Cleveland has become nationally known for independent and sustainable restaurants, but it's the unique personalities and uncompromising hard work that the individuals behind these establishments infuse into each dish.
Some of those personalities — from the whimsical to methodical — were on display Thursday during the “Cleveland 2.0: Cleveland's Emerging Chefs” program at the City Club of Cleveland. Participating chefs were: Heather Haviland, chef of Lucky's and Vine & Bean; Chris Hodgson and Jeremy Esterly, owners of mobile food truck Dim & Den Sum; Michael Nowak, chef of Bar Cento and Bier Markt; and Matthew Mathlage, chef of Light Bistro. The panel was moderated by Michael C. DeAloia, practice leader of the Local Advocacy Practice at LNE Group. During the event, these up-and-coming chefs touted Cleveland's culinary industry, its reliance on sustainable foods and practices, and local consumers' desire for new and different dining concepts as reasons they are committed to operating here in Cleveland. They also provided insight behind their passion for the industry, as well as perspectives on culinary education versus hands-on experience and the challenges in running a business. As Ms. Haviland said, “The food industry has been a bit misleading with the young work force because everyone thinks we're rock stars. When you're on your hands and knees scrubbing the walk-in, you don't feel like a rock star.” Mr. Esterly added: “We work 20 hours a day, six days a week.” They all agreed that passion and being a “little crazy” also were key ingredients to running a restaurant (or driving a mobile food cart), as well as handling employees' personalities and work ethic. When asked why they thought Cleveland has such a burgeoning culinary industry, Mr. Mathlage said it was because it's cheaper to open a restaurant than in other large cities. Plus, the protégés of such seasoned veterans as Karen Small, chef/owner of the Flying Fig, and Douglas Katz, chef/owner of Fire, are starting up their own restaurants here. “I think Cleveland can really handle more restaurants before it starts to hurt another restaurant,” Mr. Nowak said. “There's more diversity here. There are not just a bunch of chains, some fine dining and some independent restaurants here and there. “There are little restaurants, taco places, food carts, hot dog stands … I don't think I've eaten at the same restaurant twice in the last two months,” Mr. Nowak said.
0 Comments
AFTER more than 30 years of civil war, invasion and occupation, Lebanon is prospering again, and the downtown area of Beirut, the capital, has risen from the rubble. Among more than 400 projects are a new waterfront area, parks, world-class hotels, high-end shops and restored monuments, churches, mosques and even the synagogue.
And to help the city reclaim its title as the Paris of the Middle East are more than 100 restaurants, some involving notable chefs and restaurateurs. “We are bringing in world-renowned chefs to make Beirut the food capital of the Middle East,” said Joseph Asseily, chairman of Beirut Hospitality, a division of Solidere, the Lebanese company in charge of the downtown development. Joël Robuchon, Yannick Alléno, Antoine Westermann, the Parisian baker Eric Kayser and perhaps even Jean-Georges Vongerichten are among the marquee names poised to draw tourists and cosmopolitan locals to the once devastated quarter. But while some Lebanese might dare to try Mr. Robuchon’s eel with foie gras, when it comes to their own cuisine, tradition rules. You’ll find croissants seasoned with the spice blend zataar in bakeries, but that’s about as far as most chefs dare to innovate. A few restaurants are adding Asian or Mexican dishes to Lebanese menus, but generally it’s hands off when it comes to classics like hummus. Lebneniyet, a Lebanese restaurant in the rebuilt area, prides itself on authenticity rather than creativity. “The Lebanese like routine — it’s comforting after what they have gone through,” said Philippe Massoud, the chef and owner of Ilili in New York, who is from Beirut but who left during the civil war. The dozens of cold and hot plates that come under the heading of meze — like hummus, tabbouleh, fattoush, eggplant purées, little grilled sausages, savory filled pastries, assorted kibbees and the like — are appreciated according to the finesse of the preparation. “Nouvelle Lebanese does not exist,” said Kamal Mouzawak, a writer who became a food activist and now supports small farmers and regional cooking traditions with a farmers’ market and a restaurant in Beirut. “Food like you get at Ilili in New York would be shocking to the Lebanese — duck shawarma and things like that,” he said, referring to the popular sandwich made in Lebanon with shavings of spit-roasted beef or chicken. “Right now we are discovering our traditions. During the war and its aftermath we were too busy with other things.” Restaurants serving Lebanese food are now starting to feature ragouts, often vegetable-based, that typically were served only at home. Comfort food, yet something new. Advancing this trend there is Tawlet, which means “kitchen table” in Arabic. It’s the airy, informal restaurant that Mr. Mouzawak opened in a fringe area of Beirut last November, where home cooks from villages around the country prepare regional specialties. These often amount to discoveries for Beirut residents. “It’s like a food museum every day,” Mr. Mouzawak said. Every five weeks, reservations are at a premium when Joe Barza, a burly goateed chef who is an outspoken advocate of new Lebanese cuisine, cooks lunch at Tawlet. “Why does hummus have to be made with tahini?” he asked at lunch there a few weeks ago. “I see a big opportunity.” His buffet included hummus made with broad beans instead of the usual chickpeas, enough of a departure. Kibbee was made with raw fish, not raw meat. And a dish called siyadieh, which usually combines fish with rice, was done with frik, a roasted green wheat that is cooked like a pilaf. “We have the ingredients,” Mr. Barza said. “We just have to think about how we are using them.” Lebanon’s larder is extremely rich. Almost anything, including American beef, can be imported, and even pork is sold, a rarity in an Arab country. In the countryside, farmers set up impromptu stands along the roads with gorgeous fresh favas, green beans, strawberries and artichokes. The produce at Souk el Tayeb, the farmers’ market that Mr. Mouzawak has organized on Saturday mornings in downtown Beirut, is nothing short of mouthwatering. Fish restaurants like Chez Sami, which overlooks the sea just north of the city, display beautiful, mostly local catches that are simply fried or grilled. And yet the array has its limitations. “Lebanon has some terrific ingredients they don’t use, like sardines,” said Mourad Mazouz, an owner of restaurants in London and Paris, who is on track to open in the newly developed area with a Moroccan-French-Lebanese menu. Both Mr. Robuchon and Mr. Alléno said they were going to try to use as many local ingredients as possible. Unlike the restaurants, Lebanon’s wineries are trying some new approaches to build on a tradition that is said to go back 5,000 years. Ixsir, a new winery near Byblos, north of Beirut, is selecting grapes from farmers in several regions to find the best terroirs, according to Étienne Debanné, the owner. Massaya, in the Bekaa Valley, is experimenting with tempranillo, the red grape of the Rioja region in Spain, and it is making a white wine with a blend that includes obeidi, the native grape said to be a precursor of the French clairette. The unusual white wines of Château Musar, perhaps the best-known Lebanese label, have always been made with native grapes. “We’re more behind the scene when it comes to experimenting with our food than with our wine,” said Naji Saikali, the brand manager for Ixsir. “We hesitate to innovate. Perhaps it’s because we’re living with risk. But you can’t always postpone trying something new because you’re afraid something may happen to disrupt your life.” Raymond Blanc has inspired chefs around the UK to start their own kitchen gardens for the freshest possible produce
