One may assume that Chef Joël Antunes’ favorite meal is a French classic like blanquette de veau, pot-au-feu or pan-seared foie gras. Maybe he likes a good magret de canard, or coq au vin?
But if you guessed any of those entrées, you’d be wrong. Instead, when I asked the award-winning French executive chef of the Capital Hotel what his favorite thing in the world to eat is, he said apple pie. And not just any apple pie — his mother’s version which she makes for him when he visits France several times a year.
“It’s the best,” he says with a heavy French accent. “She always makes one for me the first day I’m there.”
The simplicity of his favorite food reflects the idea behind the cuisine he creates at One Eleven, arguably one of the city’s most upscale restaurants. Now open a year, at One Eleven, Antunes, 53, says it’s very important for him to understand what diners want to eat.
“I think people want something they understand, and something simple and good,” he says. “And I give a lot of choice. It’s why we have all these salads, good fish, good meats, different pastries, desserts, soufflés and pies … because it’s what people want. I don’t cook for my ego; I cook for what people want to eat.”
And people — locals and visitors alike — really do want to eat what Antunes is serving. Before he took the helm and changed Ashley’s into One Eleven, Antunes says the lunch crowd at Ashley’s was very small, to the tune of “four, six, eight people maximum.” “Last Friday, we had 175,” he beams. “Today [a Tuesday] we did 61. Three years ago today, it was four.”
In With the New
The increased lunch traffic can be credited, at least in part, to a concerted effort to make the restaurant more approachable. Antunes says he insisted on trading the red carpet for the wood floors, and he helped choose statement pieces, like the beautiful zinc bar, and recommended ways to open the restaurant up and modernize it.
“I said ‘I don’t want carpet, I want light.’ And it was difficult in the beginning because it was new,” he says, gesturing toward the now bright, airy dining room. But he emphasized the importance of the overall restaurant design matching the cuisine and, in the end, everyone came around.
“I think people like good food,” he says, “but they like it in a good atmosphere and good ambiance.”
nother challenge Antunes encountered was to dispel the perception of the restaurant as a special occasion-only dining experience. When he arrived at the Capital Hotel in late 2012, replacing Lee Richardson, he debuted a new menu with more options and a variety of price points.
“They [Little Rock residents] don’t want fine, fine, fine dining where you have to spend six hours at the table,” he says. “That changed the concept for the menu, the pastry, for everything. I changed everything on the menu. I think it’s successful,” he says.
We concur. The breakfast, brunch and dinner menus are brimming with southern classics like buttermilk biscuits with housemade sausage and gravy, oysters Rockefeller, and shrimp and grits, amidst entrées with more international flair, like grilled prime beef filet with seared foie gras, and roast duck breasts with figs and gnocchi romaine.
The lunch menu, which we frequently navigate, includes a mix of soups, tapas, salads, small plates and large plates of things like seafood pasta with basil and lemon confit, chickpea hummus with lavash, and shrimp cocktail. There’s also the “3 Cocottes,” which features a starter, an intermezzo and an entrée for $15, and our preference, the “Express Lunch,” which includes a soup, starter, main course, cheese, bread and dessert for a mere $17.
“I think for the money, what you get is fantastic,” Antunes says. “The express, everyone loves it. In five minutes you have first-class, and it’s organic, good quality. You can be in and out in 20 minutes if you want.”
And if your mouth isn’t already watering, there’s a large dessert menu as well. Pastry is Antunes favorite thing to make, as he loves the precision it demands. There’s the chocolate soufflé with vanilla chantilly cream, roasted apples, fresh donuts and toast ice cream, and our favorite, the blueberry tart with honey thyme ice cream. This is just the beginning.
Antunes says he buys the best quality food he can get, 99 percent of which is organic. He uses some local produce, but not just for the sake of using local. His No. 1 priority is high quality, and if he needs to get that elsewhere, he does.
Fish is delivered from New York several times a week, and he never uses frozen or canned produce. He says everything is homemade, right down to the pastry dough and ice cream.
