"There are still people who come in and say 'Oh, Kevin must be off tonight,' " says Mr. Townsend, referring to Kevin Sousa, the restaurant's much more famous owner and executive chef. Mr. Sousa checks in with the restaurant daily, but he's focused on numerous other projects: Union Pig & Chicken, Harvard & Highland, Station Street Hot Dogs, and his forthcoming Braddock flagship restaurant Magarac.
The day-to-day operations of Salt of the Earth fall to Mr. Townsend. He's just one of a legion of mostly-unheralded helms -- people who are essential to the continued growth of Pittsburgh's booming restaurant scene.
Their names might not be recognizable to those outside the restaurant industry, but it's this crew that maintains continuity at area restaurants while the head honchos are experimenting with new techniques or are off working on other endeavors.
Mr. Townsend is a chef de cuisine. In the lists of restaurant hierarchy, that puts him one step below the executive chef. Unlike the executive, chefs de cuisine almost never have an ownership stake in the restaurant; yet in all practicality these colonels of the kitchen run their respective eateries. They don't need to ask for permission to make any but the most major decisions, and even when they create a new dish for the menu it's generally subject to just a quick check before going into rotation. The trust between an executive chef and a chef de cuisine needs to be near absolute.