Welcome to the Connected Table Live.We're your hosts, Melanie Young and David Ransom, your insatiably curious culinary couple.
We travel the world to bring you the amazing people we meet when we eat, sip, play, and explore, and we love sharing their stories with you.We're taking you to Bryan, Texas, where we had our first visit in August of 2024.
We were invited to a grape stomp at Messina Hoff Winery, and a chance to explore this bustling town.It's actually a Twin Cities.
It's Bryan College Station, and it's the home of Texas A&M, which we learned is a massive school, and we've been following the football since then.
Joining us are the proprietors of a restaurant we fell absolutely in love with, and we know you will too, right, David?
It really was a delight, wasn't it?
Yeah.We're talking about Ronin, R-O-N-I-N.It's actually a farm and a restaurant.The restaurant's in downtown Bryan.Joining us is Brian and Amanda Light, the husband and wife owners.They have a great How They Met story.
And we love this restaurant because it's dedicated to spotlighting the wonderful seasonal produce that's grown on the farm.The menu changes regularly.We had a great meal and we were really blown away by the wine list.
The beverage program is really one of the best we've seen in a long time.And the food, it was top notch.So, you know, we love sharing stories like this.So Amanda, Brian Light, welcome to The Connected Table.
Thank you, hello.Howdy, thank you for having us.
So let's talk about how you met because it's a cute story.
Well, Brian was a chef and I was a server, front of house lady.And that's how everything started.
We were working at the same restaurant here in town.I was kind of in town for a little bit.I wouldn't really plan on staying.I was going to go head elsewhere.
Uh, and then they gave me, I was there as a cook and they gave me this chef job, like two months later, she showed up six months later.We started chatting pretty soon after that.
And then here we are 15 years later, 16 years later now, three kids, dogs, hogs, chickens, vegetables, restaurants.Yeah.
Then we met the kids.I have to say, you have some dexterity.I saw you holding a baby in one arm and working the stove in the other.And I was like, wow, we've only seen that.
We had a friend who did that with a glass of wine and a toddler that she was toilet training.And we just went, wow, how does she hold the baby in one arm and hold the glass in the other?It's amazing what parents can do.
Right.Can't hurt the baby, so I've got to hold it a little farther away.It's kind of fun to do that.
Absolutely.So give us your background.What did you eat to grow up and where'd you go to what was your education and like, did you think you're gonna end up with a restaurant.No.
Not particularly.I was born and raised in South America.My grandparents were both based in Houston.My parents went down there for the oil industry.At age three, we started coming up to Venezuela and Colombia being the two where I was raised.
At age three, we started coming up to Houston for Christmas and summer and spending those times at my grandparents' houses. Apparently at age three, my grandfather said that every family needs a chef and you're going to be him.
I have like zero recollection of that whatsoever.But my mom, she's like, you know, distinctly vivid memory of that.And here we are.
I do know that growing up, like so in South America, there was a bunch like open fire cooking where they'd have chickens on spits and South, like Argentinian style barbecues and all that kind of stuff.
I just remember seeing all the fires and the smells and You know, it's mostly men working on the fires and watching all that whole thing.
And I guess between the subliminal, every family needs a chef, and then watching those big communal meals, effectively, growing up, it took.
So then we moved to Houston when I was in high school.
Went to a couple of different colleges, wasn't sure exactly what I wanted to do, but then I ended up at U of H at the hotel shop management school, because I've been working in restaurants since my first job at age 15.
And then I haven't stopped since.It's been 30 years anyhow, just constant learning and growing.And then we added the farm to it 15 years ago when we moved here.
So they're not only just cooking of the food, but the raising of it and learning what seasons were and are and nature and how roots it can be sometimes, the farm and the farming forms of cooking.
But it also, you know, when there's a crop devastation and you lose your crops, you realize as a little farmer that, you know, I can't make this meal that I was planning on making this weekend.
But as a farmer, farmer, you're like, oh, my God, this could this could affect your entire livelihood, you know.And so so you learn how to how it all affects everybody.
