VAGABOND
KITCHEN

I climbed Mt. Fuji through the night from the first station, got humbled by altitude, bad decisions, and my own thoughts, then watched the sun rise above the clouds and remembered that sometimes the dumbest journeys make the best stories.

After years of asking everyone how they boil their eggs, I think I’ve finally "cracked" it.

Chicago's a mecca for amazing food, and I got to eat some incredible things in the couple years I lived there. Being flat broke the whole time, though, meant the opportunities were rare. When they came, they were almost always revelatory.

Grandma Mary's soup is both wildly popular and amazingly simple. It's fitting that this technique lives on the blog because Grandma didn't believe in recipes either.

The first time I walked into Beans N' Bagels on the Montrose stop of the Brown Line in Chicago, I was just looking for a good coffee. I found a lot more.

We may never have had much to work with here in Appalachia, but that's fine. We don't need much. We know how to make it work. Sugar, eggs, butter, vinegar standing in for a lemon nobody had access to.

I was out of money, living out of my car, and hungry. That hunger led me straight into another job in food service, this time at the Purple Fiddle.

Awesome soup starts with awesome stock, something most people probably aren't doing in their home kitchens these days. The process, though, is both simple and rewarding, the same as most good kitchen habits.

I started cooking professionally while I was in college at West Liberty University, back before it was even a university, around the end of 1999.

Sloppy Joes don't need reinventing. They need doing right, the kind of right that gets lost when everybody's rushing. Real ground beef, mashed fine, tenderized the same way a diner cook would, and a sauce built layer by layer instead of dumped from a can.

In 2016, we shot a documentary tracking the road that led here. The cross-country motorcycle trip covered over 13,000 miles, visiting kitchens, farms, fisheries, breweries, and bakeries before the decision to bring it all home to Wheeling. These cookies were at the end of that trip, and they are the only item that has always been available at Vagabond Kitchen. Now you can do what we do: take something everybody already knows, do it with intention, and don't apologize for the

If time flies when you're having fun, what does it do when you're working your ass off? Twelve years ago, on June 8, 2014, we opened the doors to Vagabond Kitchen in the McLure Hotel. Depending on the day, it feels like yesterday or two lifetimes ago. At the time, I was only six months removed from a six-year stint living out West. The year before, I had launched the Vagabond Chef project riding my motorcycle around the country, chasing stories, meeting cooks, and various sun

In this, the day of manufactured outrage, it’s more important than ever to remember our roots. I grew up in the Northern Panhandle of West “By God” Virginia. Deep in the hills and hollers, but not far from the river that forms our Northwestern border. The Ohio River and the industry that she supports add a different flavor to Appalachian Culture in the Upper Ohio Valley. All too often, Appalachia is confused with the South. While we do share some culture with a strictly South

A System-Wide Approach to Heritage, Community, and Experience Good morning. All of us in this room are the same. We are custodians of Appalachia, protectors of West Virginia, and together we tell the tale of our hills & hollers. As superintendents, you’re responsible for protecting some of the most important places in West Virginia. You’re stewards of land, history, and public trust. My role, as Executive Chef for the Parks, is a little different, but it connects directly to

All kinds of misfits are attracted to the Service Industry. Those that like attention often serve in the Front of the House -- they’re...

When I opened Vagabond Kitchen on June 8, 2014, we were in the basement of the now condemned McLure Hotel. The day before I had won my...

Now with two little ones under the roof, I am on a mission here. My first real cooking job was in the West Liberty University Cafeteria....

Welcome to the Vagabond Kitchen website! Folks, we pulled out all the stops to craft for you a website that’s as intentional as our menu...