When female diners visit the loo at the top London restaurant Pied à Terre, they will be in for a surprise: Marco Pierre White will be staring back at them through the window. And no, the Hell’s Kitchen chef hasn’t turned Peeping Tom — his photograph is stuck on the head of a scarecrow, to keep pigeons out of the two Michelin-starred chef Shane Osborn’s rooftop kitchen garden (the Knorr apron his mischievous finishing touch). “I’m going to change the picture every couple of months,” Osborn grins. “Michael Winner is next, with a pinny that says ‘Calm down dear’.” He is very proud of his new roof garden, which he started sowing last autumn. This year he has added plants that he has propagated himself, from seeds grown on a windowsill. It’s small, measuring just six metres by four, yet it grows nearly 200 plants, including 15 different herbs and numerous edible flowers, from borage to caraway. There are also various vegetables and fruits, from Jerusalem artichokes to redcurrants, all of which Osborn uses in his innovative dishes. “I started the garden initially to teach the guys how to grow things,” he says, “but I also wanted to plant a seed in people’s minds that we can all help the environment in some small way.” He has installed a wormery and a 650-litre composter — which is fed by food scraps from the kitchen — but hasn’t quite sorted out the water problem yet. At present it takes two chefs armed with buckets to keep the garden watered every day, and the only access is through a window. “But they love it: it’s a great place to hang out between service. And to be able to pick stuff this fresh, especially the flowers, which haven’t got a long shelf life, is quite something. There’s loads of empty roof space in London, so use it.” Space isn’t something that worries your country house hotel. Following the lead of top French chefs such as Michel Bras and Alain Passard, who have elevated the kitchen garden to a new level, they have revived traditional potagers that once fed grand families and are now feeding us. These kitchen gardens have become attractions in their own right, where head chefs team up with head gardeners to get the best out of their produce at hotels such as Mallory Court, near Leamington Spa, and the most ambitious of all, at Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons, in Oxfordshire, where Raymond Blanc and his brigade wander the gardens in their whites, snapping off broad beans and digging up artichokes under the watchful eye of drooling guests, stomachs rumbling at the prospect of a freshly picked dinner. One of the most established is the organic kitchen garden at the celebrated Lancashire hotel and restaurant, Northcote Manor. “I think one of the best things is that it makes you more creative,” says the head chef, Lisa Allen. Thanks to the green fingers of her boss, the chef proprietor Nigel Haworth, Allen now gets as excited about vegetables and herbs as she does about meat and fish. “I’ve got so much more respect for produce now I’ve actually seen how things grow. Our focus at the moment is old English varieties: we’re trying eight different potatoes at the moment, each with their own flavour, and 15 different types of cress. It stimulates the mind. We’re always finding ways to use up all the produce,” she says. Matthew Tomkinson, the head chef of the Michelin-starred Terrace restaurant at The Montagu Arms Hotel in Hampshire, agrees. “There’s nothing like a glut of courgettes to force you down the road of experimentation,” he says. “It has given us an opportunity to go back to a time when Nature dictates.” This is the first year for the hotel restaurant’s kitchen garden, developed on land adjacent to the property that was bought last year. “It was a jungle, and a great leveller. I’ll never forget the sight of our general manager pulling down trees, and our chefs ripping up roots.” There are now herbs galore (lemon verbena is a current favourite), plus a polytunnel filled with strawberries, tomatoes and other vegetables, an asparagus bed, and beds each for runner beans and red fruits. “Chefs used to turn their noses up at produce if it was misshapen or dirty; now I can’t keep ours out of the garden,” says Tomkinson. A bowl of homegrown produce at reception encourages guests to take an interest in the garden, which is overlooked by the restaurant’s floor-to-ceiling windows. The installation of hen houses has proven so popular that there has been a noticeable decline in chicken orders at dinner: “Sometimes there are up to six couples standing here watching us feed them — yes, we are all beginning to reconnect with Nature in some way.” You could argue that Matthew Owsley-Brown has gone native. The Norfolk-based chef sold his popular fish restaurant in Burnham Market last year to create a catering company with a difference: one that grows and rears its own produce for the business. In addition to planting fruit, vegetables and herbs at their new five-acre home in the village of West Bilney, near Swaffham, the Owsley-Brown family are now the proud owners of two Gloucestershire Old Spot pigs. “This first year has been a bit of an experiment. We’ve been finding our inner hippy,” he laughs. Owsley-Brown has already constructed a commercial kitchen in one of the outbuildings and is planning a series of pop-up restaurants in the sunny courtyard from August, alerting potential diners of the dates via Facebook and Twitter. The polytunnels, donated by a local farmer, are now packed with different Mediterranean vegetables, while out on the plot are an array of vegetables and fruits. “Yes, you make mistakes,” Owsley-Brown says, “but it’s the only way to learn. You’ve just got to do it.” What to Serve With the World Cup
