Today we’d like to introduce you to Graham Boswell.
So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
When I was a teenager, I thought that by the age of 26 I’d be a successful cellist, touring and performing with a string quartet and teaching at music festivals. But after graduating with a cello performance degree from BU’s music school, I was completely burned out despite being admitted to a handful of graduate programs. The slightly longer explanation is that I had unrealistic expectations for my own playing, and never lived up to what I saw for myself. Music was the center of my life at that time, so that was a really tough place to be.
So after graduation I continued to study and play on my own for a year, but also started working at Veggie Galaxy, a vegetarian diner in Cambridge. Growing up my mom taught me how to cook, and I’ve loved cooking ever since. I had a blast at Veggie Galaxy, and got an excellent foundational understanding of restaurant cooking.
Eventually I stopped playing cello all together in favor of working full time at the diner, helping manage the kitchen, working on specials, and contributing my recipes to the permanent menu. But a year and a half in, it was clear that I needed a new challenge. I realized the world of food is so much bigger than vegan comfort food.
A great vegan chef — Stuart Reiter of True Bistro — suggested that the best training would come from a conventional (i.e. non-vegan) restaurant cooking experience. So I set out to find a top Boston restaurant that would hire a strict vegan line cook… which ended up being as hard as it sounds. I interviewed and staged at five of Boston’s best restaurants, none of which would entertain the idea of hiring a cook who couldn’t taste the food he was cooking, and I absolutely couldn’t blame them.
I was fortunate to get connected with Keith Schubert, the owner of Taco Party (a popular vegan taco shop and truck in Somerville). His baker had just left and I had some baking chops, so he let me be the one-man-baking-show at his shop.
I started baking at Taco Party in February of 2016. In May an opportunity came up to be a grade manager cook at Oleana, where I had staged a few months prior. I worked in both restaurants for about 18 months, keeping one foot in the vegan food scene while also stepping into the broader world of food.
I’ve learned so much about food at Oleana. Ana Sortun’s cuisine is so incredibly inspiring. I was finally around fellow cooks who really cared about the quality of what we were serving and have a passion for food… I’ve learned as much from my peers as I have from my bosses.
That said, it took me a good long time to feel like I fit in at Oleana. I came in with an incredible inferiority complex. Could a vegan really cook non-vegan food? I wouldn’t have hired me!
I eventually trained on the grill station. It’s pretty insane that I cook large cuts of meat at one of Boston’s top restaurants but haven’t eaten meat in 12 years. I’m grateful to my bosses for giving me the opportunity to learn something completely outside of my comfort zone, and having the patience to train me from scratch.
Unsurprisingly there’s some serious cognitive dissonance for me as someone who doesn’t think it’s ethical to eat animal products and yet cooks them for people at my job. I don’t feel good about it and I can’t really justify it. It’s complicated, so I try to focus on the positive. With Littleburg I’m now able to apply all the amazing food knowledge I’ve gained at Oleana to my own cooking, and make people food that is consistent with my values. That feels amazing.
Littleburg is a pop-up restaurant I started in November of 2017 specializing in vegetable-centric scratch cooking. I bring in the techniques, flavors, and spices of the Mediterranean — the stuff I learned at Oleana — and apply that to the best seasonal produce. The center of the menu is my veggie burger, and we also do different vegetable mezze dishes at every event. It’s vegan food that my girlfriend’s Greek dad would like.
We have standing monthly pop-ups at Lamplighter, Winter Hill, and Nightshift breweries, a weekly presence at the Kendall Square Farmers’ Market, and other special events in the Boston area. We’ve grown month by month from doing 1-2 events per month, to now 1-2 events per week. The business is still under a year old and has so much potential. I’m still astonished when people show up to buy my food. It doesn’t feel real.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
My second month in business I lost $1000. It was such a shock. I’ve almost never had a paycheck with four digits. Sales were terrible that month, and I didn’t know how I had spent so much money.
Then I realized that a lot of that money was invested in the future of the business. I had purchased some small equipment, paid for the next year of my health permit, the next month of business insurance, stuff like that. Yeah, sales had sucked that month, but I was in a good position for the next month.
People have responded enthusiastically to Littleburg, but not every pop-up is a commercial success. Every time something goes poorly I think, “Does this make me not want to do it again next month?” The answer is always “no” and it will probably stay that way, at least until I can’t pay my rent!
We’d love to hear more about your business.
Most vegetarian restaurants feature veganized versions of familiar food. Littleburg is my take on what vegan food would be if it wasn’t imitating non-vegan food. That’s where the vegetables come in. Is the veggie burger inconsistent with this concept? Maybe, but I’m not really trying to imitate meat with it. I’m just trying to make the best veggie burger possible, which I believe is one of the few foods that is authentic to vegetarian food culture (if vegetarianism was a country, the veggie burger would be the national dish).
What were you like growing up?
I had a different fascination every month as a kid. One week I was obsessed with ancient Egypt, one week with skateboarding, one week with making weird art projects in my dad’s woodshop. I built two computers in middle school. I spent a ton of time with classical music as a high school student.
My family was always super food-centric. My mom cooked dinner for the family most nights after a long workday as a doctor. Going vegan at 14 forced me to start cooking more for myself. I had loved meat and heavy dairy-rich foods, and it was a challenge to figure out how to get sated. I ate a lot of over seasoned tofu preparations and my bodyweight in vegan mayo (not sorry), and it took years for meat and dairy to lose its appeal.
The other major story of my childhood was a sense of never fitting in. Like so many cooks’ sob stories, it wasn’t until I got into the kitchen that I felt at home with other misfits.
Contact Info:
- Email: littleburgveg@gmail.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/littleburg_
- Facebook: fb.com/littleburgveg
Image Credit:
Photos by Littleburg and McCall Bliss
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