6 Questions with Nicholas and Leslie Goellner

Nicholas, you worked on a cruise ship but not just any cruise ship. Can you tell us about that experience?

Nicholas: Yeah, that was a really informative start to my career. I went there right after culinary school. It was a paid internship program. It’s a very unique ship, I think it's the only one that operates like it in the world. It’s the size of a cruise ship, but it's actually privately owned condos for the ultra wealthy like bank heirs and oil families. It was really incredible because I got to go to so many different places that I would usually be priced out of and see what food cultures are like in those areas when the people there are not trying to sell to foreigners.

It was a lot of work. I met a lot of people from all over the world, there weren't very many Americans working on the ship, mostly South African, Austrian, German. It's just one of those environments that I don't think you really find very many places in the world anymore. I got to work with some of the best ingredients from all over the world.

How did you two meet?

Leslie: It’s funny, we actually were both living in New York at the same time, we just didn't know each other. I knew his mom and sister prior to moving to New York, because they owned a pastry shop down the street from the restaurant where I was working prior to living in NYC. Eventually, I came home to Kansas because the chef that I had worked for previously was opening his own restaurant, and he needed a manager. So I went and ended up becoming the GM and reconnected with Nick's mom and sister, who said he was also moving back.

…so all along Nick’s mom and sister were trying to set you two up?

LG: [Laughs] Yeah, we didn't really find that out until later. But yes, and we didn't let it happen. We were trying to be very professional. It was actually one of our dishwashers who presented the fact that we may have both been secretly watching each other during service.

What’s it like working with your significant other?

NG: You know, I'm back of house, and she's front of house. In a sense, these are two different worlds in the same restaurant, and we actually started our relationship working together. I think for certain couples, maybe it's tough when they start their lives as separate, and then they try to start a business together afterwards and they're spending a lot of time with each other.

Our work and our personal lives have always been intermeshed from the beginning of our relationship. When we are discussing food and wine, when we're going out to eat, and when we're at the restaurant, it's all kind of just what brought us together to begin with. We both just have such a passion for food and beverage and travel, and it's really why we do what we do — to be able to travel.

Speaking of travel, what does it mean to you to go on a trip?

NG: One of the things I love about travel the most is actually the anonymity. It's one of the things I loved about going to New York. I love the feeling of being in a place that's completely new to me and discovering things, and that people don't really necessarily have any expectation of who you should be, or how you should be when you're on vacation. You kind of get to just be your true self. Being on vacation, where you’re actually able to let go of what's kind of, you know, the burdens of the minutiae of everyday life. It's pretty magical. And we've kind of been chasing that feeling ever since we started traveling.

What are you most excited to share on a trip to Georgia?

NG: Oh my God.

LG: How long do you have? [Laughs]

NG: It's a very unique place. If you look at it historically, it's the oldest wine growing region in the world. The language and the writing system are very ancient; it's on a northern spur of the Silk Road; it's predominantly Orthodox Christian, which makes it really, really unique as a food culture, because you get a lot of spices used heavily in the Middle East. But you're adding things like pork and alcohol into the cooking, which aren't really used in the Middle East for religious reasons. It's a really unique cuisine because of those demographic facts.

And to me, those are always my favorite types of food cultures. The ones where you have something familiar, like spices and ingredients, but you've never had them used this way before. That's to me what I love about Georgian food. I couldn't tell you another food culture from a country that small that's actually made such a significant impact on the cooking that I do at all. I mean, it's a tiny country. But man, it's kind of loud voice when it comes to food.