Today we’d like to introduce you to Alex Wnorowski.
Hi Alex, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
It’s funny, you know; I’ve never really felt like the type of cook with a story to share. I’m just Alex, a person who happened to find the kitchen after my identity of an athlete faded.
Growing up, there was never a passion around food with my family. My dad was always excited to make his apple pie on Thanksgiving, but that’s really the extent of food passion in the Wnorowski home. Food was sustenance. Both of my parents worked incredibly hard – my dad traveled for work, and when he wasn’t home, my mom cooked. Being the oldest sibling, I’m so much like my mom. My parents had me fairly young, so I got them in their most concentrated form compared to my two younger sisters. I was raised on lists and routine – something that I still live by. Reunion Park Pop Up is built on an infrastructure of spreadsheets and sticky notes.
Every day I came home from school to a chore list, and that list was to be done by the time my parents got home from work. Before I ever started my chores, I always had a snack while watching the food network. I can’t say exactly what my initial draw was to those shows, but I remember loving the food science taught by Alton Brown on Good Eats, the discipline of Robert Irvine on Dinner: Impossible, and the approachable ways of Rachel Ray. I don’t watch much TV these days, but those shows were a big inspiration to me back then.
Cooking for me began by adding onion, garlic, and dried spices to a jarred tomato sauce – spaghetti was one of those revolving staples for us; and it just kind of grew from there. It’s weird putting these thoughts into words, but cooking never came from passion. Instead, curiosity lit the fire, and principles learned from my parents like discipline and hard work kept the fire burning.
My first restaurant job was actually as a server at a sports bar in Cary. I was a senior in high school and really didn’t think too much about the potential weight introducing myself to that environment would have on the next almost fifteen years. I liked waiting tables, and it came naturally to me. I was, and my mom would say I still am, a people person. The real draw to me was the environment; I just really enjoyed the rush of service.
Whenever a dishwasher called out, I always volunteered to wash dishes and give up my tables to be a part of the kitchen that night. Being the youngest person in the restaurant, those cooks embraced me for it. Those dish shifts weren’t easy – I was a one-man team responsible for all dishes in a 70-seat restaurant. This dish pit was my first station, and looking back, it’s hard not to think fate was starting to align itself for me.
After realizing that I wanted to fully transition from a server to a cook, I spent another two years at that sports bar making pizza and flipping burgers. By the end of my tenure and on the verge of my 20s, I knew that the kitchen was for me. I switched majors, enrolled in culinary school, and made a promise to myself that I would only leave a job for a position in another kitchen with a greater challenge and more knowledge.
I spent on average about one year per restaurant until I found myself at a restaurant called An in 2014. This was my first true exposure to a professional kitchen. We said “Yes, chef,” we folded our towels, we scrubbed and polished the kitchen every night, I shaved my face every day, and the list goes on.
The station I spent the overwhelming majority of my time on was shared with Chef Josh, the second in command in that kitchen. Chef Greene, the Executive Chef, stood right next to us at the expo station. This setup introduced me to equal parts pressure and nurture from both of them. On a team with about six other cooks, the Executive Chef and Chef de Cuisine were right next to me. In all the best ways possible, I grew from their close watch. I was fortunate enough to be the last cook hired before Chef Greene transitioned back to Herons, inside the Umstead Hotel, where he still currently is.
Without question, I am who I am because of Steven Greene and Josh Hughes. After about a year and a half at An, I was fortunate enough to join Chef Greene at Herons. I was still incredibly young at this time. I made a lot of mistakes and learned a lot about myself while at Herons – mostly what not to do and how not to handle myself. It was around 2016 I started to question a lot of things. Was this life really what I wanted?
I’m not sure how I came across the Appalachian Trail. The day after learning about it was my only day off that particular week. I spent the entire day sifting through books at the bookstore trying to learn about this thing people attempt to do; walk from Georgia to Maine. I had never backpacked before. The only camping I had done was as a young scout. I literally knew nothing except that this was what I was going to shift my attention to. I told my team my idea, and rightfully so, got truckloads of pushback. I was a cook, and the kitchen was all I knew. I don’t belong on a 2,000-mile-long trail. However, there was something about challenging myself in a way that I’ve never done before that shifted my attention from cooking to hiking. I turned in my notice a few weeks after spending that day in the bookstore. Toward the end of my time, one of my chefs bet me $10 that I wouldn’t finish the trail. I shook his hand, and my last day was a few days later. I ended up thru-hiking in 2017, and that hike changed me forever. I still have that $10 bill and use it as a bookmark.
The idea of a pop-up dinner was completely foreign to me up until close to the end of my time at Herons. There was a documentary on Netflix that one of my chefs recommended I watch that focused around the story of one chef and his journey that started with a pop-up restaurant in his apartment. I was captivated. If I had not taken the path less travelled and stepped away from the kitchen and onto the Appalachian Trail, there’s a good chance I don’t take another less walked path away from the traditional restaurant, and Reunion Park Pop Up doesn’t exist.
