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.
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SAN FRANCISCO, CA—Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants has achieved 50 hotels in its portfolio with the opening of Eventi in New York City.
Eventi is the company's fourth hotel in New York and is located in the Chelsea district. Designed by Colum McCartan, the property features 292 guestrooms with custom-made furnishings. Eventi's public areas, including an outdoor plaza, a spa and a multi-level restaurant will open later this year. CHICAGO–Hyatt Hotels Corp. unveiled plans to add three hotels in international markets to its growing Andaz lifestyle brand.
The hotels will be located in Sanya Sunny Bay, China; Delhi, India; and Providenciales, Turks & Caicos. With the four Andaz properties already open and others previously announced, the brand will have 11 hotels open by 2014. It was nearly midnight on a bitter January night when a group of Washington's most celebrated chefs assembled around a long table at downtown hotspot Brasserie Beck to debrief one another on their recent White House mission. Enlisted by the first lady's office in her war against childhood obesity, each had eaten lunch at a D.C. public school. The unanimous verdict was fairly predictable: no stars.
The food, largely paid for by the federal government, was fatty and overprocessed. A breakfast sandwich had more than 100 ingredients, said one chef, angrily waving a photo of what looked like a burrito that he'd taken on his cellphone. Where there were salads, the kids just threw them away, bemoaned another. In one school, a chef reported, there was no cafeteria at all. The kids ate out of pizza boxes at a folding table. "What we are feeding our children is an outrage. We should be marching with picket signs and pitchforks in revolution," said Cathal Armstrong of Restaurant Eve in Alexandria. But a wholesale replacement of chicken nuggets and nachos is a tall order. Whatever the chefs think, the meals served in schools do meet federal nutrition standards -- and they are delivered at a price the government is willing to pay. So the city's Iron Chefs -- the group includes White House assistant chef Sam Kass, José Andrés of Jaleo, Todd Gray of Equinox, Spike Mendelsohn of Good Stuff Eatery and Robert Wiedmaier of Brasserie Beck -- decided that each chef would adopt a school. Kass is spearheading the project. In the months since that meeting, the chefs have taken the first steps to make real the lofty goals of Michelle Obama's Let's Move! initiative, which aims to end childhood obesity within a generation. Gray and Mendelsohn began teaching cooking classes to hundreds of students and parents, and have helped to plant school gardens. Armstrong established a nonprofit catering service with a mission to create healthful, affordable food for public school cafeterias. On Friday, they and hundreds of other chefs will gather at the White House to launch a national adopt-a-school program. Dubbed Chefs Move to Schools, the initiative will draw both the brightest stars of the culinary universe -- Rachael Ray, Tom Colicchio and Cat Cora -- and the unknown soldiers who staff corporate kitchens, food banks and culinary schools. Their mission won't be easy. The lack of funding (the federal government allocates $2.68 per child per lunch) and equipment (many schools don't have kitchens) stand in the way of freshly made salads or even hand-cut french fries. At the very least, the combination of chefs and reality-style makeovers is smart marketing by the White House. But if the nearly 1,000 chefs who have signed on to the program catch the same fever as their Washington counterparts, the hope is that the program could spark a real "Food Revolution," Jamie Oliver-style. A thousand forks of light, if you will. Witness the excitement at Murch Elementary, the school that chef Gray adopted in January. His first cooking lesson and lecture were scheduled for a Sunday -- after a major snowstorm. And yet about 250 parents and students arrived at the school auditorium in Northwest Washington. Gray, who will talk at the White House event about his experiences, stood on the stage and showed them how to whip up a cucumber and bread salad and a smoothie with blood orange and beet juices. "The kids were slugging this stuff back," he recalls. "Parents kept saying they'd never seen kids do that." Mendelsohn, who made his name as a runner-up on the reality TV show "Top Chef," is taking a similar tack at the KIPP Academy in Southeast Washington. The chef was attracted to the charter school, he says, because it "has done the same thing with education as we want to do with food: to reinvent it." He has taught several Saturday cooking classes that students attend with their parents. (At one lesson, each child was given a tomato and cucumber to slice. The students with the best knife skills paraded their work around the cafeteria.) On Monday, he will plant a rooftop garden for the school. Since the launch of Let's Move!, many food service providers have already begun to improve their offerings. In Chicago, for example, Chartwells, the same vendor