Oakland soul food restaurant Burdell just turned one and what a groundbreaking year it’s been already. Soon after its opening last fall, Eater SF dubbed it the “restaurant where we want to be regulars.” Earlier this year, chef and owner Geoff Davis landed a coveted James Beard nomination. And in September, Food & Wine officially anointed Burdell its restaurant of the year.
“It’s pretty cool to see, honestly not even for me, but for soul food as a category to be celebrated as a real cuisine,” Davis says. “It’s really special to see the hard work of the team and the hard work of the ancestors be honored. Soul food isn’t boxed in or just for a cheap lunch.”
Davis grew up in the Central Valley, trained at the Culinary Institute of America in New York, and worked in Michelin-starred restaurants across the Bay Area and Wine Country. Burdell is his first solo restaurant, and he turned to his roots with a fresh perspective on soul food grounded in California ingredients. The restaurant is named after his grandmother, who loved to host Sunday supper, and that’s exactly the kind of vibe you can expect at the restaurant.
Over the past year, people have come together over breakout menu hits like boiled peanuts, barbecue shrimp, and chicken liver and waffles. But it’s worth returning every season for the exciting dishes Davis adds to the menu like a new bacon sausage dish that hit the menu this fall. “When I think of sausage, I think of making something out of bits that are left over,” Davis says. “We really wanted it to pay homage to a core tenet of soul food, which is not wasting, making something inexpensive into something a little more luxurious.”
Read on to learn about how this dish comes to life at Burdell, and make a booking on OpenTable.
A labor of love
This dish does not come together overnight. Davis sources a cross breed of Lancaster and Duroc pork (which he prefers for the bold flavor and rich marbling) from Lan-Roc Farms in the Pacific Northwest. The restaurant then takes a portion of bacon, cubes up the pork, and tosses in lots of fresh parsley, garlic, and mustard. It’s a three-day process to grind the sausage twice, stuff the links into hog casings, and let them cure overnight before they’re poached in the morning, ready to be seared at dinner time.
But, that’s not all. Davis and his team shop at four different farmers markets each week to bring this sausage dish together. The sweetest butternut squash and the crunchiest Fuji apples come from Zuckerman Produce in Stockton, arrowhead or conehead cabbage is from Dirty Girl Produce in Santa Cruz County, and fragrant parsley and sage comes from Star Route Farms in Bolinas. Plus, they add dumplings, too, featuring housemade buttermilk ricotta and sharp Cheddar.
From farm to table
When you sit down and order the sausage, a full week of work has gone into the layered autumn dish. Davis first sears the sausage in duck fat for deeper flavor and drops Cheddar dumplings to brown in the drippings. Butternut squash and apples are tossed in the same pan, followed by cabbage until it’s just tender and silky. The dish is finished off with crispy sage leaves. “The sweetness of the squash and apples are a good counterpoint to tangy, smoky sausage,” Davis says.
The chef recommends starting with a cocktail then pairing the dish with a glass of Syrah to reinforce the sweet and smoky elements of the dish. By then you’ll feel really at home in the restaurant that resembles a grandparent’s sitting room with a vintage sound system playing funk or soul in the back.
“The things that really resonate with people are more comforting and less cheffy … ” Davis says. “The sausage is a great example of that.”
Becky Duffett is a food writer living and eating in San Francisco. She was the deputy editor at Eater SF and has written for The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, and Bon Appétit, among other places. Follow her on Instagram at @beckyduffett.