And it's much more real way of doing it than just calling the produce company and getting a case of asparagus from somewhere else.There's an actual farmer who's like, oh gosh, this may be a problem.So community support.
We had that conversation when we had Lee Jones on our show with Chef's Garden up in Huron, Ohio.He said they'd gone through a number of trials and tribulations during their career with their farms.And when you have a bad year, you lose everything.
And you have to then regrow from scratch.And it takes time to do that.It's not always the next year.
Yeah, it's very hard.Curious, the farm has an interesting backstory.And let's talk about how large it is, where it is located for our listeners who are often global, who may not even know where Bryan, Texas is.So let's create some context.
And how the farm came into your hands and proprietorship.
Well, Bryan College Station is located kind of in what a lot of people term the Texas Triangle.So it's between Houston, Dallas, Austin, San Antonio.
We're kind of an hour and a half to three hours away from any one of those major metropolitan areas, which sets us up nicely being kind of a crossroads.So we do see, especially being that it is a little more
I guess, rural for lack of a better word that's a little extreme for Bryan College Station.I don't know that it's not quite rural at this point anymore.
It used to be, but it's certainly smaller than those major metropolitan areas that I just mentioned. Anyway, that's kind of the location of Bryan College Station, Texas.The farm is located about 10 to 15 minutes away from the restaurant.
So we're actually, you know, in two separate spots, the farm being So close though has been really great for like Brian brought up his truck this morning full of firewood from the farm.So we have a live fire kitchen.
So we're using wood that's collected from the property and things like that.So the proximity has been super important for the restaurant and the farm to be close to one another so they can kind of work in kind of symbiosis, if you will.
So that's kind of the location background.And then, as far as the farm itself, it was owned and operated or it was owned as a family property operated by a gentleman named Don Ganter, who owned a bar and restaurant called the Dixie Chicken.
He also owned a number of other bars and restaurants on the Northgate District, which is basically the a strip of bars directly across from the university.So people, we win a football game and everybody walks to those bars.
The chicken's been around since like the, I don't know, late?It just celebrated its 50th.Okay, they just celebrated its 50th.Yeah, 1974.
1974, yeah.dixiachicken.com.
My dad drank beer there.My brother drank beer there.
They'll have people who's like, it's like, they'll take four generations, the grandfather, the father, and then the son, everybody's, maybe not the infants, maybe not drinking beer, but like, it's been around for forever.And it's such an institution.
And then the farm, because it was this property, has all this stuff.
We always say we have a little bit of like Bryan College Station history, just because the farm was owned by him.So the guest house that is a family property that is right next door to the farm, so you can always come stay with us.
It is actually a little home that was built as a man cave for Mr. Ganter.So when we moved in all those years ago, it had pool tables and a couch and a fridge and one bathroom. That's it.
All the necessities.For your man cave.
Fun backstory, fun history to the farm.And then we sort of serendipitously fell into kind of building out the commercial kitchen out there and then catering.And then that turned into the restaurant.So it's been a 15 year adventure.
You actually started working with the farm before you started with Ronan the restaurant.But it's an interesting story in its own right.And it's a very historic building in downtown Bryan.
Why don't you tell us a little bit about how you got Ronan started?And let's talk about the wood-burning stove too, because I know that was an issue that you thought you might not get to happen.
And that would have been the deal killer for the building.So tell us all about that.
About the building itself?
And just how you got Ronan started.
Well, the building, let's do, because it's a very historic building.So how did that come about?And what was it before?It was vacant.
Yeah, it was vacant for a good long while.It was the original ice house that was built in 1912.It was apparently state of the art of Texas when it was built.
So underneath the building, fun facts. for 1912, there's a state-of-the-art, like, ice-making system that still exists.It's, like, under us, but it's been, since, you know, obviously filled with ice.
So an ice house, just to, for, again, I'm thinking about our listeners who may not know what an ice house is, because we lived in the north for a long time.I never saw an ice house up there.Did you have any ice houses up there?No.No.
