Calendar puts sexy back into cooking

"Oh, yeah, I have all the salacious details," said Travis Anderson with a laugh.

Well, that got our attention.

Anderson is the Minneapolis photographer behind the 2015 follow-up to last year's Sexy Chef Calendar, which put the crew at Travail Kitchen and Amusements in Robbinsdale in a decidedly unexpected light (for anyone who has visited the raucous, fun-loving restaurant, maybe not so unexpected).

Last year's calendar — which Anderson also photographed — was produced as an incentive for the restaurant's hugely successful Kickstarter campaign. The motivation behind a second edition was simple.

"We had so much fun the first time around that we had to do it again," said Anderson.

Q: So who's featured in this calendar? Or should I say, who voluntarily checked their dignity at the door and agreed to be a part of this project?

A: It's mainly the three main Travail guys [co-owners Mike Brown, James Winberg and Bob Gerken], and some core players, although we involved just about everyone at the restaurant. The September segment is a back-to-school yearbook page with awkward individual portraits of almost the entire staff.

Q: Who came up with the idea to superimpose an illustration of the meat chart on Bob Gerken's naked body and photograph him like a dead pig on a butcher's table?

A: I'll take full credit for that. We were sitting around with a bunch of vague ideas and didn't like any of them. I showed them the chart from a cookbook, and Mike's eyes just lit up. That's one of the funniest moments I've ever had on a shoot. It was an exercise in the loss of dignity.

But that's the great thing about these guys. They do such an amazing job with the food, but they don't take themselves too seriously. They're game for anything.

We'll sit around with these kernels of an idea, and the fun for me is to noodle it, to build a story, to create a narrative. I'll push them to a certain point, and then they'll go further. I'm not convincing them that it's the right thing to do. They just do it and take it up another notch.

Q: How long did it take to put the calendar together?

A: It was a whirlwind. We shot it over three days — mostly at the restaurant — and I probably blitzed about 60 hours over four days on the computer. That's the majority of this work. It's very composite-heavy, taking multiple images and stripping them together. Some of these scenes are so elaborate that there's no way you could ever stage them in one photo.

Q: What ended up in the calendar?

A: We did a zombies shot, and a "Reservoir Dogs" image. There's a "Coyote Ugly" shot. The freak show carwash is funny because it's just the dishwashers. There's also a Last Supper image, just in case we left anyone out that we didn't offend the first time around.

I think my favorite is the Mexican wrestling scene. It's just ratty and down and dirty, with guys flying through the air, and people on the ropes waving cash. We shot it at Uppercut Boxing Gym in Minneapolis. Megan Leafblad [of Travail] was my collaborative buddy on this project. She did most of the legwork, sourcing costumes and securing locations.

Q: Was it a challenge to recruit guest-star chefs, or did they jump at the opportunity?

A: The first time around, I think they were a little suspicious of how it would turn out. This year, they knew what they were getting into. They were totally game, they were completely willing to denigrate themselves. We handed them these crazy costumes, and they just dropped their drawers and put them right on, no questions asked. It was great.

Q: Who are we talking about here?

A: We did a roller derby shot with Gavin Kaysen [Spoon and Stable], Landon Schoenefeld [HauteDish], Jack Riebel [the Lexington and Il Foro, both opening next year], Doug Flicker [Piccolo], Alex Roberts [Restaurant Alma] and Steven Brown [Tilia]. It was pretty funny. We were at the Roller Garden in St. Louis Park, and the only other people there were these two ladies eating those hot dogs that look like cardboard, and they were watching these celebrity chefs get greased up with baby oil and climb on one another's shoulders.

Q: Um, baby oil?

A: As funny as this sounds, baby oil is essential to achieve the quality of a "sexy shot," and I'm putting that phrase in quote marks. We went through a whole bottle of it at that shoot. We sprayed it everywhere. I'm putting together a making-of video — I was shooting it behind the scenes — and you'll see that when we did the Mexican wrestling shot. We're practically hosing people down with baby oil.

Q: I'm struggling to find an image we can run in the newspaper. OK, that's a slight exaggeration. But, still. How does this lad-mag mentality play to the folks back home?

A: I showed it to my mom, but I would never show it to my grandma. She has some vague sense of what I do, and this would only confirm her worst fears.

Q: Where are you aiming your camera when you're not giving some of the Twin Cities' top chefs the PG-13 treatment?

A: I do a lot of advertising and editorial work. I also work directly with a ton of restaurants, so I know most of these chefs already. I'm so into food, and having this kind of collaboration is really fun for me, because I get to work with people I really admire.

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