LI Farm Chef Reflects On Netflix's 'Blue Ribbon Baking Championship'

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“A couple of years back, we found that there was a disconnect. People didn’t know how to use fresh produce — or where their food actually came from,” he said. He began posting “Meal Reels” on the farm’s Instagram page, sharing recipes for fresh focaccia bread or eggplant Caponata. And, Kaiser, said, he shared a reel about his famous “Concord Gape Pie,” mentioning that the mouthwatering favorite had won a blue ribbon at the Riverhead Country Fair.

Not long after, Kaiser received a message from a talent scout for a production company, searching for talented bakers to star in a show on a major network. When asked where he’d attended culinary school, Kaiser said he hadn’t.

“I worked in a restaurant many years ago, and I just developed all of this baking here, to sustain the farm,” he said.

Later that day, Kaiser was told he had a Zoom call with the executive producer of the show — and the process begain to see if he would make the final cut.

Months later, Kaiser hadn’t heard anything, and was home one night with his wife when his phone rang at 7 p.m. A Netflix staffer told him, ” Larry, I just want to let you know you’ve been chosen to be one of the 10. I was just euphoric. It brought tears to my wife’s eyes and mine. It was like, ‘Oh, my God, this is a reality. This is actually going to happen.'”

Kaiser described what it felt like to compete.

“The first day we were put through a ‘Baking Boot Camp,'” he said. “That entailed a a space with identical stations and equipment as what was on the set, and a culinary director who stood in front of us and said, ‘Okay, cast, we have 16 recipes to get through today and I’m going to teach you all how to competitively bake.'”

Participants were tasked with creating their winning bakes in a shorter amount of time than they’d normally used, with everything created from scratch, a testament to the “integrity of the show,” Kaiser said.

For his first entry, Kaiser said contestants were told they had to reinvent a fair treat on a stick.

“It had to be extremely unique, something that’s relevant to you. Everything had to have a back story. I thought, what can I do with something we’re known for — something with North Fork potatoes? So I did some research and I did some research and development in the kitchen and I came up with this potato candy. It’s along the lines of a Mounds bar and it has to stay on a stick — but goes back to our farming roots.”

Not only was his father-in-law Harold Feinberg a potato farmer, his wife and he are now farming themselves, their roots deeply entrenched in the rich soil where their legacy lies, Kaiser said. “I like to incorporate something from what I do, into what I make,” he said. “I also like to think outside the box — and I wanted to impress. Little did I realize what I had created was deemed phenomenal by the judges.”

After the judges tasted Kaiser’s North Fork Potato Candy, he won the judges’ choice blue ribbon.

When asked how he felt when bestowed with that honor, Kaiser smiled. “I thought I was going to break down in tears, to be honest. But a 60-year old man blubbering on TV is not a pretty sight.”

Speaking of the judges, Kaiser said Yosses was a “phenomental person, Bryan was wonderful, Jason was funny, and Sandra was very professional and very swet — a true celebrity.”

Kaiser said at one point, off camera, Lee looked at him, creating a fair treat out of potatoes, and said, “Are you really sure about this?”

He responded, “I’ve got this,” he said.

When the judges saw the finished creation, he said he was told, “This presents very well.”

And then, he said, they took a bite. “I think they were floored,” he said. “Their reaction was true, it wasn’t staged. Bryan said, ‘This is unbelievable.'”.

Also in the second half of the first episode, contestants were asked to reinvent their blue ribbon-winning entries for the second bake.

“I turned Concord grape pie into a Concord grape layer cake,” Kaiser said.

But, challenges arose: Normally, he said, when he makes the pie for the farm, Kaiser uses pulp that’s been shipped after the juice has been processed; he reconstitutes the pulp into a pie filling. On the show, he was presented with a case of Concord grapes. “I had to process them myself to make the filling, so it was really arduous to get that bake done.”

Using different brands of ingredients can make for a “nerve-wracking” bake experience, Kaiser said.

In the end, Kaiser’s cake came in last for that round, and he was the first in the competition to be sent home.

When asked what he believes happened in the baking process, he said: “I think a lot of it came down to flavor combinations. Not everyone has the same palate. It’s not as though I made a terrible cake, but they have to pick a least favorite.”

His vision, he said, involved reflecting the flavor profile of the Concord grape pie, so he went with a brown butter sponge, which has a nuttier, earthy flavor. “It’s not a light sponge, it’s a denser sponge,” he said. “I don’t think it really shone as much as it could have, and it certainly didn’t shine bright enough among some of the other entries.”

His time with the show, he said, had come to an end.

“The biggest thing is, you have to have thick skin,” Kaiser said. He admitted that when he was eliminated, “I consider myself a pretty tough guy with thick skin, but it stung.”