Cape Town's burgeoning restaurant scene reflects city's many cultures People come to Cape Town for its fine beaches and waterfront—they have since the 1600s, when the Dutch established it as a watering stopover for ships trading with the East. They come for the sports: The city will hold eight World Cup matches this June. They come for the history, to see Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela spent most of his imprisonment. But few visitors come for the food. Daniela Bonanno, who works here for New York-based custom-vacation company Absolute Travel, thinks that may change. A spurt of high-caliber restaurants has transformed the dining scene, she says. Where the top places once offered French cooking, often heavy and meat-based, now chefs are training abroad, offering a wide variety of international influences while keeping ingredients local. As in New York, Vancouver and London, the dining landscape represents a confetti of global cuisines reflecting the many cultures of Cape Town's almost three million people. Given the oceanfront setting, seafood plays a big role in menus, as do local meats such as ostrich, karoo lamb and springbok, an antelope variety that's the national animal. And, peri-peri, a piquant red chili, is also common as a side sauce or flavor addition. Peak tourist season is during South Africa's summer from November through March, and although temperatures usually don't exceed the mid-80s, there can be some exceptionally hot days, especially in January. The slow season is the winter months of May through August. The average daytime temperature is mild at around 55 degrees, but July and August are the height of rainy season where many days can be wet and windy. Cape Town doesn't get big crowds during September, October, March and April, and the sunny days with temperatures in the 60s make these ideal visiting months. Several weeks ago—Cape Town's fall—my husband and I tried five restaurants, many of them opened in the past few years, that Capetonians said would give us an idea of their hometown's cuisine. CODFATHER- This place in the Camps Bay area, a chic South Beach equivalent full of trendy eateries and bars, got its start as a fish store in Johannesburg. "Customers began asking if the store could cook the fish they picked," says owner Skippy Shaked. Diners still get to select their fish from a large case—usually including several prawn types such as the prized tiger, crayfish, the South African version of lobster, and filets of the codlike kinglip and Cape salmon from the restaurant's own fisheries. The fish is grilled only with a touch of fish spice, and served with sauces including peri-peri and sweet chili apricot on a bed of fries and Asian style stir-fried vegetables. Make sure to see the sunset. MAZE- Gordon Ramsay, the feisty task-master of reality-television show Hell's Kitchen, runs this year-old spot at the One&Only hotel. Each of the seven restaurants of this name around the world has a distinct menu—including, in Cape Town, Namibian oysters, Mozambican langoustines and grilled eland, another South African antelope. The towering space also has an open pastry kitchen turning out desserts such as malva pudding, a kind of caramelized cake dating back to the days of Dutch rule. The 5,000-bottle cellar claims to be one of the largest in the country—heavy on South African wines, of course. BIZERCA BISTRO- After a decade in Australia's Blue Mountains, Cyrillia Deslandes returned home to South Africa and brought along her husband, Laurent, from France's Loire Valley, as chef. In late 2007, the duo opened this restaurant. Mr. Deslandes applies French techniques to local ingredients. While some dishes, like the braised farm pig trotter, are always available, a half-dozen different starters and four entrees are added each day, usually new recipes. The white mussels in a beurre-blanc sauce from Saldanha Bay on South Africa's west coast are so meaty they could be mistaken for scallops. A seared steak comes from a farm in the north, and a Provençal fish soup is rich with chunks of local crustaceans. Mr. Deslandes also regularly gives springbok filet, veal shoulder and karoo lamb stew a French treatment. BUKHARA- In the 19th century, Indians were brought to South Africa to work as indentured servants, and today they're one of the country's prominent ethnic groups. There are four Bukhara restaurants throughout South Africa; we visited the original in Cape Town's Central Business District, which has a long glass-walled kitchen and offers all the standard North Indian dishes. Many Indian eateries don't do beef justice since it's forbidden in Hinduism, but here the beef pudina marinated in mint uses South African beef, often likened in quality to the highly regarded Argentine meat. A tandoori chicken was free of the pasty orange flavor too often common in this dish. THE GRAND CAFE & BEACH- In an airy converted beachfront warehouse overlooking Table Bay, the restaurant's seating spills out onto a large terrace and the beach itself. A chic set packs it every night. Owner Sue Main is a globetrotter and her menu reflects that: The prawn tempura is via Japan, the 3-foot-long crispy pizzas topped with thin slices of local parma ham are inspired by Italy, Steak béarnaise is from Paris, and the Waldorf salad comes from the States. As for the crayfish sandwich—Cape Town's answer to the New England lobster roll—Ms. Main cuts the meat into small pieces (it's almost always served whole), mixes it with homemade mayonnaise and tucks it into a soft bun. TRIP PLANNER Getting There: Flying through Johannesburg is the only way to reach Cape Town from the U.S. without a stopover in Europe. Daily nonstop flights to Johannesburg include South African Airways from New York's JFK (the return flight stops in Dakar) and Delta Air Lines from Hartsfield-Jackson Airport in Atlanta. From Johannesburg, there's frequent service to Cape Town; the flight lasts about two hours. Where to Stay: One&Only Cape Town—This 131-room, supremely luxurious hotel with a contemporary style opened last year just off the waterfront. Rates per night start at 6,000 rand ($815). www.oneandonlyresorts.com Cape Grace—The 120-room grand dame of Cape Town's luxury accommodations, on the waterfront and decorated in a traditional Cape Malay style, was refashioned in December 2008. Rates start at $550. www.capegrace.com . De Waterkant Village—Amid cobblestone streets in a historic neighborhood between the waterfront and center area, this collection of self-service cottages, apartments and bed and breakfast style rooms has affordable, well-appointed accommodations. www.dewaterkant.com . Rates start at 950 rand. The Five Restaurants: Details Codfather, 37 The Drive, Camps Bay, 021-438-0782, about $50 a person. The Grand Café & Beach, Haul Road, off Beach Road, Granger Bay, www.thegrand.co.za, 021-425-0551, about $35 a person with a glass of wine. Maze, One&Only Cape Town, Dock Road, Victoria & Alfred Waterfront, 021-431-5222, about $40 a person with a glass of wine. Bizerca Bistro, Jetty Street, Foreshore, www.bizerca.com, 021-418-0001, about $35 for two-course meal with a glass of wine. Bukhara, 33 Church Street, www.bukhara.com, 021-424-0000, about $30 a person. — Shivani Vora is a writer based in New York. Mass output and U.S. rules have diminished flavor; what aficionados should demand
