By Sarah Golibart Gorman, contributor
Foodie Q&A is a series showcasing the Harrisonburg food community. Food enthusiast and storyteller Sarah Golibart Gorman interviews food and drink makers behind the Friendly City food scene. You’ll read about their origins, creative processes, aspirations, and go-to spots in town. Fresh articles drop the second Tuesday of each month from June 2024 to June 2025.
This month Gorman sat down with Ryan Zale to hear about his culinary journey from his hometown in Ohio, to culinary school in Pittsburg, and finally to Virginia where he’s opened three Chop House locations. Read on to hear about the opening of his newest restaurant, The Chop House Tavern in Staunton.
Gorman: Can you tell me where you grew up and about the food you grew up eating?
Zale: I grew up in northeast Ohio right on Lake Erie. There was not much to do besides farm and play sports. I grew up on classic Ohio cuisine. All summer long, corn was served with everything. I didn’t really have any exposure to seafood, so, you know, catfish and walleye and bluegill and bass were, you know, my meat out of the water kind of fish. I didn’t really experience any seafood until I went into culinary school.
I have a lot of Polish ancestry and my grandmothers on both sides were really good cooks. So I ate a lot of Polish dishes – pierogies and sauerkraut and kielbasa have a very, very warm place in my heart. My grandfather had a pretty decent sized garden, so we would work with him and eat out of the garden. When I was a kid, for money, I used to milk cows. Drinking raw milk. Nothing beats that.
One of my coolest memories when I was a kid is when my grandfather would take me to the garden. He would keep salt with him, and when he’d dig up the radishes, he would sprinkle salt on them and give them to me. That’s one of those things that stuck with me for a really long time.
Gorman: When did you begin cooking and who taught you?
Zale: I worked a lot as a kid. If I wanted anything, I had to work for it. I worked at a diner on the weekends slinging eggs and cooking the church rush. And I knew, early on, that I was good at it. I wasn’t the best, but I was good. At 15, 16 years old I could keep up. That was my first sign that maybe I could do this for a while. I could have gone to school for sports – soccer, track – but you could hurt your knee at any time and then it’s done. I didn’t have to take any SATs for culinary school. So three days out of high school, I went to the Pennsylvania Institute for Culinary Arts. Two weeks in, the school’s restaurant opened up, which was called the Pittsburgh Fish Market. I started there, working mornings and going to school at night. I was the morning fry guy, breading scallops and oysters and frying sweet potatoes.
By year two of culinary school, I was destroying the other culinary students. They would sit there peeling potatoes when I had peeled 50 pounds already that day. Or, they would learn how to pin bone a salmon and I’d already cleaned 12 salmon that day. I felt like I was a head above the other students. We had to do all these classical cooking tests, cooking for one guy, when at work I would cook for 200 people. Five years later when I left, I had worked my way up to sous chef.
I wanted to be great. I’d save up my money and at least once a month I’d buy a cookbook or go out to dinner somewhere to gain some sort of experience. And then I would just put my head in the cookbooks and read and study.
Gorman: What brought you to Harrisonburg and what’s kept you here?
Zale: After Pittsburg I worked in a couple restaurants, but my main reason for coming to Virginia was The Inn at Little Washington. I worked there for a couple of years. It was kind of like starting over. It felt like culinary boot camp. They pretty much break you down and morph you into a Little Washington soldier. I loved it. One weekend I visited Harrisonburg and fell in love. Four months later I ended up moving to Harrisonburg.
I was very fortunate to sync up with these extremely wealthy people who could afford a private chef. One summer they decided to go to Italy and they took me with them. Talk about a wild experience. Cruising the mountains outside of Rome in this little five speed Mercedes Benz, buying green beans from grandmothers off the street, going to the market, buying meat from the butcher. As they traveled throughout Italy, I went with them and cooked. After Rome, we went to the Amalfi coast, seafood, lemons everywhere, unreal.
