Issue link: http://maconmagazine.uberflip.com/i/1184236
7 4 M ACO N M AG A Z I N E.CO M | O C TO B E R / N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 9 OPEN 7 DAYS A WEEK DOWNTOWN 522 Cherry Street • 478.227.7785 • www.travisjeanemporium.com Downtown Macon's largest selection of Georgia-made goods HANDCRAFTED GIFTS FROM THE SOUTH Rogers, who, through the platform he had, changed America's opinion of Pittsburgh," he says. "Pittsburgh had a very difficult 20th century – it was not known as a nice place. Seeing Mr. Rogers going out, going to the shoe store downtown, that changed America's attitude about that city. So, I try to be Mr. Rogers, going on a field trip." e farm-to-table eatery Grow made an appearance in one of Ragusea's videos. is spring, the restaurant hosted a series of themed pop-ups featuring local home chefs, and Ragusea, along with musician Michael "Big Mike" Ventimiglia, took over for a day celebrating homestyle Italian dishes, including Ragusea's homemade "I think home cooking has become infected with a lot of inapplicable ideas from professional cooking via the celebrity chef phenomenon," says Ragusea. "Who used to teach us cooking? Julia Child! She was a home cook. Now we've got Gordon Ramsay teaching all this fine dining stuff that's not really relevant. I have chefs hate-posting at me because some of my methods are unorthodox, but I'm not going for the best possible iteration of every dish here, I'm going for accessible. I'm going for good enough." For him, Macon has been the perfect place to do all this. "It's a position of strength to be in," he says. "Even if revenue fell off a cliff, I could afford to be a quarter of my current size and still live in this beautiful house." He moves on to discuss his attempts at representing Macon on a larger scale: "ere's a location tag feature in YouTube that not many people use, so I always tag Macon to rep my city. But the problem is, it's mostly fight videos using that tag. I struggle, because that tag isn't going to have positive content attached to it unless people use it – but if I'm the only positive content ..." his voice trails off, uncertain. He loves to do field trips to places in town like Society Garden, Grow and Ocmulgee Brewpub. "My specific inspiration for that is Mr.