I think maybe in Poughkeepsie, but we moved south and they're all over the place.
We had a box in our house.
Up north, they used to cut the ice out of the frozen lakes and use that.And down here, we had no such things.And so they would, I mean, they would quite literally make the ice here.And then the farmers would come and then grab a chunk of ice.
And off they went back to the farm.
And we're right next to the railroad.So our neighbor is the railroad track right there.You can see it out this window. They would send ice for the entire county on the railroad that's right here.
Well, so what's interesting about this is just to put some context into it.So Brian, College Station is located in Brazos County.In Texas speak, two and a half hours is a commute. Because Texas drive long.
10 miles from the restaurant to the farm is up the road.And there is a train track through the middle of town, which really underscores how important Bryant College Station is.
station was for people in terms of a transportation hub linking these major cities, thus the ice, because in the Deep South, and we experienced the Texas heat, you need ice.And this was 1912 before modern refrigeration.
So it was a very important building historically for those times.
for the community up until about 1950 when refrigeration was invented.And then all the houses all went out of business.So this became like a tractor dealership.It was a car for a while.
It's been an antique store.Yeah, it's big.
Well, it's it's a it's a beautiful building.And you folks have done a great job with the renovations to really build up the restaurant from scratch.
It's We tried to keep as much of the original materials.
You can't take 100-year-old wood and 100-year-old brick and all that kind of stuff.
What was neat is you have these levers on the ceiling that can raise the table up and down to make it a high top.That was very cool.We saw that one other place somewhere.
Yeah, it was very unique.
At the farm, all of the tables are set in a forested space, or in one of our barns in the case of rain.It's all open air and outdoor seating, but they're all communal, long tables.
It grew from one big table with 18 people, to two tables, to three tables, to now we seat up to 200 people out there. And so little by little at these very long communal tables, and that's kind of how the farm sort of started and grew.
So by the bringing the sort of long communal tables to the restaurant, we wanted to kind of emulate that.And what we found so interesting, and this is, again, think about before COVID, we people
Talk to their neighbors a little bit more and made friends with people that they may not have spoken to otherwise when we were at the farm so we wanted to again emulate that and bring that to town.
And have that be kind of the central focus of the restaurant and then have it overlooking the kind of open kitchen for the purpose of. Again, the same thing at the farm, there's only one restroom.
So folks have to come into the kitchen and kind of they get to watch Brian and the kitchen team cooking and doing all the things with the meal.So they're able to interact in that way with their
with who's preparing their food, which isn't normal I would say these days.It's more normal now than it was before.
Well right, I mean before the kitchen was like downstairs in the basement with no air.
Right, or tucked away somewhere.
We liked the open kitchen.We thought that was kind of like part of the excitement of dining there.
Yes.Yeah.I always say it's like live food TV.It's fun to watch.Yeah, it's fun to watch.
I just wanted to grab everything off the counter was the problem.
They probably would have led us to because I think I walked up to talk to Brian at the shift station a couple of times during dinner and to talk to some of the staff and whatnot.They were all like,
were inviting us over to say hello and asked us how we liked our dish and whatnot.It was really a, it was like a family affair.
And really that's what Ronan is.It's a family affair.You all work together.You had your kids in the restaurant that night.You met everybody.They were traipsing around the restaurant too.And everybody's like a big family there.They all work hard.
It's a hot kitchen, obviously, on that side of the counter.But the restaurant, the front of the house also works in the same way.Very familial.
Your kids were traipsing, but they were polite.They were behind the scenes.They're very well-mannered.I just want to say that because traipsing sounds like, you know, they're very well-mannered.Like I said, you were holding that baby.
It was really charming.So your menu changes with seasons and actually almost weekly, right?
Okay, so the entire menu doesn't change weekly.That's tough to pull out.
But something will change almost every week.One vegetable will go out of season or another one will come into season.So we'll kind of swap some things around.We'll do stuff for, you know, so a season's about three months here, give or take.
