An Extraordinary Chef’s Life

Joseph Wrede’s Ardent Culinary Artistry
Spans Nearly Three Decades

By Lynn Cline ∙ Photos by Douglas Merriam

The best steak I ever had was at Joseph Wrede’s celebrated first restaurant, Joseph’s Table in Taos. The pepper-crusted organic beef tenderloin—seared so perfectly I could cut it using just my fork, and served with a rich Madeira mushroom sauce—is etched in my memory, though I have long forgotten exactly when I savored it.

That’s the thing about Wrede’s sublime food. It’s so good, it can make you forget about time. I’m not alone in my enthusiasm. After opening Joseph’s Table in 1995 at age twenty-nine, Wrede was named one of ten Best New Chefs in the country in 2000 by Food & Wine magazine, which praised his use of local, organic foods in “surprising, sensual ways.” The London Times called him “the future voice of modern American cuisine.”

Fifteen years and one James Beard nomination later, in the wake of a recession, Wrede closed Joseph’s Table, only to reinvent it as Joseph’s Culinary Pub (originally called Joseph’s of Santa Fe) in 2013. In the decade since, the warm, welcoming restaurant has drawn locals and food lovers from around the world with extraordinary fare such as Wrede’s signature Duck Fat French Fries and Rabbit Bolognese Lasagna, a unique and delectable combination of house-made pasta and a slow-simmered (and not the least gamy) bolognese dressed up with ricotta and Parmigiano Reggiano. He’s also known for creating inventive veg-forward dishes such as his Vegetable Enchilada, lovingly layered with local mushrooms, acorn squash, corn, red chile, and other hearty ingredients. Regulars have long known to leave room for Cloud Cake, a heavenly slice of towering Italian meringue cake topped with fragrant tarragon leaves and plated with a caramel sauce and refreshing grapefruit supremes. Pleasure at Joseph’s Culinary Pub extends well beyond the plate, encompassing impeccable yet easygoing service and a laid-back yet refined atmosphere.

“I want energy, I want people to come as they are, and I want the food to be exciting and the service to be friendly, from the heart,” Wrede tells me as we sit in the artful dining room of his revered, rustic restaurant, while around us, his team begins to set the scene for that night’s dinner service.

Exciting food energized Wrede’s life right from the start, thanks to the passion his parents shared for cooking and entertaining while he was growing up in Cincinnati in the 1970s. “Cooking was definitely an activity in my early years in Cincinnati, before my parents got divorced when I was eight,” Wrede recalls. “They were young, in their thirties, and they were artists, working and designing. They were reading French and Italian cookbooks and eating, drinking, and having parties.” They would make cassoulet, lobsters, artichokes, and other gourmet fare of the era to serve to their lively circle of artist friends.

Many of the copper pots and pans hanging on a dining room wall in Joseph’s Culinary Pub belonged to Wrede’s parents, a tribute to their influence and perhaps a reminder of their vibrant dinner parties, which vividly impressed the young chef. “I loved the world, I loved the noise, the sound of people laughing and gathering,” he says. “How fun it was. It seemed to me like the best place to be was the cook in the kitchen.”

When it came to working in the kitchen, however, Wrede’s first professional restaurant job was as a dishwasher, at age twelve, at the Cincinnati landmark The Blind Lemon. “The daytime shift was serious, but during the nighttime shift, you could hear people laughing and the din of the nightlife,” he says. “There was music on the patio, and it was a Midwestern city so there were bars on every corner.”

Boarding school and college followed, but what captured his heart remained true. After graduating from Regis College (now Regis University) in Denver, Wrede became a line cook at restaurants in the city, including the now-defunct Highland’s Garden Cafe, which served New American cuisine. “I really fell in love with line cooking because I had no resistance to high adrenaline and doing multiple things at once,” he explains. “I fell in love with absolutes, like temperatures are correct or not, and things emulsify or not. Putting together a plate fed the artistic side. Then the physical side was so cerebral. There’s no middle ground. That’s what happened to me with cooking.”

To augment his professional experience, Wrede enrolled in the prestigious Institute of Culinary Education in New York. “I went to trade school because I realized that although I was cooking, I didn’t understand the techniques, like how to make a beurre blanc, and what an emulsifier is,” he says. “And then upon graduation, I was determined that I was ready to be a chef. I moved back to Denver and started working at Aubergine [Cafe], a really cool restaurant. I was starting to not get along with the chefs that I was working with. I was starting to understand the techniques but had no interest in the dishes they were doing. I wanted to do my own.”

When Wrede told his mother about his desire to open a restaurant, she mentioned that a Cincinnati restaurateur friend owned a mercantile building for lease in Taos, in remote northern New Mexico. Intrigued, Wrede went to see it and while there, he picked up a newspaper and saw that a Chinese restaurant was for sale on the outskirts of town for $20,000. “I offered the owner $10,000, went back to Denver, sold my car, and bought the Ming Dynasty,” he says.

Over the years, Wrede has juggled the ongoing demands of running a great restaurant with raising his two children, who are now adults. There is a way, he confides, to make it all work. “If you want to go the distance and make this into a career, then you have to find another hobby and most likely it has to be stimulating, either music, or skiing, exercise, or running.” He starts his day with a long run in the mountains. “Your heartbeat gets cranking, you push yourself to go higher. It’s like being a line cook.”

Despite the cash flow problems and other daily stressors that come with the job, there’s a reward that makes everything worth it. “Once you interface with the people, that’s where you get back the energy,” he says. “You get it back interfacing with the customers and with your team members and by being honest with everyone that you’re working with. Sitting in my backyard for five months during the pandemic made me really appreciate what we’re doing and how special everyone is. I’m probably in the fourth quartet of my professional life and I’m appreciating it. I’m not ready to stop.”

428 Agua Fria, Santa Fe, 505-982-1272, josephsculinarypub.com