I have been cooking since I came to the United States. For more than twenty years, whenever I wasn’t in a kitchen, I spent much of my free time diving and fishing the waters of North Carolina’s Outer Banks.

 

Something I love, and something the water teaches you very quickly, is that fish—and the universe, for that matter—don’t care about you. They are wonderfully indifferent to your plans.

 

That can be terrifying. Or it can be liberating.

 

I choose liberation.

 

What we create in the kitchen flows with the fish and the seasons.

 

As a chef, you can start with the standard ingredients. They are available all the time, they are predictable, and eventually they produce a standard menu.

 

Or you can start with what is actually there. Flow with it. Embrace it. Let it speak to you.

 

Sometimes there are only four portions of salmon belly because that is all the fish gave us. Sometimes something extraordinary shows up and we change the menu because it would be stupid not to.

 

You don’t manufacture beauty from nothing.

 

You start with what is there.

 

Then you decide what to do with it.

 

We dry-age fish, cure it, ferment things, make stocks and sauces, and spend ridiculous amounts of time doing things most people eating dinner will never know happened.

 

Sometimes that makes the fish better.

 

Sometimes the best thing we can do is grill it with olive oil and salt and stop fixing the perfect.

 

Does it make it better?

 

If not, take it off.

 

That freedom—to work with what is there, to change course, to make a decision because we think it makes something better—is also why being an independent restaurant matters to us, and hopefully matters to you.

 

And beauty doesn’t stop at the plate.

 

The glass matters. The room matters. The music matters. The person who welcomes you matters. The fisherman who knows his waters matters. The cook making a decision matters.

 

And dinner taking the time dinner takes matters.

 

We also have rent.

 

We have payroll. Things break. The lights have to stay on. The business has to work.

 

But the business is not the objective.

 

It exists to give us the independence and freedom to do what we set out to do.

 

Create beauty. Make the world a little prettier.

 

And hopefully serve you a very good dinner along the way.