“We’ll see what The Washington Post thinks about my food.”
—Andrew Markert
Andrew’s knack for drawing flavor from even the simplest ingredients has brought him into the company of some of the finest chefs in the world and helped him place second in a bone marrow competition on his 2011 appearance on Food Network’s edgy competition program Chopped. Andrew got his first few tattoos, which he calls “my college white boy tattoos, mostly tribal and Celtic and some Japanese symbols,” while he was attending the culinary program at Rhode Island’s Johnson & Wales University, and his ink—and culinary endeavors—didn’t stop there.
After he graduated in 2004 with a bachelor’s degree in culinary arts, Andrew moved to Washington, D.C., where he cooked under a variety of top chefs, including David Deshaies at French restaurant Citronelle and Tony Chittum at Italian restaurant Notti Bianche. Andrew followed Tony to Vermillion, a contemporary Indian and Latin American fusion restaurant. Of his time with Tony Chittum, Andrew says, “In total I was under his training for three years. Much of my style and ideals came from Tony. He has always been a huge part of my growth as a chef, learning the ins and outs of the paperwork side of being a chef and really helping me become a better chef.”
At Vermillion, Andrew was able to explore his interest in charcuterie for the first time, an experience that inspired one of his largest tattoos. He took an old-school drawing of a meat market to Fatty, the artist he’d been working with who owns an eponymous tattoo parlor in Dupont Circle. It was Fatty who showed Andrew the album cover of Honky Reduction by the Agoraphobic Nosebleed, a grindcore band. On the album cover, a grinning Stepford blonde in a butcher’s apron holds a slab of meat level with her head in one hand while her other hand drives a cleaver into a carving board. Although Andrew admits grindcore isn’t his genre, the two concepts blended into an epic work that appears to be carved out of his chest. Andrew says the tattoo “is my inner butcher demon man. He is holding a beef rib rack covered in blood, holding a butcher knife and surrounded with meats, such as a side of cow, a pig head, sausages, and many others.”
On his right arm is a sleeve that pays tribute to his godparents, both scholars, one of Dante and the other of Shakespeare, another tattoo inked by Fatty while he was working at Vermillion. It’s a combination of Shakespeare quotes, references to their home, and a crumbling cathedral and setting sun to represent the end of their lives. On Andrew’s left arm is an oriole that represents his past and his present: where he came from, Baltimore, and his favorite cooking ingredient, which is vanilla. Andrew says, “I started this one about four years ago [in D.C.] and have been working on it since. I am almost done with it.”
The most forward-looking of Andrew’s tattoos are the four empty stars on his left arm. Andrew’s waiting for his first starred review as an executive chef to fill them in. He’ll have the chance to earn those stars working as executive chef at Beuchert’s Saloon, a “farm American” restaurant in Washington, D.C. The restaurant, located in Andrew’s home state of Maryland, comes with the luxury of being able to source ingredients from the restaurant’s own farm, East Oaks Organic Farm in Poolesville. You might not think working on a farm would be high on the list of priorities for a chef, but Andrew considers it to be the essence of his new menu. “Working on the farm really taught me what using local ingredients means,” he says. “Providing quality, one-of-a-kind ingredients to your customers is paramount, and something I am adamant about executing.”
Andrew’s oriole tattoo and this crab dish both show his pride for his hometown of Baltimore, MD.