Let's talk about steak for a moment. Was the last one you ate good? How about the one before that? Be honest. The first bite, in all probability, was juicy and tender. Not bad. A brief hit of beefiness, enough to spur you on to bite No. 2. But by bite No. 4, there was a problem: grease. The tongue gets entirely coated in it. It is at this point that many hands reach for that terrible abomination called steak sauce. It's acidic and zingy and cuts through grease, but it blots out the weak flavor of the steak. At steak houses all over the country, wine drinkers know the variety of grapes used to make the wine, the patch of earth where they were grown, and the year they were picked. They might even know whether the wine was aged in a barrel made from oak grown in France or America. They don't know nearly as much about their steak. Not the breed, not what the cow ate, or where it was raised. All anyone seems to know about steak today is this: It doesn't have much flavor. The great American steak is great in name only. It has become like its hated nemesis, boneless chicken breast: bland. The decline started back in 1926 when the U.S. Department of Agriculture began grading beef. Like the rest of the country, steak had undergone a big change in the preceding decades. It was being churned out of factories like the famous Chicago and Kansas City stockyards and being distributed throughout the country. Hotels, restaurants and butcher shops were buying beef sight unseen. Some was good, and some wasn't. So the government stepped in to make things right. It introduced its famous quality grades: Prime, Choice and Good. How did the USDA separate the good beef from the bad? There was one thing everyone from ranchers and cowboys to butchers and USDA graders could agree on: fatter cattle tasted better than lean ones, so long as they weren't too old. So that's what they looked for: plump, well-fed cattle. They looked for fat on the ribs called feathering, and fat on the flank called frosting. If there was a great deal of that fat, the beef achieved the highest grade, Prime. In the 1960s, graders began cutting a side of beef and looking for the dots and swirls of fat within the exposed rib eye. This fat is called marbling. The more marbling in a rib eye, the higher the grade. Other than that, not much has changed at the USDA. What a beef grader prized in 1926 is the same thing a grader prizes today: fat. It's the cattle industry that has changed. In the 1950s, cattlemen began sending their cattle to feedlots to get fat. A feedlot is a vast sprawl of fenced-in pens where tens of thousands of cattle eat grain—usually corn—out of concrete troughs. Soon after, cattlemen started using growth promotants—hormones and steroids, basically—to get cattle fat faster, and fed them antibiotics so they could eat corn in amounts that, under normal conditions, could kill them. By the turn of the century, a new drug entered the scene: the beta2-adrenergic agonist, a muscle relaxant used in humans to treat heart and respiratory disease that makes cattle gain more muscle. And the corn cattle now eat, not surprisingly, has also taken great strides in efficiency, having been hybridized and genetically engineered to pack more fat-producing starch. More recently, we've been feeding cattle something called dried distillers grains, which is the muck that's left over after corn is distilled into ethanol. The result has been astonishing. In the 1950s, a cow was about two years old by the time it got fat. Today, it can be as young as one year old. An average carcass now yields 40% more beef than it did just 30 years ago. In short, the beef industry has experienced a tectonic supply-side shift. Production has become vastly more efficient. In 2009, beef cost 30% less than in 1974. Yet the average American is eating 20 pounds less of it per year. The USDA is not alone in worshipping at fat's altar. "Fat is flavor" is the mantra of the grilling world. Unfortunately, it's not true. Fat imparts mouth feel and richness in food. Fat can make a steak juicy and goad the mouth into salivating. But fat doesn't carry much in the way of taste. Consider wild venison or moose. The meat possesses virtually no marbling, and yet it's very flavorful—some would say too flavorful. It helps to understand what the cattle industry looked like in 1926. Then, feedlots were still decades away. The vast majority of beef cattle were fattened on grass—according to the USDA, in 1935 a mere 5% of cattle were fattened on grain, and not much grain by today's standards. Cattlemen were not paid to make cattle delicious. They were paid by the pound. And since marbled beef commanded a better price per pound, the beef business got very good at producing marbled beef more efficiently. Today, four big companies—Cargill, JBS Swift, National and Tyson Foods—dominate beef packing. Feedlots and slaughterhouses have gotten enormous. At every level, the chain of beef production has been tweaked to get cattle fat cheaply. But mass production is not without its drawbacks. Cheap beef doesn't taste good. What we have gained in yield and efficiency, we've lost in flavor. The change has been gradual, so much so that most people haven't noticed the steady decline in strip loins or rib eyes. But we don't love steak the way we used to. It isn't the prestige food it once was. That honor is now held by whey-fed pork, foie gras or rare sashimi flown in from Japan. When we go out for steak, we spend more time talking about the wine. So, what makes a steak flavorful? At last count, 340 flavor compounds. (Which, incidentally, is a mere 46 fewer flavor compounds than have been found in red wine.) These are the complex chemicals that are produced when a steak is subject to the intense heat of a pan or grill. They are formed by everything you find in a steak—amino acids, water, sugars, fat, you name it. Science, however, hasn't come anywhere close to solving the mystery of great steak. It has yet to determine precisely which compounds in steak are desirable, and how they can be achieved. But that probably has more to do with the fact that there's more research funding in getting cattle get fat quickly than there is in making them taste delicious. Extraordinary steak does exist, however. The way a steak tastes has a lot to do with what a cow eats—and the best beef is raised on grass. Simple answers, however, only get you so far. I have eaten grass-fed steak that made me want to weep with joy, but I have also eaten grass-fed steaks that induced the gagging reflex. As with wine, creating a great steak requires great passion and greater skill. A steak can be ruined by many things—a noxious weed, a butcher who misunderstands the art of aging—but it is most often ruined by the farmer or rancher who doesn't know that a grass-fed steak only tastes good when the cow it comes from is fat. Getting cows fat is simple in a feedlot. On grass, it may as well require a Ph.D. Finding an excellent steak, thankfully, is somewhat easier. It requires combing farmers' markets, searching relentlessly on the Internet and asking questions. The most important question to ask is age at slaughter. For flavor reasons, be wary of steak from a cow younger than 20 months. Ask how much the cow weighed when it was slaughtered, because any cow weighing less than 1,000 pounds is almost always too lean to be delicious. Ask about the breed. Be wary of "Continental" breeds, such as Charolais or Limousin, which do very well in feedlots and terribly on grass. Look for British breeds like Hereford, Galloway and Angus. And if you should find grass-fed Wagyu, buy it. The news for steak lovers is good. The virtuosos are overtaking the hacks. Their meat, it so happens, is better for you. It has less saturated fat, more heart-healthy omega-3s and is denser in vitamins and antioxidants. You will not find these steaks in most steak houses. A USDA beef grader cannot pick them out by sight. But when you eat one, you will remember why steak and nothing other than steak will ever be steak. The sad story, it turns out, has a happy ending. —Mark Schatzker is the author of "Steak: One Man's Search for the World's Tastiest Piece of Beef," published this month by Viking. IT began at Fred’s. I was tucking into a lobster salad over a business lunch at the swanky eatery inside Barneys when I noticed, amid the sea of designer handbags and diners who define chic, babies dotting the room. And instead of grudgingly accepting them, the staff was doting.
