In the Kitchen with Eric Navratil

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Navratil wears many hats at The Virginian in Jackson Hole. “I’m the food and beverage director at The Virg. I’m also the executive chef at Billy’s Burgers and Midtown Sloshies and Snacks. I’m also the catering director. I wear a lot of hats,” he says with a laugh. His journey to the kitchen wasn’t a direct one, but it was inevitable. Navratil’s first culinary memory is making macaroni and cheese from scratch with his grandfather. But it wasn’t until after college — while working a corporate job — that he truly considered food as a career. “One night I was cooking for a bunch of friends, and my friend Dan said, ‘Man, you’re actually really, really happy when you do this, and you’re miserable in your corporate job. Why don’t you try getting into food for a living?’” That advice stuck with him, and a few years later, he left a corporate job at Enterprise Rent-A-Car to work in the deli and cheese department at Central Market, a San Antonio-based gourmet grocery store chain. There, he fell in love with the traditions of cheese-making and charcuterie and spent his breaks learning from the store’s production kitchen. Originally from Fort Worth, Texas, Navratil had long felt the pull of Jackson Hole, where his family had vacationed since the late 1980s. In 2012, he took a leap — he actually moved on Leap Day —and never looked back. Now he’s a fixture in the local food scene, bringing passion, heart and a little Texas soul to everything he cooks.

WHAT KINDS OF FOOD DID YOU GROW UP EATING?
Barbecue is fundamental to Texas cuisine, but I also got good exposure to Latin cuisine, specifically Mexican. We had … Salvadoran, Honduran and some Brazilian restaurants that were really good in Dallas-Fort Worth. So, I had this sort of mélange of barbecue, Latin American cuisine and then I really, really loved Asian cuisine. The first time I ate it, I fell in love with the incorporation of so many different techniques and all of these crazy flavors that you just didn’t get anywhere else.

TELL US ABOUT YOUR FIRST EXPERIENCES IN PROFESSIONAL KITCHENS.
My roommate in Fort Worth was a general manager at a fine dining restaurant, and he said, “Hey man, we need some help in the kitchen and we’re willing to take somebody on that’s passionate, that doesn’t have a lot of experience.” That was my first actual line job — in this cowboy cuisine fine dining restaurant. The first thing I ever prepped was a big bowl of pico de gallo and a bunch of chicken-fried steaks. Then, when I came to Jackson, I started at Snake River Brewing and Ryan Brogan [the executive chef there] took me under his wing.

DO YOU COOK AT HOME MUCH?
I really enjoy cooking at the house. Tena [my fiancée] and I cook a lot of fun pasta dishes. If we have to do something quick, I’ll pan- sear some fish, do a really quick salad with fresh greens, and there’s a lot of fruit around in our house. Every once in a while, we’ll do pan-fried dirty burgers — really greasy, awesome burgers. On the weekends we both share a day off on Sunday, so I’ll always cook breakfast. I’ve been trying my hand at Japanese egg cookery, so that’s been really fun to just try every style of omelet on the planet, trying to master the egg.

WHERE DO YOU LIKE TO GO OUT TO EAT IN JACKSON?
I’m a big fan of The Bird. I like the casual dining atmosphere, and they’ve got good, honest food with good service. If I want to go a little more upscale, I really like Glorietta—they’ve got a great culinary program and great bar program. I am always a fan of Annie’s Thai Kitchen. That’s our go-to for takeout. And King Sushi is my favorite sushi place in town.

I HEAR YOUR GUILTY PLEASURE IS A LATE-NIGHT PEANUT BUTTER AND JELLY SANDWICH. WHAT DO YOU THINK GOES INTO THE BEST PEANUT BUTTER AND JELLY?
The PB&J is a lifelong bedrock food item for me. I remember when I forgot my lunch money as a kid in elementary school and the lunch ladies would make me a free PB&J. And when I was broke in college, I always had money for a big jar of peanut butter. I’m not going to get into the crunchy vs. creamy debate — this is utilitarian, but you have to have that perfect ratio of peanut butter to jelly. The jelly’s got to make sure that the peanut butter doesn’t stick to your mouth or the bread doesn’t stick to your mouth, and you taste everything in one composed bite. I’m passionate about the PB&J.

ARE YOU A FAN OF SPICE?
Tena will tell you I’ve made a trip all the way to Salt Lake City just to go get chili oil at Chinatown Supermarket on South State Street and driven back. I’ve done an 11-hour road trip just to get four gallons of chili crisp. I’m a big fan of how spice can elevate and amplify different flavors, much like salt or acid. Spice is really interesting to me — the intersection of spice and smoke specifically — because smoke is very delicate but also very, very powerful if not wielded properly. Spice is very much the same thing. It can be overwhelming, it can be unpleasant, but then in the right instance it’s magic. It’s what gives it punch and depth, and the whole thing makes me curious.

WHAT ARE THREE DRIED SPICES EVERY HOME COOK SHOULD HAVE ON HAND?
Kosher salt, a really fresh peppercorn and cinnamon. I like cinnamon for the purported health benefits — properties along the lines of turmeric. It goes on everything from cinnamon toast bread to a walnut cream sauce. There’s this great citrus vinaigrette with ginger and lime, and cinnamon gives it this thing where, if it wasn’t there, it’d be missing something.

WHAT ARE YOUR THREE FAVORITE INGREDIENTS TO WORK WITH?
Probably beef brisket, because you can do everything from a smoked Texas brisket to corned beef to pastrami — like what we make here at Billy’s. Brisket is extremely versatile. Cheese — I have a strong love of all cheese, doesn’t matter what cheese it is. And then noodles, any kind of noodles.

WHAT WOULD BE YOUR DEATH ROW MEAL?
My grandmother’s chicken spaghetti. A good, proper smoked brisket sandwich on white bread, with sauce, shaved white onion and fresh dill pickles. A good piece of Spanish blue cheese. A proper scotch — preferably an Islay. You’re not supposed to do blue cheeses and smoky scotches, but I don’t care if it’s the last one. I’m doing it. And caramel meringue pie.

WHAT IS CHICKEN SPAGHETTI?
It’s one of my first food memories of my mom’s mom. It was actually the first recipe I asked for when she died. She would poach chicken breast, cook spaghetti noodles, and make a sauce of tomato soup, cream of mushroom soup, and a block of American cheese. There are some onions, you shred the chicken, throw some garlic in there, salt and pepper. It’s really simple, but you basically make this stew-like, cheesy, soupy sauce, throw in the chicken and pasta, and mix it all up. Put a big topping of cheese on there in a casserole dish, and bake until it’s golden. Chicken spaghetti was a way to make a lot of food to feed people on the cheap, and it was also how we show love. It’s really important that you show love when you cook.

WHAT ABOUT THIS CARAMEL MERINGUE PIE?
My dad’s mom, Grandma June, who’s about to turn 100, makes a caramel meringue pie. This woman makes her own pie crust and her own caramel custard — which she never burns. I swear she defies physics. Then she sets her own meringues, and they come out perfectly golden. It is legendarily difficult and correspondingly wonderful.