Chef Jonathan Bardzik is Cooking with Pride

Jonathan Bardzik is stirring many different pots – he is a storyteller, an author, a television personality, motivational speaker, and, at the heart of everything, is a skilled chef focused on healthy ingredients curated from farmers’ markets and seasonal local fare. With over 900 live appearances, a multitude of appearances on morning shows around the nation, and, most recently, the premiere of his 8-episode series on REVRY, Jonathan’s Kitchen: Seasons to Taste, Jonathan is excelling in a career that was not in his original life plan.

In 2011, Jonathan made the difficult decision to leave corporate life to pursue his culinary ambitions as he started weekly demonstrations at DC’s historic Eastern Market. At that point, at 37 years old, Jonathan’s life was good. He had an amazing husband, lived in a beautiful neighborhood on Capitol Hill, had a successful career…but he was looking for his next adventure. He took the leap. Stepping outside of his logical path was not always easy but would become the foundation for his career and his message to others.

Following your dreams is brutally hard, exhausting, and lonely — and I wouldn’t give it up for anything.

I have been using the word “and” a lot lately. A few years ago, I had a month where I pushed beyond my resiliency. I had made some mistakes at cooking gigs that I would normally never make. I met friends out for a drink and said, “I’m too busy. I’m exhausted.” They replied, “Better too busy than not busy enough, right?” We need to give ourselves more room for following our dreams to be a joy and a blessing. We need to accept that many solopreneurs like being really busy AND we can get overtired, we can get drained from too much interaction and publicity. Those things can happen simultaneously and don’t cancel each other out.

No matter what your career and vocation are, be kind to yourself and make room for “and.” It is okay for things to be both good and hard.

Jonathan’s TedX Talk is entitled Be Amazing: We Need You and encapsulates his life’s message, cultivated from his own career shift.

I sincerely believe that every single one of us has a gift, many in fact. When we use those gifts to be exceptional at whatever we do — from building schools in developing nations to personal training or tax prep — we make our families, communities, and economy stronger. Your greatness is too powerful a resource to squander. We truly need you to be amazing.

Jonathan is not just your typical chef sharing recipes and demonstrations. He infuses storytelling into everything he does, the stories add to the flavor and to the structure of the meal. Jonathan’s first paid gig was with the Glenarden Baptist Church and would serve as a lesson not only for future events but would also be a lesson in Pride.

This huge church right outside of DC has a 2-story community center that used to be a department store. They asked me to guest teach a cooking class.

At the time, gay marriage was a contentious issue and several Washington, DC black church leaders were speaking out against it. When I cook, I tell many stories about my husband Jason, and I struggled with how to handle this class. When the day arrived, not having brought this up with the organizer, I slipped off my wedding ring and did my job.

The class went well, the audience was generous with their applause and interaction, and it remains one of my favorite groups I have ever performed for. I also recognized that my stories and my presence were not as powerful, as authentic, that night as they usually were. I decided to never again withhold or change the details of my life.

Years later I can recognize that this large church with its commercial kitchen, worship choirs and bands, decorators, and instructors, was intimately familiar with the lives of gay men and knew exactly who this roommate I spoke about really was. I would happily return to teach with them again.

Since then, Jonathan has not shied away from who he is. From his college years to the present day, his coming out is a continuing evolution.

Every time I step in front of an audience and tell a story about my husband Jason, I come out to a brand-new group of people. And there is still that nagging doubt in the back of my mind as I look through the crowd and into their eyes.

But I really blew the barn doors off my sophomore year in college. It was January and I was at Colby College in Maine. Being closeted with my family had become increasingly untenable and I finally came out to my Dad and Mom one weekend afternoon.

Allen La Pan, who ran the mailroom at school, was the unofficial LGBTQ mentor on campus. I left a couple of phone messages with him over the weekend to share the news. I stopped by the mailroom several times that Monday and we kept missing each other. We finally connected at 5 PM and he was closing for the day. Al had been to a gay florist and bought me a lavender corsage to commemorate the moment. I was a little apprehensive about wearing it, but Mom raised me right and I certainly was not going to be so rude as to refuse a gift. He pinned it on my shirt, and I walked over to join friends for dinner in the dining hall. An hour later most of the campus knew I was gay.

I think some of our boldest moments in life are those where we don’t have enough time to think about how scared we should be. And in those moments, we do the most incredible things. Makes you wonder why we don’t let go of our fears more often. And how many amazing things we could accomplish if we did.

Jonathan’s love for food and the kitchen was cultivated from an early age. Who knew that what started out as a family experience would grow into such a successful career?