And then after three months, we kind of get bored of whatever dishes we're doing.But to try to change it all the time constantly, it gets to be a bit much.But it also very rarely will repeat something
from like last year, you know, there's a couple menu items.I mean, I hate to say, but like jalapeno poppers, right.
But they, and they're all, cause we get fresh jalapenos from the farmers and we make our cheese thing with bacon and pickled peppers and then we panko fry them and we make homemade ranch or homemade spicy mayonnaise or whatever.
But like, and I wouldn't have ever thought to put that on the menu, but three or four years ago, one of the, one of the cooks asked about it.
We had a huge influx of peppers from the farm.So I was like, what do we do with all these peppers?
So one of the guys was like, let's do poppers.I'm like, we're not doing poppers.Like, it's so like, But we did, and they sell all the time.It's crazy.I'm like, all right, well, I guess we won't, but they're like the best poppers we've ever had.
I'm like, all right, we're good.So it takes all of Brian's kind of- But other than that, it's not even my proper at this point, it's everybody else who like they've taught and learned and whatever experience they come bring with us and trained.
I let them fly with their ideas.As long as it passes a few rules and tastes good and standards and everything else there, it's, it's, there's, there's, I found there's so many more ideas out there than I can possibly have.
And so when we kind of let people run with them, again, as long as it tastes good, as long as it hits these certain parameters, like the menu, it's, it's, there's almost no into it.
You know, there's so much food out there in the world and there's so many different backgrounds and so many different people from different places and their parents and their grandparents.
And somebody knows something that their grandparents made that my grandparents never made. And so, so I guess that sounds good let's do that.And so it's kind of a constantly evolving thing.
And so there's no there's no rhyme or reason there's no plan to it's, it's just whatever the vegetables come in, come in season, those are kind of the rules the proteins, you know chicken and beef and pork and lamb they all they're always
Yeah, we always say that the protein stay really consistent the veggies and the way things are prepared or what kind of circulates through the seasons, like the seafood it's most of it's mostly from the Gulf, but we have a guy who gets up from the Gulf, but he also gets you know salmon from wherever salmon comes from scallops from from Maine and stuff like that.
So, like, again, the dishes change but I mean and some of the fish though we did salmon for, I don't know, six or eight months, and then we finally just one day got bored of salmon was like all right no more.
And then we did you know Pompano for a while, and then then he had some some flounders with the founder then went to the redfish and Pompano and it's never for a little bit. And then we were doing gulf shrimp for a long, long time.
But then he had some lobster tails.I'm like, let's try lobster tails.Why not?And they sold just as good, if not better than the shrimp.I was like, you know what, it's actually less labor on the lobster.Let's run lobster for a little while.
I like lobster.So, you know.
We miss lobster.We used to live in the north.We miss a good lobster.They're very expensive at the supermarket, just to our listeners.So it is a seasonal menu.
I mean, the menu that's up on your website right now is different from somewhat different from what we had when we were there in August.And there is a lobster tail on it's a grilled Maine lobster tail with homemade fettuccine miso herb cream.
sauce, gypsy bell peppers and Parmigiano-Reggiano, summer squash and herbs.It looks delicious.What's interesting is all of your menu items have a suggested pairing that tends to be cocktail centric.
I'm fascinated personally by the suggested pairing of a French 75, which is a very classic New Orleans cocktail with gin, Cointreau, Clamant and lemon.That's a very interesting pairing.
pairing and all of the dishes have thoughtful wine or cocktail pairings.I guess you sell a lot of cocktails because there's a fairly significant cocktail pairing here.
Oh yeah, it's crazy.So okay, so that dish right there, you said miso herb cream sauce, which in strict like culinary I don't know.Non-fusion technique would be kind of garbage.
You're not supposed to mix a cream sauce with herbs and miso and put it all together and call it a sauce.But one of the cooks tried it.It's roasted squash and roasted onions and tomatoes, put it all together, added some cream, added the miso.