Creating everything from scratch and executing cuisine with perfection is a time-consuming process, and the grueling hours aren’t for everyone. Antunes says he comes in at 9 a.m. and leaves between 10 and 11 p.m. five days a week, and he expects the same level of commitment from his staff.
“Lots of people left when I came here because they used to work with the chef before, and, maybe my disciplined way is not like they’re used to,” he laughs. “We spend 12 hours a day, and some people don’t want to. I understand. I don’t criticize. But for me as a chef, it’s very important that I’m the first person here in the morning and the last to leave. I’m not a chef that comes in, looks around and says ‘Everything’s ok. See you in two months.’ You have to set an example.”
Still, Antunes hasn’t struggled to find qualified kitchen staff to join his team. His executive sous chef, Marc Guizol, worked for him in London 22 years ago, and also in the U.S. at the Ritz-Carlton Buckhead in Atlanta. Guizol came to Little Rock from Montana, where he had operated a restaurant in Bigfork. The rest of the kitchen staff hails from all over the world, including China, India, South Africa, Argentina, Colombia and Mexico.
An Award-Winning Career
Antunes says he developed a taste for cooking as a youngster on his grandparents’ farm in the south of France.
“We had horses and cows and pigs and corn and wheat and vegetables,” he says. “My grandmom used to cook for the staff every day. I spent my time in the kitchen, and I think it was the beginning of my passion to see the quality of produce and to see something made from scratch.”
He began to cook professionally when he was 14 and hasn’t stopped since.
“I was lucky because for 10 years in France, I worked with the best chefs,” he says, among them Joël Robuchon, Paul Bocuse and Pierre Troisgros. Robuchon was named “Chef of the Century” by the guide Gault Millau in 1989.
Since then, Antunes has worked at high-profile restaurants throughout the world, from London to New York and Atlanta, to Bangkok, Singapore and Tokyo. And he’s got the brag books to prove it. Big, thick binders filled with clipped stories, positive reviews and awards announcements.
One such story: His cuisine at his Joël restaurant in Atlanta earned him the James Beard Best Chef of the Southeast Award in 2005. And just this year, One Eleven was named a 2015 James Beard Award semifinalist in the Best New Restaurant category. That’s another one for the books.
So how exactly did an award-winning, globe-trotting chef like Antunes make his way to Little Rock? Warren Stephens — chairman, president and CEO of Stephens Inc. and owner of the Capital Hotel — wanted him.
“Mr. Stephens knew my food from Atlanta and his good friend from London called me one day and said, ‘Joël, Mr. Stephens is looking for a chef in Little Rock. Are you interested?’ he recalls.
He had plenty of options. Other opportunities in Hong Kong and Singapore were on the table, but after working at a frenetic pace for almost 40 years, Antunes was ready for something different.
“I wanted something quiet and not too much stress by the traffic, by the noise,” he says. “Of course I’m busy, but it’s different. You know, it takes me two minutes to go home, and I like that. I want to spend more time with my wife because she never saw me for almost 20 years.”
His wife of 23 years, Ellen Austin, is a physical therapist at Ortho Arkansas. The couple met in London, while Ellen was studying abroad through Stanford University.
“I was out shopping, and I see her and she winks at me,” he laughs. “It’s true,” he says, “and, ah, it was good.”
Antunes says they have a lot in common; both had rather nomadic upbringings and they’re both hard workers, invested in their respective careers.
“She spent her life everywhere in the world. If I found someone who had never lived anywhere and didn’t want to move, it would be tough,” he says. “Because she’s like me, if I said next week we’re moving to Japan, she’d say, ‘Okay, good.’ I love my wife. She is an amazing woman.”
And though they are always up for anything, Antunes says right now, a year into his work at One Eleven, Little Rock is where they want to be.
“The city is very friendly, and I think it’s a great small town,” he says. “I think sometimes you have to turn the page, and this, being here, is a good thing for me.”
It’s a good thing for us, too.
Go behind the scenes with Chef Antunes as Soirée Gets a Sneak Peek at an Intimate One Eleven Dinner