When “The Rub” is part of a restaurant’s name, you might think there is a secret family spice rub recipe being passed down generation after generation. But that is not the case at Jonathan’s The Rub, the much-loved Hedwig Village BYOB.
This past Wednesday (February 19), the My Table team sat down with owner/executive chef Jonathan Levine to talk with the man behind “the rub” and find out what it’s about. We were also curious about the restaurant’s move to fancy new digs later this year.
The native New Yorker did not grow up in the restaurant business, nor did Levine aspire to be a chef at a young age. However, all it took was a little experimentation and praise, and Levine took his MBA and a new-found fondness for cooking and began his career as a restaurant owner.
He owned three restaurants on the East Coast before deciding to move to Texas and start a catering company. When the restaurateur (with whom he was sharing the kitchen) packed up and left unexpectedly one weekend, Levine had to decide whether he wanted to relocate his catering company or take over the entire space and jump back into the restaurant business. And so, in 2008, Jonathan’s The Rub was created.
This modest BYOB spot, located in a tiny strip center near Spring Branch Middle School, became an immediate favorite in the Memorial Villages for both lunch and dinner. Long waits for a table are not unusual.
Let’s hope diners are attached to Levine’s food — steaks, seafood, burgers, pasta — and not the storefront, because the restaurant is moving a few blocks away this fall to a new location on Bunker Hill Road near the bowling alley. The new Jonathan’s The Rub will be a “high-end affair” with a serious whiskey list created with the help of the staff at Reserve 101, and it will no longer be BYOB. The décor will be a combination of New Age and New York, meaning lots of mahogany and some use of copper. It will seat roughly 200, including patio seating that will have a view of the edible garden.
Levine is creating a new concept at the old (original) location, but declined to go into detail. In the meantime, he answered our five nosy questions.
When did your interest in cooking begin?
The first time I ever really cooked was for my roommates in college. I got my MBA and trained in business, so I was headed in a completely different direction. I started cooking for my roommates during sophomore year, and they really liked it. I thought, “I could really do this.” It has been my whole life now. I spent three years in my adult life as a commodity trader, and the rest has been this.
Tell us the history of the name “The Rub.”
It stems from my mom’s ability to memorize soliloquies. The saying “the rub” comes from Hamlet’s soliloquy “To be or not to be” when he is thinking about the meaning of life. “The rub” is mentioned, and it refers to the questions in life that you cannot answer, such as what happens after death. Give my mom two vodkas at a party and she would stand on chairs and recite all this stuff. So “the rub,” or those unanswerable questions, has always been a family theme. My son had an epiphanic moment when we were at the gym—Yes, I do work out occasionally—and said, “Dad, why don’t you call the restaurant ‘The Rub.’”
“To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil”
-Shakespeare, Hamlet
So where did the recipe for the rub originate?
After we decided on the name, we had to create a rub because I had no rub. So I gave myself 100 days to come up with a rub, and it was serious business. I wanted to understand the whole nature of taste buds and marry salt, sweet, savory, bitter in the right proportions. It was precisely day 89 when I came across smoked paprika, and a light went off because it was a flavor that I am familiar with because I grew up with it. Once I found that, that was it. That is what really made it.
We tweak this base rub for different applications. For fish, we take that and add dried lemon peel and orange peel so we have a citrus orientation. We also kick it up with Aleppo peppers when we want a blackening spice. You get an unbelievable bouquet of flavors.
The Rub is a compilation of so many different ingredients. what is your favorite single spice or herb to cook with?
I am a basic basil guy. Basil, handled properly, is fantastic. Cooking it in your sauté pan, it will be bitter and have sweet notes. If you finish a dish with a chiffonade of basil, it is going to be totally different.
When not at the restaurant, where do you like to dine out?
I have two main things. I will go eat pho at Pho Bihn by Night or any Vietnamese soup. They are incredible. And then my temple is Kenny & Ziggy’s. I go to temple every Sunday for brunch instead of real temple — I am Jewish but not that Jewish.
Jonathan’s The Rub, 9061 Gaylord, 713-465-8200, jonanthanstherub.com