And the thing is like now, like miso, it's a flavoring paste.It's not necessarily like
I mean so soup flavor, but there's a there's a funkiness there's an earthiness mommy is to it there that because we live in America and to me at this point there's no real.As long as it's again as long as he's good.
There's no real food rules because we got we got the me so paste from the grocery store we didn't go very far to get it.
But then there's also that whole dish was kind of loosely based off of like, you say a French 75, like a New Orleans style cream shrimp pasta that then just little by little evolved into the lobster tail with miso or butter cream sauce.
And it's delicious and it's kind of silly, but it worked.And I'm like, all right, put it on.And it sells all the time.And then we put lobster on it and it sold just as much, you know, so.
Well, we can see why.Now, of course you've got, there's a lot of meat in Texas and I tend to eat fish and vegetables.So it was challenged, not at your restaurant, but some others.
The Texas Wagyu, this one I love, Texas Wagyu chicken fried steak with cream gravy, mashed potatoes, sauteed summer squash.That sounds like it would be on your menu all the time with just varying vegetables.Cause that sounds like it's super popular.
It's never left.It was on there from day one.And that's cause I was, I was raised.So there's this, place called called Luby's here in Texas anyhow.It's a cafeteria kind of deal.Luby's, yeah.
Okay, when we came up from Houston that was like if I hit Luby's, Toys R Us, McDonald's, the zoo.Yeah, if I came from South America that was part of my childhood.
And so every time there I would get this the Luan platter with chicken fried steak and mashed potatoes and green beans because I couldn't get that down in South America.That wasn't really a thing.
And so as I, you know, that was one of the first things I learned how to cook when I was I don't know.
I mean, I know I was apparently supposed to be a cook from age three, but I didn't really start cooking until I got into high school and college and stuff.But that was one of the first things I learned to make was chicken fried steak.
And I was like, all right, if I ever do a restaurant, that's going to go on the menu.But it's made with wagyu and it's made with cream gravy, like actual, we'll make the gravy like a bechamel and turn it with super good cream.
And then the vegetables, they change, whatever's in season, it works. And this is Texas where people have been born and raised on chicken fry steak their entire lives.It's a meat and potatoes state.
I can't tell you how many times we've been told about how this is the best chicken fry steak I've ever had.I've been eating chicken fry steak for my entire life and it's
You know, we've been doing it for seven years and you hear a lot and it never, it never gets old.You know, I was like, all right, good.Well, at least we're still doing that right, you know?
So we've made- Well, there's a lot of chicken fried, including chicken fried chicken.I mean, there's a lot of chicken fried vegetables and it is like what you eat.
The other thing, what we know is what you eat, which was a first, a starter for us is the grilled corn.Elote, is it elote or elote?
Oh, I love it, it's so good.Yours, again, has the umami of the miso, butter, togarashi, chives, sesame seeds, and lime.I mean, it is so, it's one of our favorite dishes in tech, anywhere, and you did a great job at throwing it.
Thank you.That wasn't even my idea at all.Like we, that's here in, Texas, elotes with the Hispanic and specifically the Mexican community, it's Mexican street corn.And there's a few different ways that they cook it.
And so we've done it over the years.Some of our kitchen staff who are from the Bryan area, whose parents and grandparents were from Mexico, it's something they were born and raised on.
And they're like, hey, let's try it this way, let's try it this way.And so one of the other guys is like, hey, what if I put miso on this too?Oh my God. They worked with the pasta, why not?And sure enough, it's pretty tasty.
So that had nothing to do with me at all.That was just the cooks.But again, they kind of took the fundamentals that they've taught and learned and were trained and, hey, what if we do this instead?
It's an elevated street corn.
It is terrific.We liked it so much.The next day we had it when we went to Frida's.
We had Frida's version.We went on Elote.
It's right down the road from you guys.We had a traditional version.
It's a pairing.Again, each of your courses has this pairing.I love this one, Smoke and Spice.It's a jalapeno-infused texquila, ancho race, ancho mezcal with honeydew grapefruit sugar.Wow.I can just...
