Brian Hove didn't go to culinary school. Instead, he credits his time rising up the ranks working for Marriott Hotels as his culinary education. After starting as a prep cook in Omaha in 1992 and traveling across the country as a line cook, chef de cuisine, sous chef and executive sous chef, he took the leap of opening his own restaurant in 2013.
Hove and his wife, Jackie, opened Kozak's Laketown Grill in Smithville, Missouri, just north of Kansas City, and named the restaurant after their two sons, Kobe and Zach. The restaurant serves hearty favorites, often with a Kansas City twist, like the Kansas City Steak Soup or the porterhouse pork chop with bourbon-glazed apples and onions served with Cheddar polenta.
We talked to Hove about his ideal dinner, his favorite ingredient and why it's important to keep your recipes simple.
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What is your favorite ingredient to cook with and why? From a protein standpoint, one of my favorite things to cook is pork, because you can use it in a variety of different styles and techniques and flavors. It's a very versatile meat, so anything I can do with pork is something I really embrace; I love being creative with pork. And I like throwing in different regional or global flairs and flavors into those dishes – spices and herbs and different things from different countries allow me to be creative, especially when it comes to pork.
Do you have a secret weapon spice/ingredient/technique? I like to cook with alcohol! [laughs] I like to put, if it’s a barbecue sauce, maybe I'll put a little bourbon in it or add a little stout to it. Or if it’s a fish dish, maybe I'll enhance it with a white wine or a cordial to give it a unique flavor. So adding different elements of spirits and alcohol and beer into my dishes is something I think that is not only kinda trendy, but something people are drawn to. When you mention a special and say the flavor’s enhanced with a local stout beer or a spirit or bourbon, that really piques their interest, and I believe it enhances the flavors in a lot of these dishes, as well.
What's your perfect day of eating in Kansas City? My perfect day? Honestly – last year, we put an outdoor kitchen in our backyard, so we do a lot of outdoor dining and entertaining out there, so that’s what I enjoy doing on my day off – kicking back, having some friends over. We have a stone-fired pizza oven, so doing some pizzas back there, we have a smoker, do some barbecue, and just really relaxing and enjoy some cold beverages, some beers or wine and entertaining friends or family. That's my perfect dinner.
How has the local food scene evolved over the past year? I think I've seen some really, really great things happen in Kansas City. [We have] a lot of great local butchers and I've seen them [go] leaps and bounds in the past couple years. Great restaurants to go to. A friend of mine, Jonathan Justus, opened up Black Dirt and we went down there just last week and it was a fantastic place to eat. Seeing [people] not gravitating toward the corporate-driven restaurant as much, and more into these restaurateurs and chefs that are opening their own places and being very creative, sourcing local products, local beers, local wines – that’s very interesting to me, and I see a big push in the Kansas City area for local chefs and restaurateurs to move in that direction. Moving as a community, embracing and supporting each other as far as winemakers and brewers and chefs and butchers – it's just a big collaboration. That’s really exciting to see happen right now.
What concepts or styles of cooking do you hope to see added or expanded in Kansas City? I'd like to continue to see a push for more local. I guess a style that I really appreciate that I don’t see enough of is a tapas-style restaurant – the small bites, shareable appetizers, great flavors from around the world. I'd like to see more of that concept happening, but with more of a Kansas City or Midwest flair into the small bites; casual yet approachable.
Who are Kansas City chefs or restaurant owners you admire at the moment? I would definitely say Jonathan Justus; he is a creative genius when it comes to food, and seeing what he does. I recently got to meet the chef at Q39, [Rob Magee], and just going into that restaurant – it’s a beautiful restaurant, and the food is just outstanding, and I had a chance to talk with him a little bit and I really appreciate what he's done from a barbecue standpoint in Kansas City.
What do you like to cook at home or on your day off? Anything! Lately, I like to barbecue at home. Like I said, we like to do the pizzas outside. My wife, Jackie, and I are trying to eat healthier these days, so we're exploring opportunities when it comes to creating flavorful dishes, but still eating on the healthy side – things like quinoa, brown rice, chicken, but seeing if we can kick it up a notch and add more spices and flavors to it [so it's] not a bland healthy food but a flavorful and exciting healthy food.
What's your favorite comfort food? I love short ribs, so beer-braised short ribs on mashed potatoes is my perfect comfort food.
If you could tell home cooks one thing, what would it be? Don’t over-complicate things. Keep it simple and keep it easy to execute. Don’t get over your head when it comes to recipes. The simpler you can make it, the easier to execute it is, the better outcome you're gonna have. That's kinda my theme in general – keep it simple, don’t over-complicate your dishes.
What is your first food memory? Oh, my grandmother's cooking, of course. She baked pies and cakes form scratch, all great comfort foods. She'd make her own pastas – that’s where I really learned a great appreciation for food, is watching and eating my grandmother's cooking.
What’s the most intriguing dish you’ve made recently, and why? Gosh, that's a tough one. I guess what would be intriguing to me may not be intriguing to somebody else. Well, back to the short ribs, I made a Korean-style barbeuce braised short rib, and I'd never really dabbled in making Korean food and Korean barbecue sauce and incorporating that into a dish. But I had made it, and that night we had a new customer come in who, at one point, lived in Korea, and she brought me to her table and said, "This is fantastic dish. You nailed this. I haven’t had Korean barbecue like this in a long, long time." And I was really shocked that she enjoyed it that much, and after that she became a regular customer. I guess that was maybe an intriguing dish that I challenged myself to do, and I was glad it turned out the way it did, and that customers appreciated it the way she did.
What inspires your cooking? How do you approach R&D, and what inspires that process? I do a lot of research online; I look at recipes online. I've got some cookbooks at home. I try to take things, like the short ribs – I've braised short ribs in wine or beer hundreds of times, and you think, "What I can I do differently that I haven’t done before?" And kinda challenge myself to do a recipe that I haven't tried before. Then you start doing more research and expanding your knowledge and your skill set by doing these things and trying new flavors and recipes. So taking the stuff you already know how to do, and then challenge it by taking it to another level. I guess that's the point of being a chef: You learn stuff, and once you master it, you have to continually challenge and push yourself to be more creative and see what else you can do with it.
What are your future plans? Well, we're just gonna keep trying to do the best we can; the past year we've really focused on hiring great people. We've got a world-class bartender that does great things; I've got a great chef that’s come in and is being very creative, and just try to build off the talent we've already got in place. I'd like to see a second location somewhere in the Kansas City area. That's our hope. We've got a couple of leads and opportunities that may pan out, but we're just trying to make ourselves the best that we can and go from there. I think if you work hard, the opportunities are going to come. We're all working and growing in the same direction, and I think at some point, there will be an opportunity for us to expand, and I'm excited about that.
Kozak's Laketown Grill, 1018 S. Hwy 169, Smithville, Missouri, 816.873.3444, kozakslaketowngrill.com