I was blessed. My mother’s greatest joy was being a mother and a homemaker. She learned to garden from my Dad who grew up on a small farm, so our kitchen was full of home and locally-grown, fresh produce. Mom and Dad also loved to experience new things from the artichokes we would eat in the spring to the kiwi and other exotic fruits in the toe of our Christmas stocking. I didn’t do much dinner prep with my Mom but we made cookies together for the holidays and I felt comfortable enough to start cooking in my early teenage years.

Jonathan has made a name for himself in the industry. He never attended culinary school or received any formal training. He is often introduced as “self-taught,” but that’s not really the right descriptive as he explains.

“Self-taught” always seems inaccurate to me somehow. I was taught by so many wonderful cooks and chefs in their home kitchens, through conversations, cookbooks, and television shows. So, while I haven’t spent time in a culinary classroom I have had so many teachers and my knowledge comes from the experience, creativity, and vision of so many great cooks – both household names and people who will never appear in print.

The mistakes and successes of his first few years working as a professional chef would give him the life lessons that he still subscribes to this day and would also provide the themes for his cookbooks.

Number 1: There are three words at the end of every recipe we have ever read or prepared: “season to taste.” I think most of us are taught that this means a pinch of salt, a crack of pepper, and you are good to go, but it really means stop and taste your food. This is the moment where we taste for things like acidity, heat, and richness and they turn good cooking into great food.

Number 2: It all starts with great ingredients. I am a skilled and experienced cook at this point. I know how to build and layer flavor. But if I start with poor quality, low flavor ingredients, there is still only so much I can do. There is a reason I am so grateful for the farmers and producers who care for their land for farming methods in their products and give me — and all of us — the tools to shine in the kitchen.

Number 3: The majority of the time I am a cook. I create recipes, teach, and tell stories to people who are cooking at home. I love the chefs that have gotten so much recognition over the past two years becoming celebrities but terms like home chef do a disservice to people who cook at home. Cooking at home is about so much more than putting a great meal on the table. It is about bringing households and families together, it is about feeding not just our bodies, but our souls, our families, and our communities. I would love to see people who cook at home gain the same respect and adulation as chefs.

As we celebrate love in this issue of GED, we had to ask about Jonathan’s husband, Jason, his constant support and co-star in Jonathan’s social media.

(We met) at a baseball game, we were invited to by a friend. The friend and I walked up to Jason on a street corner, and I thought he was so hot. I didn’t get the chance to speak to him during the game and we left without each other’s phone numbers. We met up again a month and a half later in June at a bear happy hour and “shared some time” two days later. We continued to get together and hang out, grab some drinks, and spend the night.

That November he asked about coming home with me for Thanksgiving. Growing up my sister, brother, and I went to private schools and often brought home friends for the holidays who had too far to travel to see their families. So, it never occurred to me that Jason was coming home for any other reason – until we arrived and I realized he was there to meet my family. I also realized that I loved that and that I loved him. We we together every night until I finally moved in with him the following summer, and we married three years later.

With Jonathan’s busy schedule and constantly busy kitchen, how does he maintain a healthy relationship while working around the clock?

I’m not sure those two are mutually exclusive! For years, when people would ask how things are going for Jason and me, I would answer that the only thing we need is more time to share together. I think it has also been beneficial to have our own time. It allows space to spend time differently without the weight of choosing to be apart. When COVID had us both living and working full time in our small row house we learned that we love each other, we love sharing time together, and were grateful to have more of it — and we still found a little time to spend apart.

With so many years together, how do they keep the spark alive?

If you are talking about romance, that one is easy. We both love to see each other happy and live our lives playfully. There are often flowers and small gifts showing up at the house for each other. There is lots of cuddling and shmoopieness. We also pay attention, ask about each other’s families, celebrate holidays big and small. I make sure the refrigerator is stocked with basics he likes to eat, and he makes sure we have an ample supply of my favorite shaving cream and toothpaste.

If you are talking about sex, that is harder. My Dad said to me years ago that it is hard to get aroused (I don’t remember the exact words he used) when you’re worried about paying the taxes. There is a reason I love hotel sex, as it lets you push the rest of the world and your worries away. So, we communicate a lot, we touch and kiss almost every time we pass each other, we cuddle all the time, and we have some hot sex.

What has Jonathan learned most from his husband?

To relax and to prioritize. When we met I was terrible at downtime. It just meant working on a different to-do list than work. Admittedly, I still get bored after an hour sitting on the beach while Jason could happily spend the day there, but I no longer need to measure my downtime in accomplishments.

In terms of prioritizing, when we met, I measured my life by my job, then I changed and measured it by my work, my passion. During Covid, we formed a pod with a few friends with whom Jason had spent significantly more time. I listened to them talk about people, experiences, and places that they had shared together that I realized I knew nothing about. It reaffirmed the love I have for the work that I do. It also made me realize that there are other things I want in life, and work was going to have to make time.