Kaiser, however, remains overjoyed by the entire experience. Pragmatic, he said, “I kind of broke my own strategy. I didn’t want to come out on the top or the bottom — I just wanted to be in the middle and move along slowly.”

Reflecting on the outcome, Kaiser said: “We accept things for what they are. I bounded back. I’m so thankful for the opportunity.”

The memories he made, Kaiser said, are forever. “The cast that I competed against — they were amazing bakers and great people.” Now that the show has aired, all are free to communicate, and plans are in place to see one another again.

When he returned home to his family and friends, Kaiser and his wife held a watch party for the night the series aired at the Twin Fork Beer Co. in Riverhead; Kaiser made miniature North Fork Potato candies and a Concord grape sheet cake, so all could have a taste of his entries.

Most of all, appearing on the show gave Kaiser a newfound sense of confidence, accomplishment and can-do spirit. He’s energized, brimming with plans for the future and ideas on how to reach out and educate people about the food they eat and the abundance of healthy natural fare on the North Fork.

To that end, Kaiser has begun hosting cooking classes and both lunches and dinners at the farm.

On Sunday, he and his dear friend, Executive Chef Nicholas Poulmentis of Noema in Huntington — Poulmentis, The Food Network’s “Chopped” two-time champion, was a guest chef at the White House, and has appeared on “Beat Bobby Flay”, “Chopped Throw Down”, “Kitchen Crush”, “Alex vs. America,” “Chopped Cannons” and more — teamed up for a Mediterranean barbecue at the 1760 Homestead Farm.

Under the soft summer sky, guests were greeted by the scent of tantalizing sizzling meat, both Greek and Italian specialties, music, traditional Greek and multi-cultural dance by Get Empowered artists, fine wine, and the friendship, family and lifetime bonds found in a place where community means everything.

His goal, Kaiser said, is to take the farm and expand the vision so that people can come to learn, to taste, to savor the foods and understand where they come from.

Of the dinner, he said. “We wanted to showcase what we do at the farm,” he said. He met Poulmentis, he said, during the pandemic, when Poulmentis was looking for a farm where he could cook and shoot photography for his new cookbook.
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“I think within the first minutes we realized we were brothers from another mother,” Kaiser said. “We hit it off. It was wonderful, and we’ve always kept in touch. So right after pandemic, he told me, ‘Larry, you have some skills, and you should push yourself.'”

He continued: “I said, ‘Nick, I haven’t been in a kitchen in thirtysomething years.’ He told me, ‘You have talent, you need to push the envelope.’ He encouraged me.”

The two first collaborated with a small dinner party where they grilled over an open fire .”Then we sat down to a family style meal and he said, ‘This is what you can do here. You can teach people about food.’ He’s always been my encouragement, my Jiminy Cricket, whispering in my ear, ‘Push, push, push,'” he said.

Poulmentis, he said, urged him forward on his Netflix journey and told him about his own experience on television. “The first time I competed, I lost miserably,'” Poulmentis told him. “‘You pick yourself back up, and you put yourself bcak out there. You’ve got nothing to lose — try, try, try,'” Kaiser said. “Now, he’s so proud of me and so proud of what we do at the farm.”

That’s how the idea for Sunday’s dinner was born, Kaiser said. “It was a collaboration, a celebration of where we met at farm. We said, ‘Let’s go back to our heritage.’ He’s Greek , I’m Sicilian.”

Guests were greeted by tables laden with aromatic fresh French and focaccia breads, eggplant Carponata, tomato bruschetta, charcuterie and more. Then, came Kaiser’s recipe for baked clams, first made by this Great-Aunt Florence in the 50s.

There were grilled-to-perfection chicken kabobs — a signature dish at Noema — spinach pie, pork souvlaki skewers, grilled octopus, Greek Dakos salad, braciole, Calabrian-style pork spare ribs, honey cake, and squash, filled with Italian cheese cake, topped with strawberry foam and oranze zest.

And, of course, there was the coveted North Fork Potato Candy.

It was a veritable feast for the senses and soul — as appetites were sated, friendships were made and strengthened, and the time-honored farm evolved into its next chapter, the future unfolding.

The plan is to host similar dinners in the months and years ahead, with a rotation of guest chefs, Kaiser said.

At the dinner, guests shared a similar sentiment, expressing their wish that Kaiser had moved forward with the show.

But all were dedicated fans of the farm — sharing stories of beekeeping, cooking classes, and the memories they’d made there.

“He opened his heart, his home, his family and his kitchen to me,” Poulmentis said. “He’s a true farm-to-table farmer — what you are eating is straight from the farm.”

Of the Netflix competition, Poulmentis said: “I’m very proud of him, he deserves these congratulations. He doesnt’ have the background —he did it by himself — and trust me, it’s very difficult to walk the road of television, the competition.”

