: It�s a hall of fame deck and one of the first things that caught my eye. A great deck � particularly one with a view like that is surprisingly hard to come by around here.

BR: The thing is, so many people come in who�ve been driving by this place for years and say, �I never knew that [view] was out there.� They couldn�t see it because this whole property � even the parking lot � was all overgrown.

MS: The �Gone Green� theme applies there, too.

BR: We didn�t cut any major trees or do any hard pavement when we cleaned it out. It�s kind of like a park, real casual.

MS:� What sort of reaction do you get from first timers?

BR: We�d been open about three weeks and this woman came up to me at the end of the evening as I�m standing by the bar there and she says, �I feel so comfortable here, it feels like I could take my shoes off.�

(Laughter)

She felt at home, completely relaxed. I get that comment from a lot of people. They feel at ease here. It�s warm.

MS: There�s no pretense, which is nice. So when it came to actually hammering out a menu how did you two work it out?

BR: He said, �What do you want to do?� I told him I didn�t want to get away from what I do now because I know it well. I don�t want to just stumble. Let me do some of the stuff I know how to do really well and have been doing for over 20 years. So we used part of the Nag�s Head menu here, but we needed some Lowcountry stuff. So instead of regular grits we came up with the fried grits. Of course there�s the Frogmore Stew and shrimp burgers at lunchtime. And the fish: I get Cobia up there but not as much as I can get here. This area�s known for Cobia and Cobia fishing.

MS: And it is a spectacular piece of fish, particularly the way you do it here.

BR: We do a lot of Wreckfish because it�s only caught off of Charleston. Tonight [for example] we�ve got Grouper with Mussels, Tuna on the grill and Flounder that�s being fried.� The vegetables come from right down the road, either Barefoot Farms or Dempsey�s. Everybody�s got good stuff.

MS: Speaking of good stuff, we covered most of it in the Moveable Feast � including those amazing ribs and a really unique wine list � but the other key ingredient to The Foolish Frog is music. It�s part of the ambience and Beek�s integral to that.

BR: Back when we first met he was playing mandolin and I lived on an old Chris Craft � a 1954, fifty-two foot flying bridge command. I was working on that. Beek had an old Duck Island Hunt Club boat that had actually sunk that he bought for a couple hundred bucks and rebuilt. He was living on his boat and about 5:30 every morning you�d hear mandolin coming across the creek. He was doing a lot of Bluegrass and I had an interest in it � I don�t play, Beek plays and he�s really good at it.

MS: The music�s always been part of the friendship and now part of what makes The Foolish Frog unique. The Tuesday night jam is quickly becoming legendary.

BR: Yeah, last week we had 30 musicians playing on the deck. That�s a lot of people. They�re going to have to start car-pooling.

Visit www.thefoolishfrog.com to see Beekman Webb perform the song the restaurant�s named after.