How an Appalachian Chef Found His Way to His Roots Through the Kitchen

Chef Ian Boden started working in a restaurant kitchen when he was 13-years-old, first assembling salads and later learning to make French classics like beurre blanc. For the first two decades of his career, though, he wasn’t interested at all in the Ashkenazi foods of his family, dishes like stuffed derma or kishke, chopped liver, apple cake, and a small pasta called egg barley. 

“[Like] a lot of Jews my age, I was kind of embarrassed about my heritage,” Ian says. He and his brother were the only Jewish students in their elementary school in suburban Virginia and Ian clearly recalls a day he came home crying after “a guy who I thought was my friend told me: 'Your people killed Jesus, I’m supposed to hate you,’” he says. “I think that had a lot to do with it.” 

His perspective towards Ashkenazi food and his identity started to shift in his 30s. Ian would visit iconic delis and appetizing shops on visits to New York City and saw them becoming shadows of themselves. “It really upset me,” he says. At the same time he saw people around him take pride in their ancestry and culture. And, “I felt like I was lacking — I was missing it.” 

In 2014, when he and his wife opened The Shack, a restaurant on the western edge of Virginia dedicated to the Appalachian cooking of her grandmother, Ian started to see parallels with his own family’s cooking and felt a drive to put dishes from his roots on the menu. 

His mother’s family came to the U.S. from Hungary in the early part of the 20th century. And, his grandmother Pauline, was one of four sisters, who were chatty and exuberant, jokingly calling themselves the Gabor sisters. Pauline’s cooking harkened back to her roots. In her repertoire there was brisket, egg barley, and chopped liver that was given to guests just as they arrived at her home in Maryland. “You’d get a kiss on the lips and then a piece of matzo shoved in your face with chopped liver,” he recalls 

All the sisters had passed away by the time Ian decided to look into his family’s culinary past. “Unfortunately, I missed out on a lot,” he says. But, he’s since taken on a new role as the culinary torch bearer in his family, researching recipes he remembered and cooking them, but with a chef’s twist. First he made latkes at The Shack, then egg barley, replacing the packages his grandmother used with his own homemade version that’s tossed with schmaltz and black pepper. He’s since made kishke with foie gras and truffled matzo ball soup. 

“It took me a long time to get to that point,” Ian explains. But, “The more research I do, the more flavors I taste and remember, the more attached and fond of them I am.”