Meet Milktooth's Jonathan Brooks — Indy's hottest chef

• Brooks%27 next restaurant
• The dish that excites him right now
• What he thinks about his %27hipster%27 reputation

When Milktooth chef Jonathan Brooks met Food & Wine magazine restaurant editor Kate Krader in February, he wasn't thinking national accolades. He didn't even know why Krader was in Indianapolis.

"I was talking to her a bunch because I was trying to hit her up for restaurant recommendations when I'm out there (New York) in August."

Food & Wine this month named Brooks, 30, one of America's 10 best new chefs, an honor he shares with past winners like Thomas Keller, Grant Achatz and David Chang.

That's not the only major mention Brooks has received since he and his wife, Ashley, opened Milktooth six months ago at 534 Virginia Ave. Not long after the restaurant debuted in October, Zagat recognized Milktooth as a reason why Fletcher Place is among America's 10 hot food neighborhoods. Brooks visits New York City in August because he and four other Central Indiana chefs have been invited to cook at James Beard House, the place where the nation's top toques flaunt their chops. Back home, Indianapolis Monthly's April edition puts Milktooth in its best new Indy restaurants lineup.

Milktooth has gained prominence quickly, but Brooks is still Brooks, the kid who grew up eating home cooking in, as he puts it, "Meridian-Kessler but not rich Meridian-Kessler. It was 49th and College."

"I don't feel like the best new chef in Food & Wine magazine," Brooks said. "I feel like Jonathan trying to make the best Milktooth possible."

Q: What was food like during your childhood?

A: We didn't have anything fancy, but there's always, always a home-cooked meal on the table. I specifically remember our house being the go-to place. My brother would have all his cross-country friends over and my mother would just always have food for everyone. Or my sister, all her friends would come over and there was food for everybody. ... The things I remember most were orange roughy, which no one really talks about anymore. ... I remember breading that all the time, my mom always doing fish fries. I always remember making chocolate chip cookies with my mom. My grandmother lived down in Tennessee, and whenever we would go visit them she always had, like, "the meal." It was like the same meal every time. The night that we arrived it was really Southern, like ham, fried chicken, fried corncakes, green beans, grits. That stuff is a really vivid food memory.

Q: What's the first thing you ever cooked by yourself?

A: Bagel pizzas, which I would beg my sister to make for me when she was babysitting me. I think she just eventually made me cook them myself. Bagel with jarred sauce and cheese. It's funny, she renewed her vows with her wife here at Milktooth now that gay marriage was made legal (in Indiana), and I made a bunch of bagel pizzas.

Q: You landed your first kitchen job as a dishwasher at age 14. What sent you into the kitchen?

A: I definitely liked the idea of having financial independence when I was a kid. My first job was at The Jazz Kitchen. My older brother went to high school with the owner, and so they agreed to give me a job. In high school, I started working at pizza places, Mexican restaurants, delis. Probably, high school is when I got really into it and just started reading about chefs, reading biographies, looking at food magazines. Taking on more responsibility at home, helping with parties.

Q: Milktooth attracted more than a 1,000 social media followers months before it opened. Since then, it's been one good review after another. How does the attention jibe with what you thought would happen?

A: Honestly, I didn't even think about social media or reviews or anything like that before we opened. We kind of opened really quick, and we were pretty shoestring budget. I expected the restaurant to be popular.

Q: A big part of why you chose this breakfast brunch concept rather than a dinner spot was so that you could spend more time with your family.

A: We're going to open some more restaurants — there's definitely a plan for that — so it was kind of like what makes sense to do first. And I thought firing breakfast/lunch because it was totally lacking (in the market) and it kind of worked for the family.

Q: More restaurants? Spill! Concepts? How many restaurants? Where? When?

A: We're not far enough that we've started looking at spaces. We definitely have plans. ... I have the next concept. Opening one was the biggest goal I ever had. ... I don't want to be a restaurant group, but I'd like to open another restaurant. ... I'd love to do it next year.

Q: American food, ethnic food?

A: I've told you all I can tell you.

Q: You describe the Milktooth menu as inspired by homespun meals, but you put your own spin on them. How does something like cranberry walnut and raclette grilled cheese with black truffle honey and a sunny side up local duck egg happen?

A: It's so different with all the dishes. The grilled cheese is pretty straightforward. It's "OK, how do we make a good grilled cheese?" We take every element of it and make it better. So we have great bread from Amelia's. We have awesome local cheese. So that's pretty simple. Sometimes the inspirations are a little bit more out there. ... I don't sit down and rack my brain for dishes. Things come to me. I see produce in the spring. I get inspired by it. I've had dreams of a dish, woken up, made a note on my phone and then gone back to it. Sometimes it makes no sense, but sometimes it makes a little bit of sense.

Q: What are you tweaking right now?

