Food remained a private passion until Goodenough’s upper year, when he devoted his Reporter-at-Large project to researching and interviewing Mexican cooks at Soup Burg, a burger joint on New York’s Upper East Side. “It was around the corner from my house,” he says. “The place had nine seats with a kitchen that was about 80 square feet. I was fascinated by the tiny amount of space in which these guys were able to work. I wrote about the process of making the burger: reaching into the refrigerated meat cooler with an ice cream scoop, placing it on the grill, and pushing it down with the underside of a giant spatula.”
After graduation, Goodenough studied economics at Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi, with plans to follow his father, Gary “Goose” Goodenough ’65, to Wall Street. “I loved food but I never thought I could make it into a career,” he explains. “It took me a while to find the confidence that I could live sustainably from a career as a chef.”
Learning from the best
A gig as a line cook emboldened him, and he decided to devote all of his efforts to cooking. He enrolled at the Culinary Institute of America, located in New York’s Hudson River Valley, and never looked back. After culinary school, he trained and worked under some of the country’s most celebrated chefs, including Emeril Lagasse, Masaharu Morimoto and Georges Perrier. “I chose jobs with the belief that in order to be the best, one has to work for the best chefs that will hire you,” he says. “I think that working for chefs like this can provide cooks with a few things, the first and most obvious is technique — each chef has things that they do uniquely.”
Cherry-picking techniques from each of his mentors and adapting them, Goodenough developed his own unique culinary style. By 2014, he was ready to open his own restaurant. At the time, his wife, Dr. Amelia Goodenough, was in her third year of residency at Tulane University and pregnant with their second child — circumstances that informed Goodenough’s choices. “It was very important that the restaurant be up and running in order for me to take a step back and be home with the baby a bit,” says the 41-year-old chef. He found a turnkey space in the historic Riverbend district and opened Carrollton Market, an eatery with a modern Southern vibe that marries the bounty of local ingredients found in Louisiana, Mississippi, and the Gulf of Mexico with touches of the world’s cuisine.
Carrollton Market’s menu is like an edible soundtrack of Goodenough’s upbringing — diners can taste the flavors of Thailand, France, Italy, Korea, Morocco, Mexico, Malta, Japan and his new home, the Gulf South. There’s pork belly al pastor with poblano peppers and cotija cheese; seared Gulf shrimp crepinnette with Thai yellow curry and gochujang; and whole roasted fish with his new take on the Provence staple kale pistou.
Goodenough’s culinary style, he says, is “ingredient-driven,” with sustainability at the core. “The thing that catalyzes each and every dish at Carrollton is great product,” he says, adding that he thoughtfully sources vegetables and fruits from local farmers and fish from small fisheries. His dishes often feature American red snapper and blue crab caught in the coastal lagoons of Louisiana and the rest of the Gulf region. For the past three years, Goodenough has partnered with Healthy Gulf, which promotes sustainability in the region’s waters. The area, like many parts of the country, is experiencing the tension of climate change and conflicting interests: sustainability versus land and sea use. “I had no idea how political fish could be,” he says.
Collaborative cuisine
But the secret to Chef Goodenough’s sauce is inspired by the Academy. Before any dish makes it onto the menu, he puts it through a rigorous Harkness discussion. “My collaborative approach, Harkness-style, is something that does make me stand out,” he says. “While the buck certainly starts and stops with me and the vast majority of the dishes are created by me, I seek input from everyone on my staff.”
Harkness kicks into full gear when Goodenough prepares a new dish. “Everyone stands around, tastes it and then shares their opinions. What can we do to improve the dish? Is it menu-worthy? Is there enough salt? Too little? Enough acidity? If so, is it the right acid? Would lemon juice serve better than white wine vinegar? What about sherry vinegar? Is the sauce right? Is the cooking technique the right one for this dish?”
The collaboration of dissecting, exploring and listening to everyone’s opinions not only results in delectable food, but also unites his employees. “We are a small team in a small space — sometimes you find us rolling pasta in the dining room,” he explained. “When everyone is heard and participates in creating what we serve, it encourages a sense of ownership.”
Over the years Goodenough has stayed in touch with the Academy and former class-mates such as Chris Johnson ’97, who is now a pastry chef with Cronut creator Dominique Ansel. When Goodenough was invited to prepare a meal for the James Beard Foundation, he knew exactly whom he would ask to prepare the dessert course — his former PEA teammate. “Chris was at Main Street and I was in Ewald and we were big dudes, which put us in a lot of places at the same time: linemen on the football team, shot-putters on the track team,” he says. “I don’t remember Chris having a huge interest in food then, but I don’t know if I wore my interest on my sleeve either.”