He added: “We have a big friendship, and I consider him my family friend. I truly feel blessed that you are here today supporting this farm because for me, it is the best. Not only because of what they are trying to do —Larry and Maragaret and their son are an amazing amazing family and working very hard to preserve, in these difficult days, these ingredients — this farm.”

Kaiser and his wife first bought the farm in 2013. Margaret’s father was a potato farmer in Bridgehampton who “developed part of his farming business into a produce brokerage. He would sell produce and seed from Maine to Florida. He had a North Fork packing shed on Sound Avenue andand he kept steer at Wolf Pit in Mattituck,” Kaiser said.

But, after his father-in-law Feinberg died in the 80s, the farming operation closed.

Kaiser, originally from Sound Beach, met Margaret, from Jamesport, when he was working in the kitchen of a Rocky Point restaurant and she was the dining room manager.

“We became friends,” he said. The owner of the restaurant also owned the original Seafood Barge in Southold and needed a line cook on Saturday nights.” Kaiser, realizing the commute was about an hour, asked Margaret if he could crash at her house after his shift.

She agreed, and what began as a friendship — filled with movies, the beach, dinners — soon blossomed into romance; the couple soon married.

Like most couples, they didn’t have a lot of money; Margaret’s brother gifted them the use of the clubhouse at what is now the North Fork Preserve County Park, for their reception.

The couple had a landscaping business and originally bought the farm in 2013 to expand that business with greenhouses and a nursery, Kaiser said. Ironically, he said, “we wound up in the spot where we got married; the preserve used to be part of the farm.”

Just as plants sprouted from the rich soil, so, too, new dreams were born.

“We bought the farm, not with the intention of farming,” Kaiser said. “But there’s something about this place, an aura, that things occur, evolve, organically.”

What began slowly, with the thought of cultivating a small piece of ground to grow basil, suddenly flourished.

“It became, ‘Let’s eat off this land.’ We had plenty of land to grow for ourselves — and then it became the homesteading model, where you grow food for yourself and you barter, trade, and exchange the surplus.”

Eventually, a beekeeper was hired, and Kaiser kept planting.

“It’s just evolving,” he said. He began baking the signature pies, always a popular favorite.

Kaiser said he grows eggplants, peppers, tomatoes, kale, herbs, basil, rosemary, tarragon, oregano, sage and so much more.

“Not only do I offer the ingredients but I’ll take those things, the tomatoes and basil, and I make our own marinara,” he said. “We do a lot of value added — take the surplus and convert it into a value-added product.”

Kaiser said, while everyone now calls him “Chef,” instead, he has a different name in mind.

“I call myself a farm chef,” he said. “The biggest difference is a restaurant chef will have an idea for a special, go to market, and look for the ingredients he needs. A farm chef looks at 500 lbs. of tomatoes and says, ‘What am I going to do with all of this so it doesn’t spoil?'”

It’s important to Kaiser to also encourage other small farmers; his barn is set up with produce and products from others on the North Fork. His intention is to give them a presence even if they don’t have a brick and mortar shop.

He and his wife, Kaiser said, have a unique relationship. “Most people cannot work with their spouse. We live together, work together, play together — it’s the whole nine yards. She’s very, very supportive and I couldn’t do any of this without her support.”

Their shared goal, he said, is to create, with the farm, “a sustainable entity. I want to teach people where their food comes from,” he said.

He wants to speak on issues on issues such as food security, offer cooking lessons, and chef experiences.

Some people ask him to recreate a dish they’ve tasted at a restaurant; others want to bring their children to pick tomatoes and teach them where their food grows.

“It’s not just a farm, it’s a culinary farm,” Kaiser said.

Not only can guests find the ingredients and learn how to make a sauce, they can also buy a jar of sauce, made on the farm, and enjoy that, he said.

Despite his newfound fame, Kaiser is still up before dawn, prepping and baking, then picking and watering, keeping the stand stocked.

No matter how busy his days, when asked if he’d like to become involved in another food competition, Kaiser answered, without hesitation: “100 percent.”

Speaking about her husband’s success, Margaret said: “I think it’s wonderful, to be chosen, one out of 10 in the entire nation. That, in itself, is amazing.”

She added that she’s happy that her son, too, shares in the farm’s legacy and said, if her father could see what her family has accomplished, “I think he would be really proud.”

Kaiser said nothing would be possible, without his wife’s love and encouragement. “Beside every man is a better woman,” he said.

Looking ahead, Kaiser said about a year or two ago, he and his wife were walking the farm, discussing the future while poised at a crossroads. Possiblities ignited like so many fireflies in the night sky — a cookbook, possibly a show based at the farm.

“I said to her, ‘Are you willing to take the ride?'” Kaiser said. “She told me, ‘I’m right alongside you.'”

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