I can just, that just sounds so good with that corn. Really, wow.Now I wanna know, I ordered the vegetable.I always like to see how restaurants handle vegetarian plates, because most can't deal with it.And it's fairly slapdash.
I had an eggplant dish.It was very spiced, which is what you gotta do with eggplant.Eggplant's always a challenge for me personally, and a lot of wonderful vegetables with it.What you have here, which I'm salivating, because it's one of my favorite,
Vegetables is a roasted spice sweet potato with red beet puree cherry tomatoes sauteed summer squash roast carrots and mix.I love the mixed pickles pickles on anything just sounds great.And you pickled red onion.
So that's a really nice composition of vegetables and flavors and textures.
Good, thank you.That same dish has- Seasonality.The idea of that dish has changed over the years.That same relative dish has been on for, I would say, at least a year, if not two, but all the ingredients in it have constantly in and out, you know?
And it was kind of based on a dish that I'd had years before at a different restaurant with a sweet potato.You say sweet potato, but that sweet potato has gone, it was an eggplant when you had it, it's gone through, I mean,
pumpkin, squash, beets, regular tomatoes, green tomatoes, just, you know, but like you're saying, that big combination of variety of vegetables, plus the different, like the purees and the pickles and everything else there, try to hit all the textures, all the everything, you know.
Texture and flavor are critical with, and color. with a vegetable dish.So it's just not, I've been served vegetable dishes are all the same color, white, and that's depressing.
And going into fall where it's turnip and it's, you know, root vegetable season is rough.And, or, you know, I actually saw somebody who was a member of a CSA complained to the CSA owner that there was too many lettuces in her box.
And the poor CSA person was like, what do I say?And you're like, go shopping at a grocery store right now.
Yeah, let's talk about the beverage program because we were really impressed by the food, but for a restaurant of your size and location, you have a beverage program that is worthy of being in Chicago, New York, San Francisco.And why is that?
Because we were blown away by the care and thought of the wine list, which breaks it down every which way from new world to old world, a category to skin on contact to women owned,
And it doesn't stop there because they have a big beer list.They've got a sake list.Mead.They've got mead.Amaro, vermouth.All kinds of stuff going on.And it was really a breath of fresh air, to be honest.
And zero proof cocktails.And not just like one or two or three, but you have like five or six.I mean, the sake and mead.I mean, nobody has a sake and mead.How many sake and mead menus do you see?Pretty rare.Yeah, pretty rare.
We haven't seen any here in New Orleans, trust me.And that was impressive. How does that all come about?
Well, I'm sorry, there's not a sake or meat menu in New Orleans, really?
We haven't found one yet.There probably is.There probably is, but we're looking.We find the wine list here a little challenge, but that's all we'll say.It takes a lot of effort, maybe because of the hurricanes.
yeah that's what you've got and your beer menu and but the way you describe them also I mean you really get into it so it's texture and flavor as well as style.
The beverage list and the beverage program is, it's like my baby a little bit.It's been a slow and steady growth over the past, I mean, we've been open six and a half years.We opened in May of 2018, and we opened as just a beer and wine program.
That forced the exploration of other things outside of just, you know, your standard liquor and cocktails and all that fun stuff.But we did start significantly smaller.I think our list has... It's grown since then.
When we started, I was like, 30 wines, tops.That's all we need.We don't need any more than that.
I mean, the world of wine is just as big as the world of cooking.So I always talk about how you can learn forever with wine and with cocktails and spirits and mead and sake and all the fun things that are fermented.
So yeah, it's just been kind of a slow growth and a slow progression.And we always say that our beverage program tries to mirror the kitchen and kind of reflect the same philosophies.
So small, family-owned, woman-owned, those sorts of things are very important to us.A lot of the major producers, you don't find those here.We're trying to showcase something a little bit different, a little bit smaller scale.
There's a huge emphasis on organic, biodynamic, hand harvested.Dry farming is really important.