My daughter, Meenakshi, was 8 months old at the time, and my husband and I had been getting our restaurant-food fix by ordering takeout or hiring a sitter. Whenever we took her with us we ended up wishing we had stayed home. At our favorite pizza restaurant, which was always full of families, we were told that we were not allowed in with a stroller — Meenakshi was just 4 months, too small for a high chair, and the thought of working our way through a pie while taking turns holding her was not exactly appealing, so we took it to go. A casual American spot with a separate children’s menu seemed promising, but I was left struggling with my stroller down the handful of stairs while the staff stood idly watching. But after seeing the babies at Fred’s, I decided to try again. We were able to check in our bulky stroller, and when it came to ordering for our little gastronomist, then about 10 months old, the Fred’s waiter suggested an off-the-menu grilled cheese on whole wheat with a side of sautéed broccoli. It arrived within minutes. He was amused, not annoyed, by Meenakshi’s game of dropping her plastic cutlery on the floor more than a dozen times so he could pick it up. Meenakshi turned 2 last weekend — we celebrated at Café Boulud, where she selected her raisin-walnut roll from the bread tray to go with her goat-cheese risotto balls, and finished with a milk chocolate and peanut butter bar plus chocolate tuile (they wrote “happy birthday” on the plate), followed, of course, by the signature madeleines. She has been to some of New York’s finest eateries, finding obliging staff and a hint of culinary adventure in an otherwise uninspired diet. (And, I’m sure, some fellow diners who had paid for baby sitters and were perturbed at her presence.) There are no children’s menus at these places, where grown-up meals run as high as $100 a person, but they all have high chairs and find little ways to cater to the under-3 crowd. L’ATELIER DE JOEL ROBUCHON 57 East 57th Street, (212) 829-3844 TOT-FRIENDLY TASTES Sliders with homemade ketchup and hand-carved fries ($25), spaghetti with butter or tomato sauce ($32). TOT-FRIENDLY TOUCHES This serious dining destination at the Four Seasons Hotel does not just accept children — it welcomes them with amenities like a stroller check-in, a free Beanie Baby (the hotel is owned by the toy’s maker, Ty Warner), coloring book and crayons, and even a portable DVD player with a selection of age-appropriate movies like “Shrek.” TOT SIGHTINGS Once a week, usually at 6 p.m. • GRAMERCY TAVERN 42 East 20th Street, (212) 477-077 TOT-FRIENDLY TASTES Meatballs ($18), bacon-and-cheddar biscuits ($4), mushroom lasagna ($10 for half portion) and smoked kielbasa ($10 for half portion). TOT-FRIENDLY TOUCHES Stroller check-in, free milk and a freshly baked mini-cookie like peanut butter chocolate or molasses. TOT SIGHTINGS A few times a week in the main dining room and even more frequently in the no-reservations Tavern. “We see babies a few weeks old with their parents who are coming out for their first post-birth meal because they know they are always welcome here,” said Kevin Mahan, the general manager. • FRED'S AT BARNEYS NEW YORK 660 Madison Avenue, (212) 833-2200 TOT-FRIENDLY TASTES Grilled cheese with vegetable or fries ($12.50) is not on the menu, but just ask; small portions of pasta with San Marzano tomato sauce or farmed butter ($12); pizzas ($18 to $24). TOT-FRIENDLY TOUCHES This see-and-be-seen lunch spot offers ample stroller parking, but if your little one is sleeping or is too small for a high chair, you can bring your wheels to the table. Children’s orders get first priority in the kitchen. There “is never a point where a child is not welcome at Fred’s,” said Mark Strausman, the restaurant’s managing director. TOT SIGHTINGS Multiple times a day for lunch and dinner, and Sunday brunch is kid central. • CAFÉ BOULUD 20 East 76th Street, (212) 772-2600 TOT-FRIENDLY TASTES House-made spaghetti with aged Parmesan and fleur de sel butter ($11), petite filet mignon with fries ($19), risotto balls ($10), Belgian waffles ($14), ricotta cheese blintz with apple butter ($14). TOT-FRIENDLY TOUCHES Gavin Kaysen, the executive chef, has a 9-month-old son who loves being in the kitchen, so he strives to make the food and ambiance welcoming. Anjli Bhandari said that her 2-year-old twins loved the butter pasta and that she appreciated “how the staff was wonderfully patient as they replaced spoon after spoon that kept falling on the ground.” TOT SIGHTINGS Several times a week for 5:30 dinner, and always a handful at Saturday lunch and Sunday brunch. • VERMILION 480 Lexington Avenue, (212) 871-6600 TOT-FRIENDLY TASTES Mini-thalis (free for children under 5) — a crash course on Indian cuisine — come with naan, rice, daal, kebab and two of the day’s special entrees. There is also a “milder adaptation” menu in which the normally spicy creations are tempered to appeal to children. TOT-FRIENDLY TOUCHES Within three minutes of being seated at this elegant Indian and Latin fusion eatery, diners with children get a complimentary plate of sweet potato fries dusted with chaat masala. Their orders are expedited, and parents can have a three-course meal in 45 minutes upon request (plus the free mini-thalis!). “I find that parents dining out with infants want a great meal that’s not prolonged,” said the owner, Rohini Dey, a mother of two. “So that’s what we try to provide.” TOT SIGHTINGS Several times a week, and more often in warmer weather for outdoor seating — the space can easily accommodate strollers. Kim and Vitaly Paley opened Paley's Place restaurant in Northwest Portland in February 1995. He was and remains the chef; she is the indomitable spirit running the front of the house. There have never been any other partners or investors, though many former cooks and servers now run kitchens and dining rooms of their own.