that works in D.C. public schools, has tightened its nutrition standards and promised to amp up the number of leafy green vegetables and whole grains served. But Armstrong wants more dramatic change, faster. Over the past several months, he has visited nearby school food production facilities, where he says he was appalled to discover that reheating processed food is considered "cooking." He has recruited a board of directors and philanthropists who have agreed to raise money for the project. The plan is to provide food for one local school, then expand across the city. Jaleo's Andrés has taken his case to the Hill. He has hosted a series of off-the-record dinners for journalists and policymakers to drum up interest -- they are dubbed the Brillat-Savarin dinners in honor of the French chef who famously said, "Tell me what you eat and I'll tell you who you are." The chef has worked closely with sympathetic lawmakers including Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), among others. Andrés says chefs need to lobby for dollars like everybody else. President Obama requested $10 billion for childhood nutrition programs in his 2010 budget. The Senate has allocated less than half that amount. "We have to be more outspoken about how we feed our children," Andrés says. "Chefs have to have a bigger role in the school lunch program. They have to have a bigger voice in the political establishment in anything that has to do with food." Perhaps. But chefs' raging egos may not be well-suited to the moribund ways of Washington or the regulation-bound world of school food. "Chefs are accustomed to being in charge. But you can't just walk in and overhaul someone's kitchen," notes Ellie Krieger, the host of the Food Network show "Healthy Appetite." "A little bit of anger gets you motivated. But you have to channel it in a positive way and work as part of a team." For Krieger, who is attending the Chefs Move event, that meant forming a "wellness committee" and establishing vegetable tastings for students at her daughter's public school in Manhattan. Ann Cooper, the nutrition director of the Boulder Valley school district in Colorado who calls herself the "Renegade Lunch Lady," says she believes chefs can have the most impact by educating and inspiring children to eat healthful food. "We've grown a generation of children who think chicken nugget is a food group," she says. "I think the thing that makes the most sense for chefs who know nothing about school food, which is most of them, is to use our newfound celebrity status to get kids to think about food, taste food, cherish food in the way that we do." As for larger political aims? "Maybe the answer is that in addition to adopting a school, we should all adopt a congressperson," Cooper says. Maybe all we really need to do is take them to a school and show them what we feed our kids." By Jane Black Washington Post Staff Writer MELISSA Monosoff distinctly remembers what she calls her "aha!" beer moment.
Monosoff, a master sommelier at Savona Restaurant in Gulph Mills, was working at Maia, the sadly short-lived eclectic American restaurant on the Main Line. She was trying to find the right wine pairing for an appetizer of barbecued house-smoked eel served with a foie gras torchon and hazelnuts. "I tried different Alsatian wines, a Pinot Gris," she said. "Not this, not that - nothing worked. It was the eel that was driving me crazy, with its combination of sweet and smoky. Then the lightbulb went off. It's not wine at all - oh, my God! It's beer. Belgian Chimay Red, which is also a little sweet and smoky, was perfect. From then on, I was hooked." Monosoff now frequently turns to the complexity of beer when she's looking for the ideal flavor match for everything from bitter summer salad greens to sushi to chicken and vegetables on the grill. "You'd be missing something if you didn't experiment with beer and food pairings," she said. "Beer makes so many foods taste better." With the third annual Philly Beer Week kicking off tomorrow, a riotous 10 days of 872 brew-related events at more than 140 bars in the city and 'burbs, it's no secret that Philadelphians love their beer. Thinking about how the many complex flavors in craft beer can work with food takes the whole beer experience to the next level. "That's something wine drinkers don't always realize," said Erin McLean, director of Tria's Fermentation School, the ongoing education academy concentrating on Tria's toothsome triumvirate: beer, wine and cheese. Originally directed just to Tria staff, the academy also offers fun classes for the general public, including the upcoming Beer for Winos, offered by McLean and Monosoff in July. "We're so spoiled in Philly," said McLean, who combines an education background with a passion for food and drink. "We have an amazing array of beer available to us from all over the world. Beer offers as complex a tasting experience as wine does, so why not explore it?" Al Paris has been attending his own version of Beer U. in the past year. Paris, a familiar figure on the local restaurant scene for more than two decades, is executive chef at the newly opened City Tap House, an