I really, I feel like it's a much more impactful reflection of the terroir and of the grape and of the maker and what they're trying to showcase about that wine.So the wine is like a total kind of passion project of mine.
The cocktails are just obviously super fun.And they were in addition, in July of 2020 is when we received our full liquor license.
And the cocktail program, one of the things that we really like to highlight, and I'm sure y'all saw on the shelves, there's a whole bunch of large jars, excuse me, that have varying fruits and things from what's currently in season.
So right now on the shelf, there's dewberry vodka, there's pear gin, there's peach bourbon.We have a strawberry mezcal on menu that we just strained off.There's a pineapple and mango rum.So it's just kind of a way to extend the current season.
And again, be a really fun reflection of, you know, okay, well, summer might be over, but it's still hot in Texas.So while these things aren't in season anymore, strawberries are definitely long gone.
We're still enjoying them in the form of a strawberry Mezcal drink.So that's kind of some of the background on the beverage program.
It's really terrific.I think it stands up to any top wine list and beverage program.
I think what struck me most was the diversity of what was on the list.It wasn't just France, Italy, Australia, New Zealand, America, South Africa.It's Hungary, Greece, Armenia, places like that.
You really sought out some really interesting wines from what I like to call emerging regions, even though they've been making wine for thousands of years.
And the same goes with the mead and the cider and the beer.And you also have Texas, you know, Texas has a wine and beer and distilling community as well.Just very, I was just on the beer when, you know, it's by flavor and deep and bold.
There's so much depth there.I think it's great that you have found ways to extend the season and the use of the farm to incorporate beverage.
You know, food waste is a big topic right now, and I am sure as a true farm-to-table restaurant, because you literally go to the truck to the farm and bring everything to the restaurant.It is real farm-to-table.
What are some examples of how you use less popular or parts of things that most people would toss out?
salads, pickles, jams, dressings.
And then anything that is actually waste is put into a large... It gets composted.
We fed it to the pigs for a little while.I had to get rid of the pigs a little bit too much, or at least most of them.
Most of them, but compost.So I tell people that, okay, this carrot peel, like there's only so many carrot peel vinaigrettes you can make and dry pick, you know, peel powder and everything else.
But that carrot peel or the carrot tops, we'll make chimichurri with the carrot tops for a little while, but there's so many carrot tops.And so it goes into the composting.
Sometimes if you use chickens, but like I said, this carrot top will turn into tomato next year.
And so I don't feel, when we do that, I don't feel bad about it at all because it is, it's just, you know, I see where the pile goes and we put some sawdust on top of that.
And honestly, you get away with the Texas heat, you don't have to do a whole lot of flipping to it.It turns in about a year, it's compost.And then we spread it.So that's going to go. got some garlic I'm going to plant.
I'm waiting for some rain, but as soon as it rains, I'm going to have some garlic that I've been growing for the last five years.
And that's where the compost from last year is going to go on top of come sometime in the next couple of weeks, hopefully.
But then beyond that, again, like it's as much a lot of the greens that like we did an event a few years back where a chef had a bunch of cauliflower and all the cauliflower leaves, he was just tossing in the trash can.
The same with like with the parsley stems from the Like that was one of the trash can.
And I was like, that would, the stems would definitely go into the salad dressing or they would definitely go into the minced herbs, like a little crunchier, but you cut them up.
And the leaves would, again, like go into a salad, go into some kind of sauteed green, go into a sauerkraut, go into something, you know?And again, like we're not perfect.We don't always, you know, kimchi everything, like there is waste.
And then, and again, at some point you go a little too far with all of it.So you gotta, you know, there's only balance, but we try not to waste it as little as possible.
It's a fun challenge to see what you can do, particularly when you have an abundance of say carrots, because sometimes you have a bumper crop of this or that and it's coming up with creative ways to do it.
So yours is a family business, you've got your kids, we all know what restaurant life is like.What do you enjoy doing around Brian when you do have time off?