Fifteen years and countless accolades (including being named The Oregonian's Restaurant of the Year in 1999) later, the Paleys -- owners and restaurant -- are still going strong. The menu remains bright and interesting; ingredients still come from nearby, and the tables are full of happily chattering locals and visitors. In a business where quick flash and flame-out are common themes, hitting the 15-year mark is an achievement. The Paleys celebrated the achievement -- two months late -- by sitting for an exclusive interview. Questions and answers have been edited for brevity and clarity. Q: To what do you attribute Paley's longevity? Kim: We are very hands-on. We are physically in our space all the time. And when we aren't, we are doing other work to promote the place. Vitaly: It's been a journey of discovery learning what it is we do here, and I can honestly say that it's only been in the last year that I really have begun to feel confident in my own ability and potential and to feel happy in the kitchen. The thoughts don't always translate to the fingers -- the technical prowess lags the thought process. So, sometimes you are able to think of these crazy interesting new ideas that seem perfectly logical in your head, but when you get it on the plate, all of a sudden you say to yourself, "What was I thinking?" These days it seems like my fingers and head are a lot better synchronized. Not that I would compare myself with Beethoven, but now I understand more the ability to feel the outcome of what I do. But it's taken me 15 years to get here. I've been through back surgery. In fact, that was in 2005, the year I got the James Beard Award for Best Northwest Chef but was out of the kitchen for six months. Before the surgery I held my meetings with kitchen staff lying on my stomach because I couldn't stand and they ran the kitchen for me. I consider myself lucky to have been given the award that year. Q: After 15 years, how do you keep it fresh for yourself and your customers? Kim: At least in the front of the house, every day is still different. There's no routine. Vitaly: We in the kitchen push it on a daily basis. I keep all my cooks on the edge. You have to stay creative. With the recession, last year we revisited every aspect of our business. We kept buying the same quality ingredients -- the truffles and other expensive products -- but we just became more creative in how we used them. And from the need to be more creative evolved a new style for us. We began to print a new menu daily, which we had never done. We began bringing in whole hogs and breaking them down more than we had ever done. And being creative means being able to use and sell in some form all the different parts of the pig -- to give the pig's head, for example, mass appeal. I created a cold cut that we call testarossa, which is head meat that's spiced with local fennel pollen and piment d'Espelette, rolled and slow-cooked for 18 hours. It melts on your tongue and we can't keep it in on hand, and it's become a model for us to expand our horizons . But without creativity ... if we sold it simply as "head cheese," a lot of people would say, "Head cheese? Are you kidding?" Kim: And our job out on the floor is to be educated enough, smart enough and confident enough to describe it and feel with utter abandon that this is fabulous. Vitaly: We aren't fueled by the product so much anymore. Instead, the leading factor is the need to create interesting new ideas. So, for example, there's this guy from southeast Washington who raises these incredible poussins and squabs. The other day, he walked into the kitchen and in the middle of the afternoon we decided to change our menu to include poussin. So, the kids in the kitchen are scared and they're psyched at the same time. There's this feeling of excitement that keeps it fresh. There's a section of the menu that are classics: mussels and fries, escargot, beef tartare and sweetbreads. The rest changes. The idea is that I walk into the cooler and say to myself, "Today is a brand new day. What are we going to do?" For any new dish I come up with, the three questions I have to ask are: "Does it make sense in terms of being up to our standards?" Number two: "Will the item evoke a reaction from the diner, some kind of emotional response?" And, number three, "Will we be able to execute the dish consistently?" So it's this daily creative process we go through and it's how we find meaning and respect for ingredients. Q: It was the recession that moved you in this direction? Vitaly: The vision was always there, but it had never been so focused and as clear as it is today. That's the funny part: It was always there, but I was never so sure. When we walked in here 15 years ago, we were going to buy from local people, we were going to work with local farmers and support the local economy. And this was before local and sustainable became buzz words. This is our motto. So, we are just hitting our stride, but now everyone wants to know what's new and what's hot. So we are at a crossroads: Do I want to open a new restaurant so I can be heard or do I sit back and do what we normally do and cook for people who want to eat our food? Q: Is there a second restaurant in your future? Vitaly: We have been seriously looking. We looked at the old Zefiro space on Northwest 21st, but there are too many ghosts floating around so that's not in play. But I would love to do a fish house. There's no good seafood place in Portland. And I'd like to come in and show that we do have a bounty from the sea. Kim: And it doesn't have to be local. We want to be able to get stuff from all over. Vitaly: There are plenty of sustainable items we can explore from around the world. I don't know if we would ship directly, but there's a monopoly of seafood companies in Portland, and unfortunately they are not the best if you compare the quality of what else is out there. And the same way we have been supporting local farmers, I would like to explore new ideas with seafood. We need to look past halibut and salmon. Q: Are you ready to take the flak if you open a seafood restaurant that's not locally focused? Vitaly: I'm ready. I've been waiting on the sidelines for a long time, kept a low profile and said all the diplomatic things, but it's time to stir it up a little bit. Focusing locally is really important and it should be the only way people do business and the only way they live their lives. At the same time, though, by bringing in the really good, quality products from elsewhere, we will be able to show the local purveyors that what they have right now isn't good enough. I am prepared to begin making connections with people in Seattle, San Francisco and other places and see if we can find some really interesting sources. And then the idea would be a restaurant that would very seafood-focused. We would sell whole fish by the pound, but we would still need to keep it accessible and within people's price range. And that's the challenge because seafood is inherently expensive. Anyway, for now we are still mulling this over. Q: Other than changing your culinary focus, how did Paley's survive the recession? Kim: We worked harder. We looked at our numbers, tightened up our payroll. We bought a point-of-sale computer system that tracks all sorts of things. We treated the restaurant as a business and saved a lot of money because of it. We also promoted the fact that we have half portions -- which we have always had -- but that became huge for us because our customers saw it as great value. We did not follow the herd, though. We never went with the happy hour thing. We did not want to lose our identity or integrity. We had to stick with what worked for us. Vitaly: And I want to take this opportunity to dispense with the notion that Paley's is only an expensive, special occasion restaurant. With the half portions, we provide a great value. Beyond that, even though our sales were down last year, it was still one of our most profitable ever because we had tightened things up by managing our internal numbers. Q: Where do you see yourself 15 years from now? Vitaly: As I said, I'm just hitting my stride now, but I don't know what I'll be doing that far in the future or where I'll be doing it. Maybe or maybe not in Portland. Q: Are there any mistakes you have made over the years? Any regrets? Kim: I regret we didn't bring in the computer system sooner. It's probably added 10 percent in revenues that were lost from not getting things written down. Q: What are your favorite ingredients? Vitaly: Fennel pollen, piment d'Espellette and persillade (parsley and garlic chopped together) Q: Who is your favorite food service personality and why? Kim: I know it sounds really old school, but Sirio Maccione of Le Cirque. He has this way, this honesty -- you would see him sitting down at the end of the night eating his grilled cheese sandwich. I didn't work for him, but I served him a lot when I was working in New York City. He'd come in with his wife all dressed up. His manner, his style, his elegance ... if I could aspire to emulate anyone, it would be him. For me to be able to observe him and watch how he works a room. ... There is just no other like him. Vitaly: I was always amazed at his ability to make you feel welcome even if you were sitting at the worst table in the house. Q: How do you compare the Portland dining scene with other cities? Vitaly: Portland has a ways to go. We are not as international and I'm not sure we will ever be as international as Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Chicago. You eat in high-end and even not so high-end restaurants in any of those cities and you will hear all sorts of languages being spoken. Partly we are driven by locale, but mostly we are driven by local consumer demand, and the demand for international-level dining -- the very top end, the glamour -- is not here. Instead we have the grunge, cement-floor industrial thing. Up in Vancouver, B.C., big names like Daniel Boulud and Jean-Georges Vongerichten are opening restaurants. I would like to see Portland being viewed by the serious professionals the same way we see ourselves. Once we see that, the professionals are taking notice, then we've stepped into the real world and we can play with the players. Q: What do you like to do when you aren't working? Kim: Sleep, get massages, go on long bike rides. Vitaly: That's about it. I like to catch up on my sleep when I'm not working. And I've been doing the bike commute to work every day for as long as I can remember. It's about a 35-minute ride and it helps me wind down after work. -- Michael C. Zusman BY this point, nearly everyone agrees that dining out has replaced going to the theater and that chefs are rock stars. So why don’t restaurants sell tickets?