What is a romantic night dinner for Jonathan and his hubby?

We love so many different foods so a romantic night can be steaks, a great piece of fish, homemade Chinese takeout favorites, or tacos with handmade tortillas. For me what sets a special meal apart is taking time, setting the table, lighting candles, putting down our phones, and long, easy conversations that usually start with me asking Jason to share his feelings which he responds to with an eye roll.

Is cooking more part of your 2022 plan? Jonathan shares the biggest mistakes people make in the kitchen and how to work through them.

It’s a little over and a little under.

We under season. Americans use too little salt and acid in their kitchens. We have been scared from adding salt to our cooking when the real health problems come from packaged, prepared, and processed food. Salt your fresh, home-cooked meals until they taste good and cut way back on takeout and those bags of chips. We are also generally unaware of acid. I add a splash of vinegar or lemon juice to almost every dish I cook. It brightens things up and balances richer flavors.

As for over, we set our expectations too high. If I spent the next five minutes teaching you how to play tennis and then we headed to the court, how would you play? You would have a blast, you would get some fresh air, and enjoy sharing some time together, but you sure wouldn’t be ready for the U.S. Open. So why do we expect a brand-new dish with new techniques or ingredients to turn out the same way as the person who spent years practicing preparing it in that video or heavily styled Instagram photo?

At home no one is paying us to put a perfectly prepared meal on the table in fact, we can measure our home cooking in joy: the joy of choosing the recipe, of shopping, of sharing time together in the kitchen, and sharing our meal around the table. The quality of the food is only part of the joy so relax and have fun.

From setting his family’s holiday table on fire with his attempt at a Baked Alaska to becoming a household name in the who’s who of DC’s culinary industry and debuting his first cooking show, cooking has taught Jonathan a lot. What has he learned the most?

I can accomplish so much more than I ever thought. That the power to create joy and beauty in our own and in other people’s lives is right in our hands and relies more on expending effort than dollars.

Most of my work is organizing, cleaning, preparing. The moments on the screen and the sexy food may provide my biggest memories but they make up the smallest amount of my time.

In addition to the life lessons cooking has taught him, Jonathan has also learned from his fans. From around the nation, from the LGBTQ world and beyond, his audience loves his stories and his message of following your passion. His message to his fans?

I love you. Really. My life is a joy, a dream. It is hard work, an emotional roller coaster, and constantly uncertain, but it is amazing, and I would not have it any other way. You make all of it possible. Your support — whether following and commenting, watching my television show on Revry, buying my books, or telling your friends to check me out —you allow me to do what I love to do. You also bring immense joy by being a part of this journey and sharing your culinary adventures with me. So, thank you. Keep it coming. I am so grateful for you. Oh, and be amazing. We need you, every single one of you.

Just in time for Valentine’s Day, Jonathan has shared his easy, do-it-as-a-couple recipe guaranteed to provide that romantic spark.

Red Currant-glazed Chicken

The bright, colorful, sticky, glossy glaze offers sweet, tart, and slightly tannic flavors dressing up weeknight chicken for a romantic dinner (giving you more time “other things”).

Ingredients:

• 3 tbs olive oil
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 cup red currant jelly (see tip below)
• 1 tbs apple cider or Sherry vinegar
• 1 tsp Dijon mustard
• 4 boneless, skinless chicken thighs

Directions:

• Make glaze: Warm 1 tbs olive oil in a 2-quart saucepan over medium heat. Add garlic and cook until fragrant and golden, about 1 minute. Add jelly and cook until melted and slightly thickened. Add vinegar and reduce to thicken again for about another 3-4 minutes. Remove from heat and stir through the mustard.
• Preheat broiler setting top rack 6-8″ from the heat.
• Season chicken with salt and pepper. Warm remaining 2 tbs oil in a 12″ skillet over medium-high heat. Sear chicken thighs on both sides and nearly cooked through, about 150° F.
• Brush chicken with the glaze and place under broiler until sugars bubble and begin to caramelize, about 3 minutes. Brush chicken with a second coat of glaze and broil again until bubbling and glossy. Serve.

TIP: Can’t find redcurrant jelly? Substitute with 2 cups of raspberry or cherry preserves. Once the preserves melt in the pan strain them through a fine-mesh strainer to remove solids.

TIP: This may seem obvious but I have several burns that suggest this reminder is salient. The skillet handle may get hot under the broiler so use a hot mitt to remove it from the oven.

You can check out everything Jonathan at www.JonathanBardzik.com

Watch Jonathan’s Kitchen: Season to Taste on Revry

and check out his three cookbooks: Simple Summer, Fresh and Magical Vinaigrettes, and Season to Taste.