Certain serendipitous events led me to actually work with this chef whose documentary literally changed my life. I ended up helping him with seven pop-up dinners in both Chicago and Charlotte. It was after the last dinner in December 2018 my project was born. Since then, the pop-up has taken me more places than I could imagine. Now in its fourth year, I’ve pressed pause on the pop-up a couple different times. I thru-hiked another long trail out west called the Pacific Crest Trail in 2019 and I also spent a few months in Denmark in 2021. The project is a direct representation of me and my current thoughts. The food has been a become a bridge of sorts of two identities – the person I am on trail and the person I am in the kitchen. Having lived outside in a tent for a total of ten months while hiking thousands of miles across the U.S. changed me entirely – which is absolutely why so much of my inspiration comes from the natural world.
I can’t say I know where the pop-up is taking me. I live my life one menu and one season at a time. I’m incredibly thankful for the people I’ve met along the way and wouldn’t change anything about the path that has taken me here. As we say on trail, the journey is the destination.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
Has this been easy? Not at all. I laughed when I read this question because anyone that knows me knows that I kind of prefer the roads less travelled and generally embrace the not-so-fun moments.
Growing up, I always helped my dad in the yard on the weekends. Like my mom’s cleaning schedule, Dad had his own routine for the yard. We did things a certain way, and there was never any deviating from those tasks. The house I grew up in had a lot of trees around it – mostly big oak trees; which had a two-pronged negative effect on my autumn chore lists – leaves and acorns. The younger me would always complain that our neighbors simply raked their leaves into the street, why did we have to bag our leaves? The answer was always, “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right.” And so, even though almost every other house in our cul-de-sac had growing mounds of disheveled leaves and branches, our house didn’t. This weekly process took hours. We even swept up the dust after bagging everything. It wasn’t abnormal for our house to have over 20 filled lawn refuse bags sitting neatly in rows for them to be collected. My dad taught me that even the smallest of tasks needed to be done right. These lessons never came from a place of arrogance but rather a feeling knowing we did our best. Usually, at least with my experience growing up, the right way was never the easy way.
The pop-up was designed for me to be as self-sustaining as possible. It’s grown a significant amount since its inception. what started as a little dining table for six in my living room has grown to tables double the size in various places across several states. Size-wise, I never wanted something that would emulate the restaurants I’ve worked in. I wanted to literally be able to do everything that comes with a dinner service. From the smallest and most mundane of details like ironing linens to designing the menus – I wanted to do literally everything. With those desires comes a lot of hardship. I’ve worked at least one other job and sometimes upwards to three other jobs to keep the pop-up moving forward. The one main full-time job I’ve had since the beginning is at a butcher shop, and they’ve seen the full spectrum of my struggle over the last four years.
There was a large period of time where I worked my full-time hours in four days, had one full day of prep, and dinners on Friday or Saturday, sometimes both, all while commuting by bike almost ten miles each way from the butcher shop to my apartment. Usually, I had to pull two all-nighters of work during the week in addition to my one full day of prep to get everything done. For a couple years I was determined to not have a car based on principle of wanting to be a bike commuter and I’m incredibly thankful my determination didn’t physically hurt me – there were some days I didn’t even remember riding to work I was so tired. There were multiple times when I would step outside to drink my coffee and only realize I had fallen asleep because my coffee fell out of my hands, and the splash of hot coffee against my pants scared me awake.
I’ve pushed myself in a lot of ways that probably wouldn’t be considered healthy, but I did it intentionally to find my boundaries and establish new ones for myself and for the food. If I look back on the food four years ago compared to the ideas that are being worked on for this upcoming menu I’m reminded why I did those things to myself. The pop-up is a passion project and something that I want people to feel my soul that I put into every little detail – even if it happens to be terrible. At the very least, it’s fully transparent, and that vulnerability has allowed me to connect on a seriously personal level with a lot of amazing people along the way.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next, you can tell us a bit more about your business.
Reunion Park Pop-Up is basically a wandering restaurant. Pop-ups are extremely common in larger cities like Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles but not so common in the RDU area – or anywhere in the south for that matter. The two constants I keep within the dinners are a ten-course menu for twelve people per service. This ratio of people: courses helps express enough of a story while keeping the length of a dinner within reason.
The dinners were always meant to be a reflection of me. I don’t consider myself a brand and in fact, purposely don’t post many pictures of myself with the intention of keeping things always about the food and the people. I collect the corks from wine that people drink at the dinners and glue them onto a board I made. This board is a direct reflection of all the people that have come together for a dinner at some point over the last four years.
I wanted this project to bring people together and get them out of their comfort zone. Most of the dinners are at a shared table, so people, most of whom are strangers to each other, very quickly meet one another. There are certain wavelengths that all guests share who buy tickets to come eat at an underground dining experience. Most of the time, it’s the willingness to experience something new. Something as small as the adventurous spirit can truly create incredible energy for the entire evening.
The pop-up has also been taken into dozens of private homes. Private dinners are a lot of fun and something I really enjoy doing. I love working in new environments, and it’s always been a great way for people to experience the same dinners that I do in public venues in a more private setting.
What are your plans for the future?
For right now, the project has finally started meeting sustainable checkpoints. I’ve made an incredible amount of mistakes along the way and have finally started feeling a little growth from those mistakes. I’m generally not looking too far ahead, but who knows? Life has been a wild ride; I’m excited to see where things go!
Contact Info:
- Website: exploretock.com/reunionparkpopup
- Instagram: instagram.com/reunionparkpopup
- Facebook: facebook.com/reunionparkpopup
Image Credits
Alex Wnorowski
Danny Charland