A: I've been working a lot on my okonomiyaki. That's been one of my favorite things that I've worked on and trying to figure out the perfect ratio. It's a savory Japanese pancake. In Japan, they're just eaten kind of like sobering-up food, so you can just throw anything at them. So, the first one that we did was fried bologna — fried mortadella — okonomiyaki. It kind of made sense to me because it's (bologna) kind of a weird American ingredient and sometimes these pancakes have a lot of bizarre ingredients in them. The second version we did had oysters inside of it and crispy beef tongue on top of it.

Q: Critics hit Milktooth with "What? No salt and pepper on the tables? No substitutions? Who do these Milktooth people think they are?" Talk about what drives those decisions.

A: It's generally not because we're trying to be pretentious or trying to limit people, but I think people are happier when they have limited choices and realize that this is one meal out of, how many meals do you have in your life. You can give up a little control and just eat what's in front of you. You might learn something new or find something that you like that you didn't know you liked.

Q: I hear often from people who ask me about Milktooth: "That place is too hipster for me" or "I'm not hipster enough for that place." How do you feel about Milktooth being perceived in this manner?

A: I think it was annoying to me when we first opened because people kept using that word "hipster," and now, I don't care. I don't know what that means, "hipster." I mean yeah, we're a bunch of young people working hard in a restaurant. I got handed a great opportunity and felt lucky to open a restaurant, and I wanted to hand opportunities to young people who have maybe never done the thing that they're doing here before. No one here thinks they're too cool for anyone else. Maybe people get that feeling because of the limited menu, the no modification thing, but if this restaurant was in Chicago, no one would say that ... We just wanted to open a fun restaurant and have good food and not have any kind of a tight feeling or for it to feel fancy. We charge good money for our food, but it's great ingredients.

Q: I think you're defining, or helping to define, Indianapolis cuisine, being creative with a respect for Indiana ingredients and cooking styles. Some people wonder if Indy has defined its own cuisine; if it needs to or could ever have a cuisine all its own (does any city really?); or if it keeps copying Chicago. Where do you see Indy's culinary evolution and where do you think you fit into that evolution?

A: I don't think you can really define the cuisine of any place. A cuisine is kind of an ongoing conversation between farmers and chefs and people. I don't think people here are copying Chicago. I think obviously we're inspired by Chicago. Chicago's inspired by the next guy. The next guy's inspired by New York. New York's inspired by Paris. I don't see how you can define a cuisine because it's always changing. It's changed by the next people opening a restaurant ... I think we're really lucky in Indiana to have amazing produce, amazing ingredients at our disposal. Obviously, we have a global economy now. I can get fish from Spain. I think in some ways, it (my food) can't help but be (distinctive) to Indianapolis. I'm a filter for it. I'm an Indiana boy. I never wanted to be but I'm happy to be back here. I hoping that some of my Midwestern-ness is reflected in the food, but I don't consciously make that effort. I'm not trying to make our menu necessarily reflective of Indiana or focused in some purposeful way. I'm just trying to cook great food.

Q: What do you like about Indy's food scene right now?

A: The awesome excitement that's here right now. I think everybody's really supportive of each other. For a long time, I think we suffered from sprawl and chefs not being close enough to each other to support each other and be influenced by each other. I think that's totally different now. It's one of the reasons we chose this space. ... We wanted to be close to Bluebeard. We wanted to be close to Rook. I want to have a small community that I see every day, that I'm influenced by every day.

Q: What don't you like about Indy's food scene right now?

A: That people are always comparing us to Chicago, and we feel like we have to defend ourselves against Chicago. I love Chicago. I lived in Chicago for three years. I think it's a great place, but I don't think that we have to compare ourselves. Indianapolis is cool enough to stand on its own.

Q: Can Indy win a James Beard award against Chicago, and, if so, will you be the person to take it home?

A: I think we absolutely can. There could be an argument made that Chicago should be its own category, but that's such a small, silly thing to worry about. ... I think my next project will put us in that conversation. I don't think it's going to be one of the people already nominated from Indiana. I think it's going to be one of my generation that will do it. I want to put my name in that hat for sure. I think Abbi (Merriss of Bluebeard) deserves to be in that conversation. I think Carlos (Salazar of Rook) deserves to be in that conversation. It's not going to happen for me with Milktooth. It's not our goal, but I think in the next five years it will happen for somebody.

Q: Who's Indy's next Jonathan Brooks?

A: What do you mean who is Indy's next Jonathan Brooks? I'm only 30 years old! It's great the attention we've gotten for Milktooth, but you guys haven't seen anything yet. This is just the first little piece of conversation. This is just the flirting that we're doing with Indianapolis right now.

Call Liz Biro at (317) 444-6264. Follow her on Twitter @lizbiro, Instagram @lizbirodish and Facebook. Email her at liz.biro@indystar.com.