Q: I wish I could paint. I write and I draw, but I can’t really paint.
A: You can paint, you just have to not try to paint what it is you want to paint. You have to try to paint what you need to paint. Anyone can paint. Like, I could never paint people, but I can paint abstract or I can paint scenery settings. I’m not very good at definition, so I stopped trying to be. I used to spend hours of trying to just make one symmetrical thing and I would realize very quickly, “Okay, I can’t do this. I’m going to go another route. I’m just gonna paint.” So you should try it sometime.
The advice sounded like it came from some philosophical artist who just got back from having a cathartic experience during a long stay in Rome while renditioning Da Vinci’s hands of the peasants on the sidewalk for pennies at a time, but in fact, it came from Armen Vladimirovich, Union’s newest chef.
Vladimirovich started his work at Union on Nov. 1, 2018. Raised in the Caucus Mountains of Russia, he has traveled the world as a chef for many high-brow fine dining establishments. From Versailles, France; Seville, Spain; Buenos Aires, Argentina; Santiago, Chile; Ponce, Puerto Rico; Asheville, North Carolina; to Jackson, Tennessee, Vladimirovich brings many new foods and ideas to the table.
I had heard it before, but I had never talked to anyone who could shed light on the idea that cooking is an art.
Q: Tell me about the artistic side.
A: One of my favorite painters is Salvador Dali. He actually has a cookbook that he wrote. I remember thinking to myself, “There is a huge correlation there.” I have a great appreciation for art. I have a lot of books of different artists. As far as writing, I always grew up really appreciating philosophy, Aristotle, but James Joyce is one of my favorite writers. So I found ways to express myself and my thinking of the world around me and my own journey through cooking, writing and painting. They all kind of trickle into one another. Same thing with music. When I cook I actually like to listen to Cuban folk music or Old Jazz and I think it has a lot of relation to passion because you have to have passion in order to be involved in that kind of artistic side. I grew up in a family that played music and painted and wrote. My mother, especially, was a very big painter and sculptor. So it influenced me and it gives me kind of a mood. I can cook based on my mood just the same as I can write and paint off of my mood. When I’m at home, I ask myself, “What am I feeling today?” and that feeling impacts the food I cook at home.
Q: What brought you here to Union?
A: I had been a chef for a while. Before I was a chef, I was in the military and did private security contracting and got the opportunity to travel and learn to cook. But I fell out of love with the restaurant industry—more specifically the fine dining industry—because it became more of a celebrity status thing versus what it was when I first got involved with it. I became more concerned with agriculture and sustainability and how we should be better stewards of our environment so that we can enjoy culinary much more. I decided to make a transition and do something different so I ended up coming to Union.
Q: Has it been a difficult transition?
A: It has and it hasn’t. It’s been a transition from being in a four or five diamond restaurant open from 5 to 10 p.m. serving course meals and then coming and trying to feed a thousand students, [cooking] with a spending budget, you know, not what you’re used to, and then trying to figure out what the students like to eat. When you’re at the restaurant, people choose you. But here, you come into an environment like this and you’re having a build a relationship with your clientele. That has been difficult, but not as difficult as somebody might think it would be.
Russia is probably the furthest place on the globe from Jackson, TN, but Chef Vladimirovich was kind enough to ask me about my home which, compared to his, is nothing and nowhere. I described my hometown to him and how it was very different from Jackson.
Q: It was kind of weird to get used to when I first moved here, after everything there was at home. Do you feel that way after coming from so many places?
A: I don’t think I’ve really lived here long enough to get out. I’ve just started to get into the community. There are people here who will applaud for me, and then there are people who, once they see my name and hear my accent, don’t really want to talk to me. But traveling anywhere else in the world, there are people you will meet and get along with and then there are people that just have no interest. So, we will see how it goes.
Q: Where did you work before you came to Union?
A: Yeah, I worked at Davuluri fine dining, Northern and Central Italian restaurant. The chef there actually just won the Chopped Deadliest Catch competition. Before that I was in Asheville, North Carolina and I ran a French Bistro called Isa’s.
Q: In learning how to cook, did you just fall into it? Or was it something you grew up around?
A: No. My family and I are from the Caucus Mountains of Russia and eating dinner together, eating together period, is a very sacred thing. It’s very bonding. So, you know, it’s not like you sit down to one plate. There is generally a spread that is made and, in the occasion of family relations getting together and having a meal, it involves days of cooking in advance. You sit down and you eat together. So it’s always been a very personal thing for me. I don’t think in my youth I would have ever seen myself being a chef. I knew I loved food and I enjoyed actually helping cook. But after to going into the military, I didn’t think…well, it just kind of fell into place. That lets you know it was meant to be, when it falls into place the way it does.