Grant Achatz, the highly praised chef of Alinea in Chicago, has asked himself the same question. Now, he says that with his next restaurant (called, naturally, Next Restaurant), that’s just what he’ll do. Anyone wishing to eat at Next after its scheduled opening in the fall will pay in advance on its Web site. Like airlines, Next will offer cheaper tickets for off-peak hours. A table at 9:30 on a Tuesday night, say, would cost less than one for Saturday at 8. Ticket prices will also vary based on the menu, but will run from $45 to $75 for a five- or six-course meal, according to the site, nextrestaurant.com. (Wine and beverage pairings, bought with the ticket, will begin at $25.) The menu will change four times a year, with each new edition featuring the cuisine of a particular place and time. When the restaurant opens, Mr. Achatz said, the theme will be Paris in 1912, with painstakingly researched evocations of Escoffier-era cuisine. Three months later, the kitchen will turn out a fresh set of recipes — evoking, say, postwar Sicily, or Hong Kong 25 years from now, with modern techniques employed to imagine the future of Chinese cuisine. Subscriptions to a year’s worth of space-and-time coordinates will also be sold. “We now pay three or four reservationists all day long to basically tell people they can’t come to the restaurant,” Mr. Achatz said of Alinea. With Next, he intends to strip away those and other hidden costs of dining out. “It allows us to give an experience that is actually great value,” he said. “That’s the theory.” But the plan would also have value for Mr. Achatz and his main partner in Next and Alinea, Nick Kokonas. By law, restaurants may distribute tips only to those employees who work in service. But the service charge included in the ticket price “gives him control over the money,” said Bill Guilfoyle, an associate professor of business management at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y. “He can give it to whomever he sees fit.” Mr. Achatz could pay cooks more than members of the wait staff, a reversal of the usual pecking order that could allow him to recruit shining kitchen talent. Mr. Guilfoyle also said that the 150 or so tickets that Next sells each night could mean a cash-flow bonanza like the one Starbucks enjoys on its cash cards. Starbucks had a multimillion-dollar “float of products the customers had paid for but hadn’t collected yet,” he said. “If Achatz is smart, he’ll invest this in the futures market.” Much of the work of taking reservations has already migrated to the Internet. Customers who book seatings at unpopular hours on Open Table earn points that add up to cash vouchers accepted by all restaurants that the service represents. The restaurateur David Chang has an online reservation system at his Momofuku Ko, although checks are settled at meal’s end. He said that the savings in payroll and staff time have been tremendous. He had considered off-peak pricing, too, but was afraid it would turn off customers. “It’s going to irritate very many people,” Mr. Chang said of the ticket plan. “But I think it’s liberating, and a lot of restaurants are going to follow suit.” But Mr. Achatz, who is also working on concurrent plans to open a bar called Aviary, hopes that people won’t be irritated once they enjoy the convenience of a meal with no decisions to be made and no check to be signed. “There’s no transactions in the restaurant at all,” he said. “So you can literally come in, sit down, start your experience, and when you’re done, you just get up and leave.” By PETE WELLS The septuagenarian servers at Sam's Grill on Bush Street are notoriously gruff, but one of them drops the act after Tyler Florence orders the Hangtown Fry.
"Hey, you're the guy on television, ain't you?" Months later, when Florence strolls into the Financial District's crowded Barbacco during the Friday lunch swarm, heads swivel and fingers actually point at the celebrity chef. Florence is immediately greeted by owner Umberto Gibin. "Thank you for the flowers, sir," says Gibin. "They were lovely." Florence, you see, sent congratulatory flowers to Barbacco after its big three-star review. The cherubic-faced Food Network star has been a common sight in the Financial District lately, and as Barbacco's bouquet can attest, he is doing his best to fit in with his neighbors as he prepares to unveil his first restaurant, Wayfare Tavern, in June. It will be housed in the former Rubicon, one of San Francisco's most storied restaurants and once upon a time a breeding ground for some of the city's best chefs. As if that isn't enough, Florence is also opening two more restaurants - El Paseo in Mill Valley and a rotisserie shop in Napa - soon thereafter. For the Marin resident, it makes perfect sense. "If you ask parents if it's easier to have triplets or have a kid every two years, they'd say having triplets is easier, because you do everything at one time," he explains. Now 39 years old, Florence is entering his 15th year on the Food Network. His latest show - a cross-country race called "Food Truck Wars" - starts filming this week. But as evidenced by the burn scars on his forearms, he spent years in New York kitchens before fame arrived. More than a decade later, he's ready to make a splashy return to the restaurant game. He's picked a doozy for his flagship; 558 Sacramento St. has long been one of the city's most revered spaces, best known for its reign as Rubicon under mega-restaurateur Drew Nieporent. Florence is reinventing it as a gathering place inspired by the city's Barbary Coast era. A working fireplace topped with a stuffed mammal head is slated for the ground floor, just past the raw bar and open kitchen. The second floor will feature a billiards room; in the adjacent alley, Florence plans a beer garden. There's a lot going on. "We're doing three restaurants between now and August. For me, it's really just the next level of growth," he says. That enterprising mentality seems to define him. During the aforementioned Barbacco lunch, where his shiny new iPad also gets its share of stares, Florence takes phone calls, casually tossing about six-figure dollar amounts between bites of risotto. What do you do? Later, when asked how he describes his job to his children, he has a frank answer. "I'm a businessman. And I love food." Florence isn't a chef by any typical definition: He's an entrepreneur who lists moguls like Ralph Lauren and Martha Stewart alongside chefs Charlie Palmer and Tom Colicchio as his role models. He's taken his brand to unprecedented places: organic baby food, a $4.99 iPhone app and, in October, his own wine label. Oh, and the guy has 181,000 followers on Twitter. "The food community expects their chefs to be poor, little humble guys that hunt mushrooms by the third moonlight of the third full moon of the month," he muses. "I've set myself up to have a vertically integrated, multitiered company." Then there's Applebee's. In 2006, Florence became the face of the chain, quickly opening the floodgates of criticism (and jokes) from industry cohorts who saw the endorsement as a sellout. That said, the ends might have justified the means. $3 million "I wouldn't be here now if it wasn't for that opportunity," which, he says, netted him nearly $3 million. Though he's unsure if he would do it again, the Applebee's money made the next steps possible in the midst of a recession: a house in Marin, a retail shop and, eventually, a restaurant empire. Soon he will replicate the Napa rotisserie shop across America, with a second location already scheduled for SFO's new terminal and leases looming at several high-profile malls. So what's the endgame? "I want to have a winery up in Sonoma where my wife and I can just kick back, play with our grandchildren and watch the grapes grow," he says. "And I'm starting that process now." It's not going to be easy. Yes, there will be epic crowds on day one at Wayfare Tavern. Neighborly flowers aside, there will also be reviews, Yelpers and a city wary of the cult of the celebrity chef. But Florence doesn't seem worried. "Everything I've done in my entire life boils down to this moment. You know, it's really my game to lose." Rest assured, San Francisco will be watching. Eating at Tyler's Tyler Florence plans to open the following restaurants this summer: Wayfare Tavern: 588 Sacramento St., San Francisco. El Paseo: 17 Throckmorton, Mill Valley. Tyler Florence Rotisserie & Wine: 710-740 Main St., Napa. Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/04/22/DD951D10JV.DTL&type=food#ixzz0lwkYH6yu TEN years ago, Matthew Beason’s duties as a restaurant manager here included driving to the airport to retrieve a weekly shipment of duck confit and pâté from New York.
