Corey McEntyre has spent plenty of time cooking in commercial kitchens. He worked for several years as a line cook and chef in Nashville. Then, after moving to Waco about 10 years ago, he operated a food truck before opening Milo All Day — known simply as Milo — where he’s the owner and executive chef. He’s also a co-owner of Hotel Herringbone and its three restaurants: Red Herring Restaurant & Bar, Song Bird Market and Lucky Buck’s Rooftop Bar.
So, when he and his wife McKenzie remodeled their Brookview Hills home in 2022, they knew exactly what they wanted.
“The bulk of the space is right here,” McEntyre said as he sat at the kitchen island holding his 3-month-old son Foster. “The kitchen is where we spend a lot of our time.”
Their home’s front room is filled with natural light, and the countertops are free of the clutter that is often seen in kitchens. A coffee station is off to one side, and a small glass-front cabinet holds wine and martini glasses and decanters. The microwave is underneath a counter, freeing up more space, and, if McEntyre would have had his say on everything, the refrigerator would have been under the counter as well.
There’s a full-size refrigerator, but it’s positioned so that it’s not the first thing that one sees when walking through the front door. That was one of the few things that McKenzie insisted on, McEntyre said.
About the only thing that takes up space on the counter is a washer for Foster’s bottles, and it will soon be joined by a small appliance that steams, pressure cooks and purees fresh vegetables, turning them into homemade baby food.
“It’s all there in that one little thing,” he said. “We’re excited about that.”
McEntyre said he wanted the kitchen to be functional but have enough space where he can still cook comfortably even when guests are milling about.
“I hate feeling like I’m on top of people,” he said.
McEntyre said the family will visit the Waco Downtown Farmers Market on Saturday mornings to pick up bread, meat, cheese and in-season produce, then make a stop at the grocery store. On Sundays, McEntyre will check in at his restaurants during brunch service, and then maybe go back to Red Herring during dinner and then he’ll spend the evening meal-prepping for the week.
When doing so, he prepares things that won’t take long to get on the table later in the week. Oftentimes, he and McKenzie, who’s an attorney, will both get home right at dinner time, so Sunday meal preparation will consist of dishes that can be heated up quickly.
“Keeping it easy like that is the key,” he said.
The kitchen is equipped with a ZLINE double oven, with one standard-size oven and one smaller one, which McEntyre appreciates.
“Most of the time, it’s just two of us, so we don’t need to turn on that big oven,” he said. “I like having the smaller oven because when we’re just warming stuff up or I’m making a breakfast sandwich and I just want to toast some bread, I can pop it in that oven, and it turns on super-fast.”
One feature from his restaurant kitchens that McEntyre brought into his home is ensuring that each electrical outlet is on its own circuit. He told the electrician, “Do not put these on a circuit (together). Don’t chain these two just because they’re beside each other. They need to be on separate circuits.” That way, when he’s using a mixer to make a protein shake in the morning and plugs in another appliance, one circuit won’t be overloaded.
McEntyre said that many of the recipes that are on the menus at his restaurants got their start in his home kitchen. He’ll often sit at the island or nearby dining table with his laptop and a stack of cookbooks, looking for inspiration.
“I’m just looking for a spark. I just need a spark sometimes,” he said, “especially the busier I get, the more spark I need.”
The book he returns to again and again isn’t actually a cookbook. “On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen” by Harold McGee provides a scientific look at food and why certain combinations work well together. Another of McEntyre’s favorites is “Taste & Technique” by Naomi Pomeroy, a James Beard Award-winning chef.
Probably his most prized cookbook is “The Wizard American Family Cookbook,” which was published by the Western Auto Company in 1952. McEntyre’s grandmother gave him a copy years ago, and it’s been much used since then.
As far as the actual tools that McEntyre uses at home, they’re pretty simple.
“You’ve got to pick good pans,” he said. “Good pans are so, so, so important.”
His collection includes pans by Made In and All-Clad, and some cast iron from Lodge. (Visiting the Lodge factory in South Pittsburg, Tennessee, is “super cool,” he said.)
He also employs a thin fish spatula for most of his cooking, both at home and at work.
“I use it for everything, and I like it because it gets underneath things and it’s delicate,” he said.
And he likes “really, really, really good spoons.” There are three types of spoon he typically uses: a small tasting spoon; a flat plating spoon that “is a little bit more bulbous on the outside and it’s flat on the end so you can make sure that you get the sauce exactly where you want it to go,” he said; and a “pure sauce spoon” that is used for the final plating of food.