Q: What brought you to cooking? What made you decide you wanted to go to culinary school and do this?
A: I didn’t go to culinary school. I got out of the military and had been involved in service for a long time, so I kind of tried to make that transition. You don’t really know [the answer to], ‘What am I going to do?’ I’m used to having a structured environment, a very high-paced environment, very demanding environment. I tried other jobs that. I wanted to try different things, and I found that sitting still didn’t suit me and having a lot of people telling me what to do at one time didn’t suit me as well. I had an uncle who had a friend in Versailles, France, that was like, “Why don’t you go try cooking? See what you think of it.” I liked to cook, so I took a flight down and never looked back. I’ve been in the kitchen ever since.
Q: So you would say cooking is your passion?
A: Oh absolutely. I like to do it, I like to think culinary as not just being a profession, but more like being an artist, if that makes sense. Because if you mix certain colors together with vegetables or sauces, the plate ends up becoming like a canvas and the ingredients you use give aromatics. People eat with their eyes first. So the plate should be decadent. Second, it’s going to be with their nose. So it’s learning things about people. It’s sort of like being a botanist, only with using seasoning and herbs because that gives off aromatics. There’s a sophisticated artistic ability, in my opinion, to anyone is truly passionate. Anyone can cook. But not everybody can be a chef. It takes a lot of painstaking learning to pick up.
Q: Where do you see yourself in the future? Do you wanna do this for a while, or do you think you’ll move on and start doing something else?
A: I’m very adamant about trying to build the bridge between agriculture and sustainability, and I think Union is a very good advocate for that in trying to get local farmers–people, you know–involved with their community and trying to go back to a grassroots and getting people to be more conscious about their food and where it’s coming from. I want to try to educate people about being better stewards so that the things we enjoy we know will be here for a long time.
Q: Do you think with the way things are going now, as in people being more conscious about their food and where it’s coming from, that we will be able to move toward a more organic and healthy way of preparing our food?
A: I think the possibilities are there. We’re still stuck in an almost dogmatic way of thinking, and I think American culture has to sit down and really think about itself. Living in Europe, eating is something very significant. Americans will eat because they feel it is a chore or a task, where as Europeans’ lunch breaks are generally 2 hours–you sit down and you enjoy your meal. It’s a different culture. Here, it’s mostly fast food restaurants and chain restaurants. I do think that there is a growing movement, and you can see that when you go to fast food restaurants now because they offer more healthy options. So I think there is a turning table, I think it’s gonna be the younger generations willing to break the cycle and force, basically, through refusing to accept what everyone else is accepting. You see a lot more younger people wanting to know where their food is coming from and how it’s being treated and I think that the population of that youth–the youth which holds the future–brings the issue to more of a focal point. And it’s really more educating to a lot of people. People are uneducated about food, agriculture and sustainability. If you can educate people in a way that they understand, you would find it would go a lot smoother. I have a lot of hope that, from what I’ve seen personally being in the industry, a lot more people will turn their heads to wanting to make things more sustainable and healthy.
Q: Has that cultural difference affected the way you’ve decided to prepare meals here?
A: Umm, yes and no. I realize that the lunch especially is a lot more rushed than the dinner period here. It’s busier and some of the menu items that I have changed. For instance, I had Cuban food on Homestyle once and chimichurri was on the steak and there were so many questions about the green sauce and people were offset by it ‘cause they didn’t know what it was and that sent a lot of people kind of went over to where the grill station was. So that can create problems in how you prepare the food because some things do take a lot more meticulous time. If you’re brazing something, there are hours involved there. So it’s really trying to plan ahead and get the cooks to understand that we have to be a day or two ahead of ourselves. It’s had its ups and downs, but it’s actually starting get more of a balance here the past few weeks.
Q: All three of the things you do are really personal. Have you had to grow a thick skin?
A: I keep my writing and my painting very personal. Every once in a while I will share something if it’s a very significant point in my life. I might share it with my son or my sister and let them enjoy it. I have thick skin for the most part. Taking criticism is really about realizing that it is a learning experience, even though the words might be harsh. No one likes to hear anything harsh. Your pruning is also for your growth, as they say, so I try to keep an open mind and perspective. Even though something makes me feel slighted or insulted, I’ll kind of step outside of my feelings and say, “Okay, they have a point. I may not like the choice of words, but I can go back and do this better.” Then we will see what they have to say.
I got up to leave and I thanked Chef Vladimirovich for his time. I sat down thinking I was going to talk with a chef, and I stood up feeling enlightened by a fellow artist– a person who has trained his hands to complete this craft– and that made me realize we had far more in common than I ever would have dreamed.
Photo by Tamara Friesen