“We couldn’t even buy anything like that around here,” said Mr. Beason, who went on to open Six Plates Wine Bar, now one of many ambitious restaurants around Durham. “Now, virtually every place in town makes its own.” Of the rivalrous cities that make up the so-called Research Triangle — Chapel Hill, Raleigh and Durham — Durham 10 years ago was the unkempt sibling: scruffy and aging. “There was no one on the street at night, just the smell of tobacco drying in the warehouses,” Mr. Beason said. Now, a drive around town might yield the smell of clams from the coastal town of Snead’s Ferry, steaming in white wine, mustard and shallots at Piedmont restaurant; pungent spice and sweet fennel from the “lamby joe” sandwich at Six Plates; and seared mushrooms and fresh asparagus turned in a pan with spring garlic at Watts Grocery. The vast brick buildings still roll through the city center, emblazoned with ads for Lucky Strike and Bull Durham cigarettes. They are being repurposed as art studios, biotechnology laboratories and radio stations. More important for food lovers, hundreds of outlying acres of rich Piedmont soil have “transitioned” from tobacco, and now sprout peas, strawberries, fennel, artichokes and lettuce. Animals also thrive in the gentle climate, giving chefs access to local milk, cheese, eggs, pigs, chickens, quail, lambs and rabbits. “You can see the change, just driving from here to the coast,” two hours away, said Amy Tornquist, the chef and an owner of Watts Grocery, a restaurant near the Duke campus. Ms. Tornquist, 44, has lived in the area all her life. “You never saw sheep when I was young, you never saw cattle in the fields — it was all tobacco all the time,” she said. Ms. Tornquist’s restaurant isn’t blatantly farm to fork: it’s simply a given in Durham these days. “One of our farmers said that at this point, it would make more sense for us to list the things on the menu that aren’t local,” said Drew Brown, a chef-owner of Piedmont, a restaurant a few steps from Durham’s farmer’s market and right next door to the city’s public herb garden. Spring is just blowing into the Triangle, bringing strawberries, mushrooms and the first Sugar Snack carrots and small white turnips. “We’re raising things I never would have dreamed of,” said Michael Brinkley, a farmer whose family farm in nearby Creedmoor produced up to 60 acres of tobacco until about five years ago, when the Brinkleys shifted entirely to produce. There are still plenty of good places for a barbecue plate, excellent French bistros like Vin Rouge and Rue Cler, and some white-tablecloth dining rooms, both traditional and modern. But the most intriguing cooks here have a few things in common: an understanding of how to give a menu a sense of place; a true love of pork and greens in all their forms; and a lack of interest in linens and glassware. Watts Grocery, for example, looks like an upscale sports bar, but it tastes like a Southern-artisanal Union Square Cafe. “In the old days, people would have to get out of here to really learn about food,” said Matt Neal, the owner of Neal’s Deli in Carrboro, near Chapel Hill, where he grew up. These days, a chef here is made by learning all the ways to cook cornmeal and butcher hogs, not by taking a Grand Tour of Europe followed by hotel school in Switzerland. Tanya Catolos, the pastry chef at the formal Washington Duke Inn in Durham, moonlights at the city’s farmer’s market, selling handmade “Pop’t-Arts” filled with Nutella or jam from a vintage Airstream trailer. “You can be very playful with food around here” she said. “People really get it now.” (She’ll be making local-rhubarb ones soon.) The food at Neal’s Deli is resolutely everyday and American — like breakfast biscuits stuffed with egg and sausage — but the eggs are steamed tender with a touch of pepper and parsley, and the wide, crisp biscuits are mixed from high-fat local buttermilk and organic flour from a nearby mill that’s been held by the same family for nine generations. The sausage patty is from Cane Creek Farm in Alamance County, where Eliza MacLean, an owner of the farm and a former veterinarian, advises farmers across the state on the transition from tobacco to pork. Every bit of that care comes through in the flavor of the finished product, a stunning bargain at $3.25. Mr. Neal prides himself on high-quality, low-brow food, like a house-made porchetta sandwich with spinach and pickled peppers, served with a bag of Zapp’s potato chips from Louisiana. “I honestly do not know how to make a soufflé,” said Mr. Neal, whose father, Bill Neal, was the founding chef of Crook’s Corner and La Residence in Chapel Hill and one of the most famous chefs in the South until his death in 1991. Bill Neal, his son added hastily, certainly did know how to make a soufflé. “But soufflés are not what I want to cook,” he said. What Mr. Neal and others like him do want to cook are full-flavored versions of the food they learned at their parents’ elbows, and in influential local kitchens like Crook’s Corner, Nana’s and Magnolia Grill, where many of them polished their craft. The tender cornmeal butter cakes at Watts Grocery are like a combination of a French financier and Southern spoon bread; at Six Plates, the slick-sounding sautéed crawfish on red pepper polenta with tomato broth is a take on shrimp and grits, the Carolina coastal classic. Mr. Brinkley, the farmer, says that his family’s farm, and many others, might not have made it through the loss of the tobacco cash crop without the lucky coincidence of the rise in the local food movement. Now, chefs compete over his lady peas, pink-eyed peas and butternut squash — a relatively exotic vegetable here, he said, where the sweet potato was once the king of the winter table. Then again, “We’re also working hours I never would have dreamed of,” he said, adding that raising such diverse crops and marketing them has more than doubled his workload. He makes weekly appearances at the Durham farmer’s market. Mr. Brown, of Piedmont, said that the farmers there are treated like rock stars, that dogs and babies abound and that hipsters mingle with hippies. As Mr. Brinkley said, “It’s a lot different from dropping off your tobacco at the station and picking up your check.” By JULIA MOSKIN |
BLOG
News from our manufacturer's & re-posts from publications around the hotel and restaurant industry. Archives
January 2013
Categories
All
|