Q&A: Chef Zac at Heirloom Cafe

I was born here in Columbus, and I grew up in Missouri. I started doing food service in 2006—I was 14 at the Holiday Inn doing banquet stuff, washing dishes. My love of cooking started in Boy Scouts; it was my first merit badge. My dad was big on cooking, feeding all the kids in the neighborhood whose parents weren’t necessarily around. That's really where I got my love of feeding people. 

I worked around some fast casual places, then I started working at what is a now-closed pub in the Polaris area. That’s when I really started to get into from-scratch cooking. After that, I started training under classical chefs. Whereas I do not have a formal education by way of culinary degree, I have taken some culinary classes. That’s where I really like to take the skills of our forefathers and ancestors, you know? But then I don’t really stick to the rulebook. 

In my hometown, Joplin, I was around a lot of Black families, and a lot of Mexican and Guatemalan people lived in that area. A lot of my friends, [I watched] their moms and grandmas—my mom and grandma were in Ohio, so I didn’t have that there. And being raised country, Missouri and Ohio are similar, but where I grew up there’s a lot more barbecue, low Southern style cooking.  

I try not to mess with the menu here too much because it's a winner, but I like to bring it into my specials. This week, we got the Gila Monster, a special we’ve had in the past. I just hit it with a little bit more of my style—I made a green hatch chili aioli.  

We did black bean arepas for the autumn exhibit opening, because Harold [Mendez] had arepas in his artwork. That was really one of the first times I got to lay my personality on the plate here, and I really enjoyed that because then I was able to curate that menu along with the art exhibits. For Sahar Khoury, we did the found-food style. [For Jumana Manna], I made sure we had ethically sourced za’atar. Keep paying attention this year, because I’ve finally got enough time to focus on some specials and expand our catering, which is what I'm working on right now. 

We've done catering through here since we've opened, but this place had a lot of recovering to do from the pandemic. Now that we're back on track and there's more and more people on campus, we're focusing on growing our reach. I'm able to start working more with not only the individual Wexner Center departments, but specifically with Jean [Pitman] and Learning & Public Practice. Jean is one of my big influences. She gives me Miss Frizzle vibes. 

I’m working with her as much as I can, and there are other programs here that reach out to me from time to time, but feeding hungry people that need it is the ultimate goal. It's why I do everything else. 

I've always dreamed of having a beautiful dinner on a covered bridge. Fairy lights coming down from the rafters, you know? That’s definitely on my bucket list, but any time that I get to feed people is a dream. I've been blessed enough—I've fed presidents, I've fed celebrities. I've done a lot of cool things in my career. Now, I have less of a bucket list and more of a to-do. My big dream is to continue to grow Heirloom as much as I can so that I can put more back into the community.  

Yes! That’s something the Wex started asking us to do recently. It's really cool to be part of the things they’re doing for the community. The popcorn that we use is all local, organic. Most of time I'm getting it from Stutzman Farms. It's Ohio heirloom popcorn. How beautiful is that? We’ve got a few staple flavors; a fan favorite seems to be our coconut oil and pink Himalayan Sea salt. We rotate flavors—there’s ‘gronion’, which is garlic and onion, and right now we have a Thai Spice coconut. 

I’ve been working on a Cinnamon Toast Crunch flavor. It’s a work in progress, but that should be out before Thanksgiving break. 

Then I can keep some of the popcorn we have left over—that way you can get more life out of it. We try to limit the amount of waste because there's so much unnecessary food waste in restaurants. 

I have noticed a shift. A lot of places, even some of the places where I've worked before, are now [donating leftovers] where they didn't before. Food Rescue US is one of the big ones and their local chapter is really good at getting leftovers. I really like that group, but we don't typically have enough to work directly with them. It’s one of the things that I am trying to figure out. 

A lot of student club events, and we’ve got a bunch of holiday parties coming up. There are a couple of student clubs and a sorority that our staff are involved with, that I make sure are taken care of. We did box lunches for a group of teachers. And we did the exhibition opening, which I loved. 

Probably 60 percent of our sales come from college students, and another 35 percent come from the Wex staff. They are very supportive of us. Often, I’ll remember what you're ordering before I ever remember your name. I didn't know what [a regular]’s name was for a good eight months, but as soon as I saw him walk in, I’d start cooking what he wanted. We get a lot of regulars and that's what I like. When people come in and see you day-in and day-out, spend their hard-earned money with you, it means you're doing something right.