Michael and Bryan Voltaggio are arguably Frederick’s most famous sons. As contestants on Season 6 of Top Chef in 2009, the tattooed brothers—with their chiseled good looks and ability to cook for the cameras—seemed straight from central casting. Michael, who finished first, and Bryan, who was runner-up, have been wildly successful since.
In the past, they’ve each pursued their own projects (among them Michael opened Ink and a sister sandwich shop, ink.sack, in West Hollywood, while Bryan operated now-closed Volt in Frederick and Aggio in Baltimore), but more recently, they’ve been working as a culinary team.
“It’s taken 30 years to find our cadence,” says Michael. “Both of us combined make a great chef. Bryan is one of the best technicians I’ve ever seen and he has an incredible work ethic. I drive a lot of the creative ideas and he’s very good at bringing them to life—we balance each other out. We’ve removed any ego and listen to each other.”
While scoping out their latest project, Wye Oak Tavern inside Frederick’s Visitation Hotel (check out our full review in our September issue), we caught up with Michael to talk about creativity, cooking, and why he no longer sleeps on Bryan’s sofa.
How often do you make it to Maryland?
I’m like the forgotten child of the DMV. I come in any time there’s a menu change. I come back once month or every other month and Bryan and I workshop the menu changes together. For me, it’s more about the creative process and coming back when there are new activations.
How did all the notoriety around Top Chef shape you as chefs?
In some ways [fame] inspired us to waste a lot of time. There was a span of about five years where we ran in different directions and did not support each other’s efforts—we were focused on our individual efforts. For me, back in the day, a lot of it was driven by ego and this need to be different, avant-garde, or inventive. Now we are just focusing on making delicious food that people want. This restaurant, the [Voltaggio Brothers] steakhouse in National Harbor, and Vulcania [at Mammoth Mountain in Mountain Lakes, CA]—these are all restaurants that speak to the partnership that Bryan and I have. These days, we have found this formula to join forces not only as brothers, but as authentic business partners.
What’s your process when you’re coming up with new dishes?
We will find ourselves posted up on a cutting board until 2 a.m. We might be stuck on one idea just trying to get it finished for the next day when the team comes in. The next morning, I don’t think they realize we’ve been up all night doing this and we’re like, “Okay, here’s the recipe for the dish this day.”
So many of the dishes on the menu not only taste great, but offer a playful surprise, like the coddies served as “popsicles,” or the smoked beet pastrami that mimics the taste of an actual pastrami sandwich. How do you come up with some of those ideas?
These are all foods that people have had before, just not in this way. The coddies are a Maryland staple. Bryan and I have a lot of late-night sessions where we are obsessively on Amazon trying to find the perfect shape for something. We found those popsicle molds for when we do birthday celebrations at Voltaggio Brothers Steak House. We make these mini ice cream popsicles to celebrate people on their special occasion. For the coddies, we thought the idea of fish sticks would be really cool but to do them with coddies. Frozen fish sticks on a tray with ketchup are such a childhood thing and we were like, “What if we could make the coddies on a stick?” That’s how that conversation went.
Tell me about the origin of the chicken liver mousse that looks like chicken and waffles?
We have a chicken liver mousse that’s shaped like a fried chicken leg. That started because I was doing cold fried chicken sandwiches in L.A. at my sandwich shop. We were using cornflakes, and when you fry cornflakes, it caramelizes the sugar and then when it cools off it gets crunchier. We applied that technique to the chicken liver mousse.
When we started to do that dish, we were like, “I wonder if we could be shaped like a fried chicken leg?” From there, we were like, “What if we serve it to look like chicken and waffles?” And we knew we wanted there to be bread because people are used to eating bread with pâte, so what if we just put sourdough onto a waffle iron and make that the waffles?
A lot of times that’s just how the conversations arrive at a completed dish. Rather than try to make a newly created dish with weird ingredients, there needs to be a sense of comfort. We tend to start with comfort food and then evolve it into something that is a little bit technique-driven, but the dish itself isn’t driven by technique.
Would you describe Wye Oak as a steakhouse?
We have the steakhouse at National Harbor and that services that conceptual need for us to serve food in a steakhouse format, so we challenged ourselves with being able to extend that steakhouse concept into Frederick, but not compete with what we already have. That’s why the starter section is very different than the steakhouse at National Harbor. The meats themselves are on the smaller side compared to the more massive size we are serving at the steakhouse, and there’s a good balance of fish dishes that are going to the table. It’s not so much inspired by a steakhouse as it is for the opportunity for guests to share and taste a lot of food at the table.
What’s it like being back in Maryland for you given that you’ve been on the West Coast for so many years?
The biggest thing I love is that the Wye Oak is attached to The Visitation Hotel and our Voltaggio Brothers Steak House is attached to MGM National Harbor, so I’m not sleeping on Bryan’s couch in the basement anymore. I now have two amazing hotels I get to sleep in when I come home. Bryan’s son, Thatcher, has a room down there, so when he was getting up at 6 a.m. for school, I had to get up, too. Also, I get to see my mom more. There are so many reasons to come back and forth a lot more now than ever. And I am grateful that we have the ability to open restaurants that serve the community that we both grew up in—I get to be bicoastal.
When did you know you wanted to be a chef?
Bryan and I both started when we were 15 years old—we are both 30 years into our careers at this point. I’ve never had a job doing anything else. We are so grateful that these two kids from Frederick got to share our experiences with the world. It was hard work, a lot of sacrifice, and time from our families, but we are so grateful for getting to share our stories. We could have been forgotten about by now, but we continue to work our way forward—and we are not done yet.
A lot of people start their careers on a very high note and it’s up to them from there to see what direction they go. For us, it’s been a slow burn from day one. We both started at The Holiday Inn in Frederick, so our goal was every year to get a little bit better, to get better opportunities, and to continue to evolve and grow. All of a sudden, 30 years goes by and we are having a conversation about a new restaurant—it’s just wild.
Any fun stories about those early Holiday Inn days?
I started out as a busboy and was not a very good one. I’ve never said this to anyone, but one of my jobs was to go collect the trays in the hallways after room service. I was a 15-year-old punk kid. My friend, Ryan, who is now a schoolteacher in Florida, and I would go in the hallways and take the metal lid plate covers off the plates and we’d take the coffee creamers and we’d pitch baseballs with the coffee creamers into the metal lids. Ryan would get down in a catcher’s position with the plate lids and I’d pitch the creamers to him.
I’m not saying this is the type of behavior that should ever happen in a professional environment, but as 15-year-old kid I was like, “This is great.” I had no idea I was starting my career, so I didn’t exactly start out as a model employee.
And now you’re like a hometown hero when you’re back.
I am still inspired by our community and hometown. There’s nothing like it. And it’s fun for all those teachers and everyone who was like, “I don’t know about these guys,” to see us now.