Inside The Brewers Kitchen with Grains of Wrath
The New School’s new ongoing series ‘The Brewers Kitchen’ investigates how breweries approach food, embracing creativity both in their offerings and in their business models. Today’s beer landscape sees everything from high-end gastropub-style brewpubs to food carts, pop-ups, and outsourcing the kitchen to third-party food vendors. Keeping the public as interested in the food is often as much of a draw as the beer itself, and is therefore an essential element of business for many breweries. This culinary world is often inhabited by chefs and brewers who are as passionate about their food as they are about the beer.
In The Brewers Kitchen, we highlight the people making some of the most deliciously creative food to pair with our brews.
At first glance, the menu at Grains of Wrath isn’t a major departure from your classic brewpub grub, with staples like burgers and wings dominating. But a look beneath the bun shows an array of cheffy touches that place the Camas, Washington brewery’s food in a league of its own. This is notable during a time when many breweries and even restaurants are scaling back menus and sticking to the basics, drilling down on a niche offering, or passing their food program off to a third party. Grains of Wrath, on the other hand, is doubling down on its in-house program by taking small but noticeable culinary risks while serving up some of the tastiest food in the game.
This leveling up is largely the brainchild of David Henry, a classically-trained chef who took the reins at Grains of Wrath in February of this year. Since joining the team, the Oklahoma-raised chef has been winning over longtime fans as well as pulling in plenty of new ones with his head-spinning and quite often over-the-top specials. For some, this has made the brewpub’s food as much of a draw as its beer, with hungry customers eager to see what this chef will come up with next.
“You think about classic brewpub food, and it's just, like, no-frills, but I’m kind of stepping it up a little bit. When I first got here, I did a lot of research because I'm just not from the area. So I was looking, and it's like, you either do pizza and wings or burgers and wings,” says Henry.
Henry saw an opportunity to put his own spin on classic brewpub food while being mindful of what the masses want and what is needed to maintain steady traffic. His approach is just enough of a leap to scratch his creative itch while appealing to a broad base and adventurous eaters alike.
“I like to push the boundaries. Even with my background, I was always pushing boundaries, always trying to do something different. I try to find something that's in that realm, but not everybody's doing, but not stepping out so far to get out of their comfort zone. Being a brewpub, it's kind of limiting. People just want to get a good IPA or just chill and have a burger or pizza. eat some wings. So, my twist on it is, well, let's do a fun, funky sauce or, you know, black garlic aioli or, you know, the wing sauce is like 90% of the fun when you' throw it on a sandwich or whatever,“ says Henry, referring to his rotating wing sauces that often find him experimenting with techniques like fermentation while mimicking flavors like Flaming Hot Cheetos.
This is just one of the ways he mixes it up and keeps things interesting, but it’s the weekly specials that really push boundaries. Anyone who has followed the brewery - best-known for their award-winning West Coast IPAs and crispy lagers - on social media over the past year has surely stopped their scrolling to salivate over specials that veer from faithful renditions to bizarrely delicious creations. These include everything from chopped cheese hoagies, pork belly steam buns, Korean BBQ-style pork shanks and fried cauliflower tossed in a Hawaiian Punch sweet and sour glaze (because, why not?) to a devilishly decadent short rib sandwich that tastes like a lavish pot roast pressed between two slices of bread and served with a side of supremely dunkable au jus to a poke bowl with a Latin flair that includes an elote salad and marinated cucumbers among its toppings.
Henry often blends his experience as a chef with his personal favorites and a healthy dose of nostalgia. Even Taco Tuesdays - a fairly standard special for many restaurants and bars to bring in customers for cheap tacos - finds Henry offering an ode to his Oklahoma upbringing with super traditional-style carnitas made using Coca-Cola, oranges, and garlic. For his burgers, he might go for a classic Oklahoma-style onion smash or occasionally include outlandish and downright slutty toppings like poutine, beer cheese, horseradish sauce, burrata, lemon-herb ricotta spread, and even a perfectly executed fluffy omelette. His jalapeno popper burger slathered with a big chunk of cream cheese is a customer favorite. Henry even concocted an Au Poivre Burger, smothering the entire thing half-pound patty and bun with melted Swiss and beer onions with a black pepper brandy cream sauce.
“When I first got here, I was trying to do what I thought would work. And then I stopped doing that and just was like, ‘fuck it, let's just have fun.’ And that's when things like the burger specials just started getting out of hand. The two grilled cheeses and stacking more cheese between the meat and all that,” he says, before referencing his infamous quad burger (yes, four patties) as an example of his freewheeling craziness.
