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Paul Wolf:
I'm going to do something very unfair to you today. I'm going to get you craving a restaurant that you can't have right now, because they're closed for their Independence Day break. Hey, it's Paul Wolf with a front row seat to conversations on culture from Jackson, Mississippi. We call this podcast Soul Sessions. It's the people, places, and events that make the City With Soul shine. Today, I'm talking with Chef Chaz Lindsay and General Manager Jonathan Webb of Pulito Osteria at the Belhaven Town Center who informed me you'd be out of luck getting a spot there tonight anyway.

Chaz Lindsay:
I don't think you could get a Friday reservation on a whim unless you wanted to come at nine o'clock.

Paul Wolf:
Oh, it's like that, huh?

Jonathan Webb:
Yeah. People have been booking out about two weeks in advance, so we've been very fortunate, very lucky. We definitely do support and suggest reservations. We try to keep a little bit of room in the bar for walk-ins and then on the patio.

Paul Wolf:
Yeah, because you've got that new patio menu, right?

Jonathan Webb:
Yeah. So, we're doing a patio menu. It's kind of a serve yourself sort of thing. So, use the phone, mobile, order, and pay through Toast. And full bar menu is available. And then we've got just a limited selection of a couple pizzas and a couple appetizers. We'll bring them out to you, water, and all that kind of stuff. Just a little bit more casual.

Paul Wolf:
So, take me back for just a second, Chaz, I remember taking pictures of you for a feature for Find It in Fondren Magazine when you had Belhaven Pasta Company. You've moved off, you've had experiences, decided to come back to your hometown in Jackson, and where did the idea for Pulito begin?

Chaz Lindsay:
I kind of knew coming back to Jackson that I didn't want to work for anybody here again. So, I needed to figure out my own thing. Not that there's not good people to work for here in Jackson, it's just I'm in my early thirties now and then I'm ready to start my own thing and create my own path. And I figured after being gone for almost four years, it was time to come back fresh and show people something new. And what I've learned on new journeys and everything. The whole thing that really kick started Pulito is that I was looking at buying a pre-existing restaurant in Jackson. And that deal fell through. And it fell through for the best, honestly, because I wouldn't end up with Pulito if that had gone through. That fell through and I decided, I was like, "Okay, I've got to do my own thing now, and what do I like about Mississippi? What do I have for my experience?"

Pasta... Belhaven Pasta Company, people know me for that. And then also seasonal cuisine. And there's anybody who's really got a format of, "Okay, we buy this nice ingredient and we treat it well," and that's it. And doing a la carte large format, shareable sides, shareable proteins, which is what I learned at Craft in New York, working for Tom Colicchio, and fell in love with that style of cooking. And so, I was like, "Okay, well how do we bring that to Jackson? How do we do that, but incorporate my experience in New York, and Italy, and seasonal cuisine?" Because, Mississippi has a really long growing season. So trying to figure everything out, and that was the idea for Pulito. I knew it had to have pasta, and then expanding on that and making it a little bit more accessible so we didn't just pigeonhole ourself into this pasta, red sauce joints, spaghetti and meatball, making it a little bit different and a little more unique.

Jonathan Webb:
He's very intentional about the location of Pulito, finding out that there was going to be some space available in Belhaven. It's in the town center. We're putting a lot of faith into this thing, taking off and being huge, which it absolutely has. It's blown everyone away. Chaz was born and raised in Belhaven. It's a connection back to his roots and mine. I've been in the neighborhood 18 years, more or less, ever since I moved to Jackson when I came to Millsaps when I was 18. So, that part's really important is the location and being in the neighborhood and being in Belhaven.

Paul Wolf:
And Webb, I remember you from those Sal And Mookie's days when you were my favorite server there, but some other people might know you from Fine and Dandy, Sophomore Spanish Club, even Hal and Mal's. You and Chaz met somewhere along the way, and he as chef and partner, and you as general manager and partner, come together to put Pulito on the map. How did all of that happen?

Jonathan Webb:
We met back in 2017, back opening Estelle at the Westin. Chaz was sous and then I was managing the bar. We kind of kicked it off there, had very similar thoughts, and opinions, and approaches to the service industry, and kind of saw eye to eye on a lot of different things. At that point, I could tell Chaz definitely wanted to go places in the service industry world. I had my first kid, and was trying to figure out what the next five, 10 years was going to look like, and had always been in the service industry, but wasn't sure if it was going to be the rest of my life.

