Cotton Row, Commerce Kitchen chef James Boyce talks Taste of Home, football food, al fresco dining

HUNTSVILLE, Alabama — “I always tell people the best recipes or concoctions are accidents,” chef and restaurateur James Boyce says.

He’s seated at a second floor corner table inside his dandy downtown restaurant Cotton Row, which is housed in an exposed-brick space that dates back to 1821. Afternoon sunlight peaks through a nearby balcony door and over his shoulder.

About 10 years ago while still based in Laguna, Calif., James had to improvise when he arrived sans dessert at a Long Beach home to cook a five-course meal for about a dozen people. The scenario birthed the Peanut Butter & Jelly With Phyllo, the Cotton Row sweet which features strawberry compote, chocolate ice cream, peanuts and marshmallow fluff.

“People just dig it – it’s just one of those things,” Boyce says of the PB&J dessert. Standing 6-foot-3, the Poughkeepsie, N.Y. native is sporting jeans, blue dress-shirt, brown loafers and tousled hair. “Nobody I think has an epiphany like, ‘I’m going to create this.’ It’s always something that’s messed up.”

Boyce will put on a live, off-the-cuff skills clinic at his 4:30 - 5:30 p.m. Sept. 10 Taste of Home Cooking School VIP Experience demonstration at the Von Braun Center Mark C. Smith Concert Hall (700 Monroe St.).

The virtuosic chef/restaurateur isn’t really sure about all the ingredients he’ll use. Which is by design. Dubbed the Pantry Challenge and inspired by a Boyce segment on Huntsville ABC affiliate WAAY-31’s “First News Morning,” the event will find him preparing appetizers using an ingredients list gathered from submissions topantrychallenge@waaytv.com.

“I was doing a few commercials for them and they were talking about, ‘I know people are gonna pick like Brussels sprouts and horseradish.’ I thought, ‘Well, that’s not too bad.’”

The $25 VIP Experience tickets - available via the VBC Box Office, ticketmaster.comor by phone at 800-745-3000 - also insures you “prime seats” for the two-hour 6 p.m. Taste of Home Cooking School, an offshoot of the magazine and website of the same name, featuring chef Michelle Roberts. Tickets for just the 6 p.m. event are $10 and include a gift bag and Taste of Home cookbook.

A free, Taste of Home Expo will run 12 – 6 p.m. in the VBC East Hall.

“Someone asked me a long time ago why I liked cooking, and it’s like an artist but you don’t have to be appreciated,” Boyce says. “It’s automatic. You know right away. It’s not like painting that sits on a wall for a hundred years, and finally the guy’s dead and ‘Oh yeah, it’s great.’”

View full sizeChef James Boyce is pictured at Cotton Row. (Huntsville Times file photo)

Chef, what do you enjoy about cooking on TV or a live stage, as compared to a typical kitchen situation?

It’s very natural. Somebody was telling me the other day it’s very hard to cook and talk at the same time, like if you’re at your home and you have guest around and talking. For me, it’s natural. And I feel very comfortable and confident in front of people when I cook – I get more out of it now than I do sitting in a kitchen and cooking for 150 guests, which I still enjoy but in a different way. If I’m out on a stage with people and you have interaction, you have fun.

What’s the first thing you can remember being really good at cooking?

I’d have to say grilled chicken. As a kid, we’d always do that Sunday get-together in Upstate New York, and over on the barbecue it was kind of fun. I remember this marinated chicken we would make and put it out there. I think I was probably 10 or 11.

Is there something the Taste of Home audience can watch for to get more out of your demonstration?

I think seasoning. Technique has a lot to do with it. How to season and use salt. People are like, “Oh, I don’t use any salt.” Well, salt serves a lot of purposes other than saltiness. It’s texture sometimes. It’s like pepper. Do you grind it fine or do you grind it larger? And that has a lot to do with it. Grind it fine and you don’t see it but you taste it. It’s a surprise.

People sometimes ask the wrong questions. “What kind of pan do you use?” Give me any pan you want and I’m not going to make up an excuse. I’ve tasted food off of a grill made out of a garbage can and I can’t tell the difference between that and a Green Egg. I think we sometimes overlook the basics. “What kind of knives do you use?” The ones that don’t get stolen. [Laughs.]

Since college football season has started, if you’re sitting around watching a game what are you eating?

A Pane e Vino pizza.

Cotton Row and Pane e Vino both boast great patios. Where are some of your favorite spots around the world for al fresco dining?

There’s a few of them that come to mind. All different. From sitting on a sidewalk in New York to Sicily, Italy to having a lunch sitting at a picnic table on top of hill at a vineyard in California was great, just two weeks ago. Fisher Vineyards, man. The owner cooked for us.  First we had a salad of peaches, blue cheese and toasted almonds that were from the vineyard. Then she did a roasted duck.

In Sicily, we were sitting on a hill on the island of Lipari, and it was a panini we got from a little sandwich shop in the harbor. This little old lady made it and tied it up.

In New York, you’re just down in the Village somewhere and you have a plate of eggplant parmesan and I have a picture in my phone. My two kids and my wife and we’re just hanging out and having a great time. It’s not a five-star experience all the time. It’s culture.

Since you stepped away from your involvement with James Steakhouse and Humphreys’s Bar & Grill a few months ago to focus on Cotton Row, Commerce Kitchen and Pane e Vino, how has that affected you and your work?

We were involved in those, and after a while it’s like, I don’t want any partners. It’s just my wife and I. Stick to what we do. I’m in the restaurants every day. The restaurants that I love. There’s a sense of pride that we have: Changing the menus, revamping the restaurants. 

And we’re starting this catering company and it’s going to be an awesome catering company because everyone’s always pigeon-holed us: “Cotton Row is for the upper end, and we don’t want to do that.” Well, this catering also encompasses food in the style of Commerce (Kitchen), Italian food from Pane e Vino. Barbecue. 

What are you going to call your catering company?

The name we haven’t quite figured out. But we’re kicking it off in a couple weeks with a bridal show out at the Space & Rocket Center. 

Do you ever miss being solely a chef, as opposed to a chef/restaurateur, which brings with it a lot more business concerns?

It was cool and I wouldn’t change anything, but it was a long grind. And I’m turning 50 this year. It wasn’t until we had this restaurant, five years ago, and the first year I was still cooking in the kitchen and the second year … It’s only recently that I’ve ventured out. And I’ve had some smart people that have helped me. My wife. I can still have people that I cook for. I’ll cook in the kitchen and show people things.

But it’s kind of like the old racecar driver and he’s like a five-time champion and now he’s a commentator. And I was listening to an interview and they asked him, “Do you ever miss it that? And he’s like, “Uh … no. It was cool at the time, but I don’t want to die doing it anymore.”

It’s like that: I don’t want to die cooking. I want to die enjoying my life and cooking a little and talking to people and doing what I do best. If you look at the background of a lot of chefs, they’re very focused on, “I want to cook my whole career. I don’t care where I am, I want to cook.” Well, you find them still cooking when they should be retiring. With two younger kids, I’d rather teach them how to cook.