By Ann Volkwein
Photographs by Linda Campos
When No Comply Foods opened in Great Barrington this spring, it added a shot of laidback authenticity and food-forward, chef-driven adrenaline to the local food scene. The walls are lined with skateboards, art donated by friends, and other mementos reflecting owners Stephen and Julie Browning’s passion for ‘90s punk and their New Jersey roots. It’s creative and cool but unpretentious, a relaxed space crafted for their community with an eye to showcasing local talent, from chefs to artisans to farmers.
Steve’s menu, which changes daily, rotates a tightly curated, eclectic roster: fresh littleneck clams in a pool of ramp pesto; Turkish eggs with Japanese sweet potato, labneh and chili oil; loaded Chicago dogs with freshly made relish. You can expect “simple, big flavors, and good ingredients,” said Steve. Julie runs the front of house, and is often behind the counter with friend and restaurant design consultant Kate Skinner.
Steve bridges front and back, cooking alongside longtime protégé Dimitri Koufis. Taking over the former Sweetish Baker location at 258 Stockbridge Road, Steve and Dimitri crafted the interior revamp—one carefully placed, sustainably sourced tile at a time. “It’s a miracle that we did this,” said Steve. “We did it as DIY as we could, and we salvaged a lot of stuff. It’s all reused.”
Although this is Steve’s first time as a chef/owner, he is well established in the food world. He was the founding chef of Great Barrington’s Prairie Whale, helming the kitchen of the restaurant from 2012 to 2022. Prior to his move to the Berkshires, as a classically trained Culinary Institute of America graduate, he ran through an impressive list of gigs in New York—Lutece, 21 Club—before emigrating to Brooklyn’s food scene. He and his mentor, Eric Lind—the underrecognized “godfather of Brooklyn cuisine,” says Steve—landed at the pioneering, farm-to-table Flatbush Farm. This was 2006, during the early heady days of Brooklyn’s food renaissance.
Steve’s views of food started to shift as he shook off the Wall Street customer cobwebs and started cooking for people he might actually want to hang out with. “It felt more punk than not. And it was there that the neighborhood restaurant thing struck me.” When he moved over to Diner and Marlow & Sons—co-owned by Mark Firth and Andrew Tarlow—he felt an even bigger shift. “I started working there with these young kids who were kind of ‘no comply,’ not following rules. They were younger than me, and they saw me as someone who knew how to do everything because I was classically trained, but I was looking at them like, ‘what did you just make?’ It really changed the way I cook.”
When Firth decided to move to the Berkshires full time, he invited Steve to join him in opening the Prairie Whale, which quickly became known for showcasing outstanding locally raised and grown meats and produce. Steve is proud of the food and kitchen community that he created at the Prairie Whale, and envisions No Comply Foods as a place that leans further into celebrating the area’s vibrant local resources and talent. By creating a space for farms or chefs to highlight their ingredients or host events, his intention, he said, is to “give artistic freedom to those who work with us. I want resident chefs to come here to refill my battery as well as the community’s battery.”
Post COVID, he said, “I had burnout and I fell out of love with the industry a little bit. The work-life balance was out of whack for me and my team. So I started to ask myself, ‘What do I want my next ten years to be?’ We were making sustainable food but the system was not sustainable.”
Why No Comply? The name is a reference to a skateboarding trick. Just before COVID hit, Steve felt it was an okay time to risk the injury and get back on his board. He mastered the No Comply pretty quickly, Julie said, encouraged by Library Skate Shop founder Damon Vorce (@libraryskateshop). The newly minted “No Comply Steve” named his startup company accordingly, and began offering his golden milk, Caesar dressing, hot honey, za’atar, and chili crisp at local farmers markets (now they’re sold at his checkout counter). “Skateboarding again changed my brain a little bit. I don’t think I’d be doing this if I hadn’t [gotten started again],” Steve said.
In this chapter, Steve has also made it his mission to fix some of what he sees as broken in the restaurant industry, such as wage disparity between the front and back of house, and the hierarchy, explaining, “We want to be part of the change, part of the best foot forward.” To that end, he has deliberately streamlined service to counter ordering and a number system, and eliminated tipping. He’s the serious chef who also brings your order to your table. As Julie points out, “Community is worth it, and being able to create an environment where people in the restaurant world are treated fairly and paid fairly is far more important to us than us ever having a lot of money.” Similarly, added Steve, “We’d rather people come consistently than charge more. We want to be there for like-minded people.”
His menu has evolved—he’s been known for his expert handling of local meats and is now more vegetarian friendly. “As you grow as a chef and an artist, it’s natural that you become more vegetable centric later in life… eat more olive oil than butter, stuff like that. Being a chef can be a little like being a musician, where you make hits and then you don’t want to play the hits anymore.” Julie chimed in: “He’s been married to a chicken for 20 years.”
It wasn’t until their early twenties that they began dating, but Steve and Julie became friends in high school, during Saturday detention, bonding over a mutual love of Mike Park’s Asian Man record label and his punk group Skankin’ Pickle. Steve was part of the skater crew and Julie was the outsider who wore fishnets and Converse and was really into “Rocky Horror.” She is technically moonlighting at No Comply, and loves her day job as a special education teacher at Housatonic Valley Regional High School. Her career, in teaching and outreach, has been dedicated to helping underserved, disadvantaged people who have been outcast by society. “I felt like there were no adults in my school system who took any interest or cared or even thought I would ever be anything. I wanted to be that one person who cared.”
Julie and Stephen Browning are ready to take your order.
The skateboarding ethos—all about creativity and individuality—runs through everything at No Comply. When working in Manhattan, Steve would skate to work, “skitching” a ride on a UPS truck from Penn Station to 50th Street, but he paused more serious skateboarding so as not to risk injury. “I think I put a lot of that energy from skateboarding into cooking because it’s creative. You can go to a skate spot with five skaters and everybody is going to do something different; like in cooking, you can take the same ingredients, and everyone is going to put their own spin on it.” For Steve, the DIY, skate, and punk energy go hand in hand with cooking. “Line cooks were often punks or misfits; some people might see skateboarding as a red flag, but to me it shows dedication. It’s punishing, it’s the perfecting of one thing. It takes a certain personality. You get into that zone, and you chase getting it perfect.”
Supporting Cast
Dimitri Koufis started working with Steve in 2016 and now he takes over the menu for a night each week, sometimes adapting Greek recipes, exploring Middle Eastern flavors, baking fresh focaccia for eggplant parmesan sandwiches, or flipping smash burgers.
Kate Skinner helped Steve and Julie plan No Comply’s workflow and feel, combining found and salvaged pieces through the consideration of color palette, lighting, and table placement. “One of my favorite moments was when I had this idea one night and I called Steve in the morning and said, ‘I think we need a lava lamp.’ He said, ‘I just ordered a lava lamp.’ I was like, we are in sync.”
