My Conversation with Sara Pagan

I sit down with Sara Pagan to talk about her journey from cooking breakfast potatoes at a Holiday Inn to becoming the executive sous chef at Agi's Counter in Brooklyn.

Hello everyone! I have a new project that I’m pretty excited about. I get to sit down with some of my favorite food people and talk to them about their relationship with food. Mainly, I’m curious to learn how and when did they start their food journey. Also this gives me a chance to practice taking portraits. Most of the time I would rather just be a “fly on the wall” but I THINK I enjoy doing portraits. I’m not very good at it but my goal for 2024 is to get better.

Sara Pagan is the executive sous chef of Agi's Counter.

Q. How and when did your love for food start?

I was in high school and I was barely in high school because I was borderline dropping out of high school. So my mom was trying to get me to find a job and put a little bit more discipline into my life. So I took a cashier position at a local pizza shop near my house.

I really wanted to work in the kitchen but all the guys in the back said that the pretty girls are for cashier and phone positions and not for being in the back cooking where it's hot and I could burn myself. So I think that maybe kind of pushed me into wanting to learn more about the food aspect of restaurants.

I started watching how they were prepping and making salads and stuff, and it just didn't seem like they cared but like I cared. I mean, you're buying a $12 Caesar salad from a pizzeria. You want to make sure it's a good Caesar salad, even if it's just a $12 Caesar salad from a pizzeria. So it kind of sparked my interest a little bit in wanting to actually work with food.

My dad was a chef in the Navy, so growing up, he was like the cook in the home. My mom worked in the morning into the afternoon, and when I would get home from school, my dad would be making dinner so that it would be ready for my mom. I think I spent most of my time in my childhood sitting in the kitchen with my dad while he was cooking. And I was a big fan of Food Network also. That was just always like a constant in my household growing up.

So I think maybe there was this underlying passion and love and appreciation for food that I never knew could be a career until I started looking into colleges and I found out that you could go to college to learn how to cook. So that's when it really was like, okay, maybe let's try this. Let's do this.

So after the pizza place, I, excuse my French, got my shit together and graduated high school. I applied to Johnson & Wales University in Providence, Rhode Island for the culinary arts program and I got accepted. I didn't think I would go to college at all. I was actually the first kid in my family to go to college and graduate college.

So I went to Johnson & Wales for the culinary arts and that first year I got my first real, like, in the kitchen job at a small restaurant in Staten Island called Lillies during my internship. It was a Holiday Inn breakfast place and I was the only one working. I was pushing out like 300 covers for breakfast by myself and it was my first job. I was just flinging omelets and eggs and breakfast potatoes. They shouldn't have allowed me to do it because I was like 17 and I just had no idea what I was doing in a kitchen, but I made it work for an internship.

So yeah, so that was like my first real, real actual, like, kitchen job.

I will say that even though I had no idea what I was doing, I think that really pushed a lot of raw talent that I had and a lot of raw passion for food. It made me really efficient and it made me work on my toes and really fast and try to, like, figure it out. It also gave me a big confidence boost, I feel like, because I was putting so much love into literally omelets and breakfast potatoes and people were telling me it was the best breakfast they've ever had. We had people that would just go to the restaurant into the hotel just to eat breakfast because I was cooking it and it gave me such a big confidence boost. Like maybe this is what I should be doing and I loved the hard long hours for some reason.

I mean, I was young and also getting severely underpaid for the position. So like working that full time and like even though the paycheck at the time was only like, you know, $300 at full time with overtime. It was nice as someone who's 17 and was like, oh, I'm doing this.

Q. How did you meet Jeremy Salamon, chef and owner of Agi’s Counter?

So after college, I moved back to New York City. Through college, I was working in a lot of really big, high-volume, catering aspect jobs. I was looking for something really small and I started staging around. I staged at The Breslin. I staged at Nix, a Michelin star vegetarian place that was in Union Square. Then I staged at this very small restaurant that was Hungarian called The Eddy.

I saw the ad on Culinary Agents and he (Jeremy) was the one that immediately responded to me. He was like, “Hi, I'm Jeremy, the executive chef, would love for you to come in for a trail.” He had me push three pounds of potato puree through a fine chinois, which took me like two and a half hours. He apologized profusely to me the entire time that I was doing it but I was like, it's completely fine. Like this is a stage, like make me do whatever you need to do. It was the tiniest kitchen I've ever seen in my entire life. It was like a water closet. There was one other person on the line and it was Jeremy, me, and another person.

And yeah, then I went home that day and the Breslin gave me an offer, Nix gave me an offer, and he gave me an offer. If I'm being honest, his offer was lower than what the other jobs offered me. But I immediately just kind of felt at home at The Eddy and I connected so much with Jeremy that I was like, this seems nice. Like this seems safe and it seems like I'm going to be really happy here. So I took the position.

I was the line cook at The Eddy and I worked there until they closed, which was sad. It was such an amazing job. The owner, Jason Soloway, was such an amazing person. One of the differences in that job though and one of the big reasons I kept in touch with Jeremy is that before they announced to everybody that they were closing, they actually set all of us up with jobs. So when they announced that the restaurant was closing, I was told by Jeremy and Jason that I already had a job. They connected all of us and they found homes for all of us to go to after The Eddy closed. That thoughtfulness was just something I've never experienced in restaurants before. I feel like I've just worked for a lot of really big corporations with a lot of really horrible people.

Then when Jeremy started doing his pop ups to raise money for his Kickstarter, he asked me to help him out with his pop up at Vinegar Hill House. It was like our first time connecting after a couple of years and through the pandemic and stuff. He told me he was looking for a sous chef and at the time I was kind of at a really toxic place. I texted him and was like, “Hey are you still looking for a sous chef?” Didn't hear back from him for like two weeks. Then I texted him again and I was like, “Hey, I know you're really busy but are you still looking for a sous chef?” He's like, “I'm so sorry I didn't respond to you. Here's my email, have them send their resume to me.” Then I was like, it's me, surprise. I'm looking for a job and I would like to be your sous chef. Yeah, two years later, here we are.

Q. A career in food is quite difficult so what keeps you coming back every day?

Well I think one of the biggest things, and like, I'm not being biased at all because I'm like, one of the heads of this restaurant, and I helped build this but I think it's a sense of family here. I think there's just this kindness. Incredible, genuine, like, love that comes from every single person that works in this restaurant specifically. Even when I have moments where I felt very burnt out and I'm just like, do I still want to do this? I'm so tired, it's been 80 hour weeks.

I think it's the genuine love. Like you're standing next to someone for eight hours a day and you're talking about everything. You're talking about the sad stuff, the pretty stuff, like the happy stuff, like the silly stuff, all the stuff that you didn't realize that you could open up with next to somebody. It's like, I've always had a problem socializing and I think being in kitchens, it forces you to socialize with people and I feel safe and at home. This restaurant specifically, there's definitely like an insane family feeling here.

Also I love being like the thing that makes people happy. I think people can have a really shitty day and they can walk in here or they can walk into any restaurant and have a meal that turns it all around. Or you have this special gathering with people. You have this special gathering with a family over a birthday and it's an incredible meal that has the experience.

Selfishly knowing that I'm part of that experience and knowing that like I had a hand and making someone's day better, I think that's really what drives me here.

It's just, I love seeing other people happy.

I love making people happy and if I can give someone a plate, you know, that makes them happy it just warms my soul a little bit, you know. I think that's really what it is.