Eric See was trained as a pastry chef and worked in catering and events before he opened The Awkward Scone in Brooklyn. It closed during the pandemic, and he pivoted and opened Ursula, highlighting dishes from his native New Mexico. He’s a fan of New Orleans and its food, and visited the city last year to speak on a panel about queerness in the hospitality industry. He’s coming to do a pop-up dinner at Mister Mao on Wednesday, June 5. For more information about See, visit ursulabk.com. For information about the dinner, go to mistermaonola.com.

Gambit: How did you end up opening a New Mexican restaurant in Brooklyn?

Eric See: It started with breakfast burritos and kind of spiraled after the pandemic.

I used to have a cafe in Bushwick called The Awkward Scone. I was a pastry chef by trade. I did all of the baking and pastries there and put green chilies in some of the stuff. I never intended to have some New Mexican food renaissance, but there was a lot of New Mexicans in Brooklyn, and they were pressuring me into making breakfast burritos.

I didn’t feel like explaining to everyone why we were serving this New Mexican style breakfast in a place called The Awkward Scone. But eventually I submitted to their will, and they were really popular and put breakfast burritos on the map in New York City. On the weekends, we would be packed.

But the pandemic hit, and we closed. I did a little soul searching, and I had an opportunity to open a friend’s spot that they weren’t able to use because of the pandemic. It was a little takeout window. New Mexican food lends itself to takeout because it’s pretty rustic and not fussy. Breakfast burritos are super cheap, but I knew we could sell enough to pay the rent and give some people some jobs. That’s where it started. We expanded on it with sopaipillas and green chili cheeseburgers, pozole, and pastries that were based on my aunts’ and uncles’ growing up.

It’s similar to Mexican food. You can call anything New Mexican as long as you put a New Mexican red chile on it. That’s all you have to do.

New Mexican chilies don’t tend to be burn your face off. Then you lose all the nuances of the chilies and the soils they grow in. There is a wonderful sweetness and earthiness from both the red and the green that you’ll miss if your tongue is burning.

Gambit: What are you doing at Mister Mao?

See: What I have done in New York is I have taken inspiration from what’s around me in terms of the food and a New York sensibility and what people expect. I have some classics on our menu, but I also don’t believe food is static. It’s a constant evolution of what happens to exist in the same place at the same time.

I am looking at doing a little Cajun-Creole-New Mexican mash-up, like grilled Gulf oysters with a wild boar chicharron. Gulf shrimp michelada aguachile. I want to do a rabbit carnitas tamal. I think it’ll be wrapped in hoja santa. It’s a big leaf popular in New Mexican cuisine. It has a kind of anise, licorice flavor. I’m doing that with a tarragon salsa verde with rabbit liver dirty rice. 

Sopaipillas are much like beignets. But I am thinking of a rum cake, because that’s one of my favorite desserts.

Gambit: As an advocate for queer spaces in hospitality, what do you think is needed?

See: My focus, our MO here, is that it’s a queer space. Over 90% of my staff is queer or trans identifying. Our goal is to create a space that is comfortable and safe. Safe is difficult because the definition changes every time someone leaves or enters the building.

I think what hospitality needs more of is flexibility and fluidity, because you get stuck in archaic ideas of what hospitality could or should be or what a space should be, what hierarchical structure should be. Part of queerness is being fluid and flexible. It depends on what city you’re in.

New York is not a place that makes it easy or possible for small businesses to exist and thrive. You have to make decisions that fit your space. It’s dependent on your rent and your clientele. We’re trying to have a model of accessibility to our physical community and our queer community so our food is not excessively priced. It’s quite accessible. But by doing that, you are limiting revenue, which limits the amount of money you have to pay your staff.

You have to find a balance of volume and not being extractive of your team and yourself. Once you start getting into volume business, it’s really tough on your body and your mental health as well. Something we do here that is very contested is on the weekends when we are busy, we use QR codes at the tables. Some people don’t like that. We have a hybrid model. We seat you at your table. We bring your water. We bring out your food.

There’s something about this idea that all the hospitality is being removed. But it gives you a little more power. You can put your order in. We’re still available, but the more people we have on the floor, the more we have to charge for food. There’s this push and pull with consumers. Sometimes they’re not willing to put their money where their mouth is. They say that they want hospitality to pay livable wages, but they don’t want to pay for the food.

The way you hire people and what positions they’re in, this goes beyond queer and trans safety. For anybody from a marginalized community, the idea of safety is manifested the moment you walk in and can see yourself there.

My restaurant is in a historically Black neighborhood. You have to be aware of the space you’re taking up and the sensitivity and accessibility you have for the people that were there before you.