California native Traci Des Jardins is one of San Francisco’s rock-star chefs. While her five restaurants keep her super-busy, TBI managed to snag a few minutes of her time to ask some important questions, like what’s best to eat when you’re hungover, why most burritos are just WRONG and the best way to cool things down when there’s a dispute at work. Read on, fellow city dwellers (and consider visiting Mijita for a burrito).
TBI: Jardiniere, your signature restaurant in Hayes Valley, has been around a long time (for good reason!). How did you wind up with its location?
Traci Des Jardins: Jardiniere is 18 years old, which is pretty unheard of in the world of restaurants. I used to drive by the building on my way downtown every day when I was working at Rubicon and saw it was empty, and I was like, “Oh my god, it’s such a beautiful building.” I was just sort of entranced with it. Pat Kuleto acquired the lease and got in contact with me, and I was ready to make a change and become an owner, and so that’s the history, but the neighborhood was super-derelict. Now, almost 20 years later, Hayes Valley is kind of hip.
TBI: So your neighborhood went from sketchy to hip in 18 years.
TDJ: Exactly. Yeah. I think that the same is true for Mid-Market, and I think we’re going to see the Tenderloin turn too.
TBI: What are the biggest changes you’ve seen in San Francisco in the last two decades?
TDJ: When I first moved to the city, I bought a condominium in 1994, and my realtor—I could hunt her down and kill her now—she wouldn’t let me buy this beautiful Victorian on 20th and Valencia. She thought it was too dangerous of a neighborhood.
TBI: Wow! Now you look back and, well, it would have been a great investment.
TDJ: Yeah. Twenty-one years ago.
TBI: Some people don’t like the changes that are taking place in the city and essentially blame it on the tech community. What’s your take on that?
TDJ: Well, it’s interesting, because I think what we’re seeing is the second cycle of that. I mean, we saw the same boom in the late ’90s, which is when we opened Jardiniere. The difference between then and now is we didn’t see as many of the tech people actually living in San Francisco before. Now, if you look at the commute along the 280 corridor, it’s a reverse commute. People are living in San Francisco and driving out to Silicon Valley. Right or wrong, there are aspects of it that are undesirable, and there are aspects of it that are desirable. I think this is more of an intrinsic change in the demographic in San Francisco and that, like it or not, it’s going to become more like Manhattan or Tokyo or Hong Kong. There’s a finite amount of space and a finite amount of housing, and it is what it is.
TBI: So let’s talk about something that’s even more controversial than the changing nature of San Francisco: burritos.
TDJ: Have you heard my rant about burritos? Here’s the story. I’m half Mexican. In terms of my ethnic identity, that’s what I identify with most. When people look at me, they are like, “You know, your name’s Des Jardins, and you don’t look Mexican.” But that’s my identity. My grandparents were born in Mexico, and I grew up in a Spanish-speaking home with Mexican food. So that’s my soul food. I could eat Mexican food for breakfast and lunch every day. So the whole burrito thing … burritos, for the most part—the ones that we know here—don’t exist in Mexico. Burritos exist there, but they’re ... I like to call them single-subject burritos. They’re small. They have beans in them, or they have chile verde or chorizo and eggs, but they’re small.
TBI: It’s not like a super-burrito.
TDJ: Right, it doesn’t have rice and beans and meat and guacamole and sour cream and cheese and all these things in it that becomes this, whatever, 1,500-calorie meal. I understand why people like them. They’re sort of gut-bomb filling—a great value. All these things, but the calorie content and, well, everything, is just wrong.
TBI: So is there anywhere in the city that makes the kind of burrito you like?
TDJ: I make them in my restaurants.
TBI: Which restaurant would one go to for your burrito?
TDJ: We do the chorizo con heuvos at Arguella for brunch. Then we do the bean burritos at Mijita. They’re just little. I won’t even keep the big tortillas in the restaurant because people will, like, beg to have us make a burrito, and I’m just not down for it.
TBI: OK, so let’s talk about something more practical for our readers. If you had a houseguest who was hungover, what would you make for them the next day?
TDJ: Chilaquiles.
TBI: You didn’t even pause.
TDJ: No. That’s the best.
TBI: You’re like, “I’ve done this before.”
TDJ: That’s the best hangover food ever. It’s greasy, salty, rich—a gut bomb.
TBI: Is it true that the chef world is a pretty hard partying, a “play hard, work hard” type of culture?
TDJ: Yeah. It can be, but like anything else, you’re not going to sustain that pace for very long. If you don’t take care of yourself, you’re going to burn out and fall. So when we have our moments, yeah, we can definitely go crazy. I’ve been on the back of Mario’s scooter at 4:00 a.m. in New York City, you know?
TBI: When we saw you speak on a panel about work stress, you said that one of the things you do in your restaurant is that if someone needed to cool down, you’d literally just put them in the freezer.
TDJ: Yeah. It works.
TBI: We believe that. How long does it typically take for a worked-up person to cool down?
TDJ: Well, it’s a fridge, not a freezer, so you could stay in there for a while. We also have, you know, serious management conversations in there.
TBI: What’s the longest you’ve stayed in the fridge?
TDJ: Oh gosh, a long time.
TBI: Like, an hour?
TDJ: Yeah. It doesn’t usually take me that long to cool down, but sometimes you’re doing things in there. It’s a place you can go and have a private conversation, and we don’t have offices in a restaurant.
TBI: And since you are a super-successful person, we feel compelled to ask, what advice do you have for young San Franciscans just in general?
TDJ: I guess the restaurant advice that I would have is—and maybe this is advice for life too—take time off from your phone every once in awhile and be present and have a tactile experience. I really have tried in the restaurants to keep the experience tactile.
TBI: That’s good advice. So last question: what do you think a four-year-old would say if they came to your restaurant and sampled your caviar (which we love because of the chopped-up lemon that comes with it)?
TDJ: I know they would love the pancakes. Even if they didn’t like the caviar, they’d totally go for the pancakes. And the eggs. I love having kids in restaurants. When I see a young couple out, and they have a fussy baby, I always want to come and say, “Can I take your baby for, like ,15 minutes so you guys can just have a conversation for a few minutes?”
Chicken at Jardiniere