Takes the kids to the Aggie games, we do that.That's fun.
Yeah, because Amanda's an Aggie.
My brother and sister-in-law live in town and my folks bought the place next door.It's kind of an Airbnb, but it's also like, you know, the grandparents place.They'll come and stay.
So we'll do family dinner, like most every Sunday, either our house or the guest house or my brother's house.And then,
you know it's just the girls are in school so they've got all the activities and you know that all that's kind of getting started um so we we stay pretty busy with with their extracurriculars um and just yeah i guess spending time with family and cooking at home yeah just normal normal family stuff there and we try to like as if then you know one's 13 one is eight or nine and one's
but an infant.And so whatever it is those kids are wanting to do is kind of where we're going with them, as long as we can, because the restaurant and everything else.
There's some fun things to do in Bryan.We went to the George Herbert Walker Bush Library and Museum, which was big and exciting.And they had the train and the helicopter, and it was really cool.We didn't get to go to the zoo.
We'd had some Mexican food, because everybody pointed us to a Mexican restaurant.There's a lot to do. It really is.
It is more to do than you would think.The thing is, so, you know, so Houston is this big, right?And Bryant College Station is this big.But so you take 20 Bryant College Stations and you get Houston.
But what I found, it's like the Goldilocks where it's not too big and it's not too small.And there's enough stuff to do to to raise a family here and to have plenty to do.But there's no National History Museum here.So you go to Houston for that.
Or there's something you want to go to Austin for.But we're close enough that we can go back and forth, if need be.But in town, again, there's plenty of little stuff to do.
Even just downtown Bryan, on the first Fridays, it's kind of a nice little small quaint downtown with a bunch of little stuff to do, people selling handmade spoons and stuff like that.
But we did that.We had dinner at Ronan on a Friday and then walked around downtown Bryan and took in a live concert performance of some musicians.And it was very family friendly.
What we heard over and over again by whether it's the Uber driver or people we chatted up when we walked into breweries or wherever we went is it's very family friendly.It's a it's an easy place to live.
I think that was these days a lot of people want easy places to live.So I think I think that's really important.What do you have coming up on the farm?What are some of your farm dinner highlights? before we wrap?
We have, I'll pull the calendar just to make sure that I've got the right dates for you.
Or just in general, just in general.This is an evergreen podcast.
Yeah, so the farm, we do our best to host the nine course full moon dinners.Oh, that's lovely.As close to the full moon as possible.It gives people a really nice opportunity to
connect with food in a way that you're not able to in the traditional sense.So there's a farm tour where we kind of show everything, all the gardens and animals and whatnot, and then
folks sit for dinner for eight of the courses in the forest, weather permitting, and then we stand everybody up and go to the garden for dessert.So we do those.We host private events out at the farm, but not as frequently as we used to.
Coming up in November on the 23rd, we have a full moon dinner and then on December 21st, and then we haven't announced Our spring schedule yet, but we will hear shortly.
Well, for everyone listening.It's it's Ronan tx.com backslash farm for the farm.And then there's the restaurant.There's a lot going on.And we really enjoyed learning about Bryan, dining at Ronan, meeting you guys.
We just love the whole vibe of the place.And you've gotten a lot of recognition nationally in magazines.I think you'll get more.I think that wine list could really get some serious recognition.
Well, they've already been featured in the Wine Spectator.
Okay, I was gonna say, have you been featured in the Wine Spectator?Because you should.Really great stuff.And we're so glad you took the time to join us at our table, the Connected Table, today. Well, thank you again for having us.
It was great talking to y'all.
Absolutely.So we've been talking again with Brian and Amanda Light, owners of Ronan Farm and Restaurant in Bryan, Texas.You've been listening to The Connected Table with Melanie Young and David Ransom.We had such a fun time when we went to Bryan.
We can't wait to hit the road again.But meanwhile, we love New Orleans and we encourage all of you to visit.And we always like to end our show with the words, stay and say, she'll be curious.Thank you.
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