Much of this approach comes from his formative years working at the legendary Oklahoma City restaurant The Coach House before it became The Hutch on Avondale, where he was part-owner. Legions of aspiring chefs were able to stage, apprentice, and generally learn the ropes at The Coach House. Its apprenticeship program saw many a talented chef coming through its kitchen before building a reputation somewhere else, including Henry during his stint from 2003 to 2006.
Henry grew up in the industry, working at mom and pop restaurants before taking on corporate gigs and ultimately retreating back to what he knew best. At The Hutch, he crafted high-end but approachable cuisine before ultimately selling his stake and deciding it was time for a change. His wife was from the Pacific Northwest, and the couple even had connections to the local beer industry (his brother-in-law is Baerlic Brewing co-founder Rik Hall). Henry surely could have landed a chef gig at a fancy restaurant in Portland or Vancouver, but he was looking for a quality of life that doesn’t always come when working in those types of joints. He found that at Grains of Wrath, who happened to be looking for someone to take over their kitchen, and were open-minded.
“[My wife and I] have just have a bunch of ties to the community. When I got here, it was like, am I either going to go balls out and go high-end dining or just do something to find a good work-life balance? [Grains of Wrath] was looking for a chef and I applied, and [owner] Brendan Greenen was like, ‘this guy's like way too over-qualified.’I just want something with balance and to have fun and make some gnarly fat kid food.”
Sticking with this theme, you can often find elevated riffs on drive-thru staples like cheesy gordita crunch, cheeseburger egg rolls, or maybe he will take a smoked Polish sausage, wrap it in flaky croissant dough, stuff it with pimento cheese, and serve it with a side of sweet tomato jam. Dishes like these come to life both out of creativity and necessity to be resourceful with the ingredients he can access.
“Anything that I do a fast food riff on is always popular. Like, we got a great deal on some bone-in ribeye, and so I just got them roasted them off, did like a slow cook on them, and just did beef and cheddar with the fucking ribeye on it. People loved it.,” says Henry, nodding to his take on a McRib.
In an environment where beer sales are declining and economic struggles mean people are cutting back on luxuries like dining out, Henry is giving people a reason to be excited enough for return visits. This comes down to meeting the customers where they are at while having fun with his menu by giving in to his cheffy impulses. Following a period of testing out what worked at Grains of Wrath, he seems to have found his footing, even if there are challenges to figuring out exactly what dishes will be the most popular.
“I'm a chef when it boils down to it, so I like to cook things that are fun and technical. When I first came here, I started doing a lot of barbecue, a lot of smoked meats, and I thought maybe that's what this place needed. The one thing you can predict in Camas is don't count on it. You can throw something out there, you're like, oh, this is gonna fucking slay. I think I've gotten there, but it's fickle.“
Part of finding success means being able to pair menu items with beers, which is something that Henry has become more passionate about during his time at Grains of Wrath.
“Guinness and Boddingingtons. It was all I drank, really. And so when I got and I had drank an IPA day and I wasn't a big hoppy beer person, and now I can't get enough of it. And it's just kind of like training the palate, too,” he says.
Henry has been leaning more into his high-end chef background with Grains of Wrath’s brewery dinners, which allow him to work with brewer Mike Hunsaker to pair a beer with each dish. He plans to do more of these in the future while hopefully collaborating with other chefs in the region. The brewery has also started serving brunch on weekends, which provides another avenue for fun and experimentation. Henry has worked in items like apple pie egg rolls with crème anglaise, and baked eggs in a hearty tomato sauce with peppers, onions, Italian sausage, cotija, and pita, and rich classics like a Monte Cristo, as well as chicken fried steak and biscuits and gravy.
“It's really like hangover food, for all intents and purposes.”
Part of the recipe for success has been making sure the needs of his team are met both in terms of work-life balance and in the amount of creative input they get. For Henry, this is as important as the food and a key part of his ambitions.
“Since I've been here, I've only lost a couple of people in the kitchen and it wasn't even really due to them not wanting to be here. I retained 75% of the employees and it took a minute to get them to trust me. Once they started trusting me, they now love having input. If they're taking pride in the food, it's just going to come out even that much better. Having a good work environment and is something that I've learned from going through the ranks and especially before, you know, the era of where we are now with the yelling and screaming, I was very much a part in that. I just want to have a good team, less of like the classic toxic kitchen environment.”
For those who are skeptical or jaded about the model of the traditional brewpub being sustainable in today’s unpredictable environment, chef Henry and Grains of Wrath offer a glimmer of hope. At the end of the day, they are focused on keeping things interesting while hopefully keeping a steady flow of customers along the way.