And I knew Chaz would go off open his own restaurant. We've kept up forever. He moved to El Paso for a few years and we still kept up. And I kind of just went about my own thing. And then he called me up, and for the past about year or so is really been excited about this and warmed me down. But, it was pretty obvious to me that I needed to come back to the restaurant industry. This is where I get a lot of enjoyment. It's where my talents lie, and it's going to be a real easy job standing behind Chaz's food, because I was convinced from the first time I met him that selling his food and what he's doing in the kitchen is pretty easy.

Paul Wolf:
That's the thing Webb, the two of you have to believe in each other for this to really work, right?

Jonathan Webb:
Right. Sure. And something I've told a lot of people is that fortunately the easiest part of our job is really when service starts.

Chaz Lindsay:
Yeah.

Jonathan Webb:
To be quite frank, the hours of five to nine o'clock are just... I love service, I love people being in the restaurant, love drinks being made behind the bar.

Chaz Lindsay:
And another thing for me that I just forgot how good Webb was behind the bar.

Jonathan Webb:
Yeah.

Chaz Lindsay:
I knew it was good. I really just wanted him on as a partner/manager, because I needed someone to keep me levelheaded, and he's a very calming force at times. And I was worried about wines and stuff, but our wine program is limited and direct, but everybody can choose from something. But, the amount of cocktails that we sell is ridiculous. And people love them. Dude, that freaking espresso martini, we should not sell that many of those things. And we could just put them in buckets on tables and people would drink all of them. It's crazy.

Jonathan Webb:
Yeah. The espresso martini, and then a drink called the Hugo 75. It's just like a Saint Germain and mint Spritz. People are just gulping them down. And we sell a lot of wine, too. Lots of Italian wine. There's really good affordable choices. So, it's all meshing together really well with the food and service.

Paul Wolf:
Yeah, I like that word "Mesh." You guys have really become emeshed in the community itself. You've just been open now for what, six months or so, and it's like the restaurant has been there forever and it's everyone's favorite restaurant, seemingly so, because the crowds are always there. You mentioned earlier the reservations, they're hard to get on a weekend. Why Chaz does Pulito work so well?

Chaz Lindsay:
Oh God, I don't know. I'm scared to think about it. I think our first week Webb and I sat down afterwards and we looked at each other and we were like, "Why did this work?" This is my fifth or sixth restaurant opening since I've been cooking, and I've never had one go off as well as this. Just everything seemingly once again just meshed really, really well together. It's a lot of things. I think first of all, what we're doing is, it's not drastically different, but it's different enough for Jackson, for people to be interested. And we retain their interest because we do new menus at least weekly, print new menus all the time, constantly getting new products in. We keep a couple of staples. But, last week we had a couple who came in on Friday night, and then on Saturday night we printed a new menu and they commented on how the menu is different.

It started with the concept. Then we brought on Mary Sanders Ferris, who did an absolutely outstanding job designing the restaurant. It's a feel good space. And the one comment that we constantly get is it feels like it's been here for 50, 60 years, it's not just like a new restaurant. Webb and I teaming up together has just been great, because we understand each other very well, and we feed off each other. We definitely have different thoughts on how to handle certain situations, but at the end, we're able to come together and find the best solution. So, I think, that definitely works out. I just think the fact that it's a fresh concept, but one that still feels familiar to people is why we've been successful so far. And so, now it's really just in our court for us to maintain and keep it going. We want Pulito to be here for a very long time.

Paul Wolf:
That's Chef Chaz Lindsay and Jonathan Webb of Pulito Osteria here in Jackson. They're open Tuesday through Saturday, dinner only. And they'll be back in action on Tuesday, July 11. We'll put their menus in our show notes.

Soul Sessions is produced by Visit Jackson, the destination organization for Mississippi's capital city. Our executive producers are Jonathan Pettus and Dr. Rickey Thigpen, and I'm our managing editor. You want to know more about our mission? You can find all of that, plus lots of great event info, too, at visitjackson.com. I'm Paul Wolf and you've been listening to Soul Sessions.

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