Cool to the Core

INKED IN: Executive chef and rock fan Scott McLeod wears his influences beneath his sleeve. Photo By: Michael T. Regan

Denim’s Scott McLeod on catering to unusual taste -- including his own.

by Alex Richmond

In many ways, Denim’s Scott McLeod is your typical chef. He thrives on change, loves challenging himself and his customers with new flavors and techniques and yet manages to turn out consistently great meals, plate after plate. That’s what top chefs do. What you don’t see are chefs who published punk rock fanzines for years (McLeod’s was called Deprived Society), who go out to The Bad Luck 13 Riot Extravaganza shows or check out the Relapse catalog for new hardcore CDs, and take their tattooist out to a five-course tasting dinner at Pod -- all things the 30-year-old McLeod enjoys as much as cooking.

Born in Louisiana, McLeod started his culinary career at age 16, when he waited tables at a retirement home. He went to Appalachian State in North Carolina and studied English lit, but knew he wanted to be a chef. So, at age 21, he went to L'Academie de Cuisine, a French culinary program outside D.C.

Post graduation, McLeod worked under chef Michel Laudier at Tragara in Bethesda, Md., for a year, then went on to D.C.'s Historic George Town Club, a private fine dining club serving political bigwigs, where he was promoted to sous chef. McLeod calls his time at the George Town Club "a great experience. The a la carte part was so fine-tuned and minimal that everything was done to order. It was straightforward, not over-the-top, because of the clientele and where we were. What we offered were straightforward things like mini beef Wellingtons."

But chefs need to take risks once in a while. McLeod had a friend in culinary school who was best friends with the owner of the Astor Hotel in Miami, so without much coaxing, he hopped a train. The Astor was a little more glamorous and McLeod's first real introduction to Latin and Caribbean foods. He says, "You can't help but eat a lot of Latin ingredients when you're down in Miami. It showed me a whole different side of cooking. Michel at Tragara is still the most amazing chef I've ever seen, he works so hard and like a machine, it was unreal. So Miami was a different side of that. Astor was kind of ’anything goes' as far as techniques or blending ingredients and different types of cuisines."

In Miami, McLeod read Kerouac's On the Road and got fired up to travel around a little more. He lived in Charleston, Charlotte, Atlanta and St. Paul. Then California beckoned. He recalls, "I was on my way with one bag, ready to hop a bus to San Francisco, then remembered a guy I met in Atlanta who lived in Philly. I came up with one bag, a couple hundred bucks, no job."

That was in 2000. Luckily enough, he landed a job at one of the best restaurants in the city, ¡Pasión!.

"It was pretty random, I had an eyebrow piercing and couldn't get the time of day from anyone on Walnut Street." He started at ¡Pasión! in January 1999 (a month after they opened) and got a line job, then was promoted to sous chef. "¡Pasión! was a huge influence on me. I have a lot of respect for Guillermo Pernot."

He stayed for two years before hopping out. "It was time to go. You learn what you learn and then you go on." McLeod opened Pod with Executive Chef Michael Schulson, and worked his way up to saucier, then sous chef.

"I liked it a lot, Pod was totally different from anything I'd done before -- I had no Asian background in my cooking. I did Caribbean, Latin, [but] nothing about Asian. Probably one of the biggest reasons I went was to learn techniques and ingredients. I saw a whole new world of sauces."

From there McLeod went on to cool BYO Azafran, but there he was a little antsy. "At Pod they said my food was too Latin; at Azafran they said it was too Asian. When you're not doing what you can do, it's frustrating. When Michael Churbuck from Denim said, ’We want you, you've got the guns, run with it,' I was so glad. If I was told I had to do straight Latin, I mean, my name is McLeod and I'm from the South. How could I do it?"

McLeod's eclectic menu at Denim has Asian and Latin ingredients prepared with French techniques, but you'll never taste, say, soy and plantains on the same plate. "I'd never do something atrocious like that. Maybe a hicama-pineapple-ginger sauce. My dishes go one way or another."

There's another thing McLeod only does one way, and that's being into hardcore music, just like when he was 13 and started his fanzine. "My parents thought it was a phase. I'm still into it. I love Cave In, Burnt by The Sun, Vision of Disorder. What I hate is going to those small church shows, they make me feel so fucking old and I don't even drink. I like to sit in the balcony at the Troc."

Philly is the perfect place for McLeod -- at least he says so. "I love Philly. I kind of randomly wound up here and it's been good to me. My future looks good; I want to build a career here. It feels like home a lot more than Louisiana ever did. Could you imagine being a little punk-rock skater kid with bleached-out hair, when everyone else around you is chewing tobacco and into football? Don't."

Denim, 1712 Walnut St., 215-735-6700.

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