Gorman: You opened the Chop House in 2009. This year is the 15-year anniversary. What’s that been like?
Zale: Well, there’s two stages of me at the Chop House. I came in as executive chef in 2009. I was there until 2016 and then I left. I went on to work at a couple different places and then I moved to Annapolis, Maryland. One of the owners now, Brad Reese, used to be the general manager. I actually hired him as a dishwasher and he worked his way up. He ended up leaving too, but what brought him back into it was the original owners were selling their shares. Brad bought out the original owners’ shares and came in as an owner. One of his first calls was to call me. I decided to come back. Kate Hill was one of the original owners, so now it’s the three of us.
When I came back, it was a mess. It was screaming for a good old facelift. So the first year was just trying to get it back to the way it was. They were using a lot of frozen food and I never use anything frozen – just french fries and ice cream. It took a year and half to get it back to where it was. Now she’s humming again. It’s different, but it’s kind of back to the same style it was at the beginning.
Because Local Chop was going so well, we opened a second location, the Chop House Bistro in Luray last October. This October we opened our third location, the Chop House Tavern, in Staunton.
Gorman: What makes the Chop House Tavern unique from your other locations?
Zale: Its atmosphere. The style is a little different from the others. A little swanky, but still casual. I think Tavern is the most sexy out of the three. It has a calm, warm energy. Very inviting. A beautiful space for a date night.
Gorman: What Tavern menu item or ingredient are you most excited about right now?
Zale: This was a great opportunity for some classical French techniques. Slow cooking, confits, rendering fat, taking off cuts of animals and turning them into wonderful dishes. We have an old school dish on the menu now called cassoulet. I learned to cook it at a young age from a French chef. It’s one of those dishes that always stuck with me. Especially now we are getting into the colder months. It’s perfect for the season.
Gorman: Can you share about your creative process when you’re developing specials for menus for your new restaurants?
Zale: The first thing is what’s available. What can I get from the growers in my area? This summer, we had a really bad drought, so the fall crop is looking different. I talk to producers and figure out who’s got what and for how long. That helps me create the layout of the menu, figuring out all the ingredients that I have to work with.
The Tavern has a smaller kitchen than the Chop House in Harrisonburg. With the Tavern, it’s more intricate, more detail oriented. It will be fall, going into winter. We want stuff that sticks to the ribs. We want people to be full when they walk out and happy and giggly because they ate too much. We will probably rotate the menu more frequently than the other two locations because we’ll have the capability. Every other week, the menu can change, rotate things in and out, feel it out with the guests, see the things they want.
Gorman: As you’re expanding, how are you able to keep things uniquely Chop House?
Zale: What’s most important is having the key people in the key positions. We have trained them in our philosophies, our procedures and policies. We try to teach them to think like we think. Then, it becomes second nature. Structure is important. Consistency is important. If you go into any of the three restaurants, the service style is all the same, the plating is the same, the lines are mostly set up the same. We want to get to the point where we can have people start bouncing around. We’re investing in some technology to make sure we can manage labor and food costs from afar instead of being in there every day.
It’s a lot of traveling for us. Today I’m at the Bistro, yesterday I was at Chop. Tomorrow I’m going out to Staunton. It’s tough, but I love it. The position that I’m in now is an absolute gift and a blessing. I wouldn’t want it any other way. We have amazing, incredible smart people that believe in what we do and that just makes the process a little bit easier.
Gorman: What are some of your go-to spots in town to eat?
Zale: I love the food trucks. I love La Taurina Grill, right across from the Duke’s Car Wash. To me their tacos are the best. But I cook at home, six days a week. Also, I’ll go to the Chop House bar and sit at my own place because I know exactly what I’m getting. I think a fun date night is the Ridge Room. Dan’s the chef up there, he does a really good job. Bobo Cafe, the ramen place, is pretty impressive. But for the most part, I’m cooking at home. I’ve been in the chaos for 25 years now, so a nice quiet night on the back deck in the woods. That’s my kind of night.
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