“I was in the punk rock scene and very rebellious as a kid, so since I was 14, I wanted to be completely covered head to toe.”
—Keith Fuller
Keith Fuller was born in Wilmington, Delaware, but began his culinary career in his hometown of Hudson, Ohio, a small town about a thirty-minute drive south of Cleveland. Starting at age fifteen, he took a job at a McDonald’s but quit after only three weeks, opting instead to work in a family-run restaurant called Yours Truly. There, Keith worked the stove for five years through high school and into his time at Rice University, where he started a two-year degree in polymer science but dropped out after the first year. Keith jokes, “Basically Tony Hawk Pro Skate and Legend of Zelda came out at the same time so what was I to do?” Needing to figure out what to do next, Keith moved to Dayton, OH, and begged his way into the kitchen of L’Auberge. The white tablecloth, fine-dining French restaurant was opened in 1979 and was Mobil (now Forbes) Guide’s longest-running four-star eatery in Ohio until it closed its doors in 2012. Keith says, “the place was basically 1970s food, suit and jacket, Dover sole done tableside. I actually love that stuff, but the restaurant was dated and Dayton was a dying town.” Despite L’Auberge’s dated style, it was where Keith learned his foundations for French cooking.
In 2000, after a year there at L’Auberge, Keith moved to Philadelphia, where he joined the team at Jake’s and Cooper’s Wine Bar, a four-star restaurant focusing on American cuisine. Keith originally thought that he would also go to culinary school while in Philadelphia, but the chef at Jake’s convinced him he was better off just learning in the kitchen and not spending the $40,000 on school. Keith spent six years at Jake’s, moving from line cook to saucier and eventually taking a sort of “junior sous-chef” position where he where he filled in for any of the head chefs when they weren’t available. While he was there, Jake’s was continually honored as one of the top dining destinations in the city, having the “Best Brunch” and “Best Crab Cakes” as recognized by Philadelphia magazine.
While Keith was working at Jake’s he spent a few months living in a house in Delaware with the members of the punk band Boysetsfire. The large house was the stage for many big parties with many members of the post-hardcore/punk scene, and even after moving out, Keith frequently returned for the blowouts. After they had to give up their lease in 2003, they threw one last bash where they dragged all their belongings into the yard and lit a huge bonfire. The cops were eventually called but not before Keith blew out his knee during the ruckus. That same year, all the people who lived in the house got tattoos of praying, which are now known as the “Big House” tattoos. Keith, a lover of religious art who is not particularly religious, got Darth Vader prayer hands.
While he had a great time in Dayton, in 2005 Keith was recruited to be the opening executive sous-chef of Six Penn Kitchen, an open-kitchen restaurant that focused on American comfort food prepared well but served in a casual setting. The restaurant was in Pittsburgh, PA, and Keith packed up his bags and moved. When the executive chef moved to Brooklyn in 2008, Keith took over as executive chef. He stayed in this position for more than three years and then decided it was time to try to open his own restaurant. However, the road to fulfilling this dream wasn’t easy.
Keith found a location, but also found that all the people who told him they wanted to invest suddenly didn’t have any money. As he asked around, a mutual friend from Pittsburgh told him that Patrick Bollinger, the drummer of punk rock band Anti-Flag, was interested in opening a place. Keith had met Patrick year prior at the parties at the Boysetsfire house in Delaware, and they soon met for a meeting to discuss their mutual desire to open a place. Keith says, “Patrick is great. He is straight-edge and very together.” Patrick agreed to back Keith, and in 2011 they opened Root 174 in Pittsburgh, PA.
Root 174 takes its name from the square root of the neighborhood’s two zip codes. There, Keith does what he calls “modern rustic” food, where he focuses on taking what he thinks most people see as waste or leftover parts and turning them into gourmet dishes. He says, “Shit you throw away can make a great meal.” Since opening the restaurant, Keith has become an area favorite and received a great review in 2011 from Pittsburgh Magazine, prompting Restaurant Critic Valentina to write “Imagine a restaurant where you might fight over the last Brussels sprout (this happened to me) … ” The following year in 2012 Pittsburgh Magazine honored them again naming them one of the top 25 restaurants of Pittsburgh. Keith was even interviewed on CNN for one of his more adventurous dishes, swordfish fish marrow; his was one of only two restaurants in the United States serving it at the time.
Keith isn’t just adventurous when it comes to cooking. He got his first tattoo the day he turned eighteen, a tribal arm band around his right arm. Over the next three years, he got a lot more ink, and by the time he was twenty-one, he felt he was ready to ink up his neck and knuckles. He laughs, “I kind of wanted to fuck myself and see how far I could get on just my personality and charm.” He got a sacred heart on the center of his neck with a fire-themed sparrow on the left side of his neck and an ice-themed sparrow on the right to complement it, but when it came time to do his knuckles, he had second thoughts. He made several appointments to get his knuckles done but kept changing his mind at the last minute. Finally, the artist told Keith that no one was going to be looking at his hands because everyone would already be staring at his neck. Keith agreed and finally got “GAME NERD” tattooed across his knuckles. This may seem out of character, but while much of Keith’s ink is inspired by religious art, his body also showcases his love of games and science. He even tends to combine these two ideas in his tattoos. For example, he has zombie Pikachu and Ash Ketchum from the game Pokémon on his chest and a Darth Vader sacred heart on his left arm. In 2010, he got a portrait of actor Steve Buscemi as Darth Vader on the back of his left leg. After posting a picture of it to ugliesttattoos.com, the photo received a ton of notice and was the number one viral photograph of 2010 on Geekologie’s website.
Keith continues to collect ink, getting the Root 174 logo behind his left ear, and he is now working to do a cover-up piece of an octopus and shipwreck on his right arm, but the original dark band was tattooed so heavily that it is raised and has been a difficult piece to cover. Keith is currently focused on continuing to run Root 174, spending more time with his wife, and teaching his son how to play all the games he loves.
This recipe was served at one of Keith’s CRUX dinners, a pop-up dinner on November 1, 2012, at a home in Lincoln Park, Chicago, where Keith Fuller and Brandon Baltzley (see entry in Part 4) cooked together for eleven guests.
NOTES FROM THE CHEF
Only purchase live, in the shell scallops.
NOTES FROM THE CHEF
Our lichen comes from a forager in Maine.