ambitious craft brew pub in a stunning lodge setting that would be right at home in Vail, Colo. Notable for its 60 beers on tap - each line fed straight from a changing array of kegs - City Tap House's impressive beer program is managed by beer steward Andy Farrell , who, along with company culinary director Brian Cooke, a former general manager at the Fountain at the Four Seasons, worked with Paris to develop the beer-friendly menu. "We did a lot of tasting," said Paris, whose culinary background includes extensive experience with Californiawine. The chef found himself surprised at just how similar wine and beer pairing could be. "I thought I knew what I liked, but the more I tasted, the more my flavor profile changed," he said. Pairing light beers with lighter foods and darker beers with heavier foods is a pattern familiar to wine drinkers, added Paris. "And you can often correlate wine to beer - for example, taste the astringent, tannic qualities found in really heavy Barola or Cabernet in a more heavily hopped beer." Philly's love of beer is downright historical, said Paris. "Pennsylvania once had more beer breweries than England and Ireland combined," he said. Pay a visit to the City Tavern, in Independence National Historical Park, and you can quaff a pint of Thomas JeffersonAle, one of the restaurant's Ales of the Revolution, brewed to 18th-century specs by locally based Yards Brewing Company. At MidAtlantic, Daniel Stern'shandsome neighborhood taproom on the ground level of the Drexel Science Center, chef de cuisine Steve Lamborn came up with an array of craft-beer matched dinners for Philly Beer Week. "Our emphasis is on both the cuisine and craft beers of the mid-Atlantic region," he said. Each evening, from Monday through June 11, he's creating a $35, three-course menu to pair with the likes of Cricket Hill East Coast Lager, Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA and Erie Railbender Ale. "Beer can be much more forgiving than wine when you're eating something tricky like red sauce, artichokes or asparagus," he said. A hoppier beer, like Indiapale ale, is the perfect complement to traditional bar food and anything with spice. Lamborn makes a zippy dish of pork "wings," boneless pieces of pork shoulder fried and tossed in a molasses chili sauce. "The heat of the wings and maltiness of a beer like Troegs' Troegenator are just made for each other." Paris' beer-loving menu includes an outstanding sausage trio of lamb merguez, bratwurst and sweet fennel, an array of brick-oven pizzas, mussels spiked with spicy chorizo, roasted garlic or shaved fennel and a daily supper that might include a pan-seared grouper (Monday) or suckling pig (June 11). When pairing, said Paris, think about matching the flavor notes in the beer - the citrus, earthiness or sweet fruit - with like foods. A few more general thoughts: The hoppier and more bitter a beer is, the stronger flavor profile you'll need to stand up to it. For vino lovers, red wine is akin to ale and white wine to lager. Hop-forward beers can stand in for a more acidic wine. But, Paris added, "Really, there are no hard and fast rules. The point is to be adventurous. Try matching complementary flavors, and then try contrasting pairings to see how you like them." McLean agreed. "Just like with wine, there are guidelines, but no definitive right or wrong. Whatever you like is the best pairing for you." Read more: http://www.philly.com/philly/entertainment/20100603_Menu_with_a_brew__Chefs_refine_the_art_of_pairing_beer_and_food.html#ixzz0ppUPIAhR When he opens his neighborhood bistro, Adsum, this summer, Matt Levin will include ingredients sourced from the Southwark/Queen Village Community Garden in many of the dishes he serves. It’s an idea that he says he’s been kicking around for months. Last week he met with the garden’s members to try to formalize a plan to use their homegrown hauls, and is currently awaiting an answer from the group. “I got a lot of positive feedback from individual gardeners,” Levin told Grub Street. “They still have to vote on it, but I think its safe to say that I will be utilizing something from the garden in someway.”
The ability to walk through a garden, pick carrots out of the ground, walk back to the restaurant and prepare a dish with them is an alluring prospect for the chef. “I’ve always tried to keep things local and support my neighborhood,” Levin said. “It’s kind of hard to get more local than three blocks away.” In the coming weeks Levin will begin reaching out to more of the city’s community gardens in order to source a wider selection of locally-grown ingredients. Retirement hasn’t been easy for Chef Jean-Marie Lacroix. He’s tried twice, but says he didn’t enjoy it much either time. Last month he announced a new partnership with local caterers Max & Me, who it turns out he had been working with as a consultant almost from the moment he bid adieu to his namesake restaurant at The Rittenhouse hotel in 2008. That restaurant he opened shortly after retiring from an 18-year run at the Four Season’s Fountain restaurant. “I always enjoy the teaching aspect of my job,” Lacroix told Grub Street. “After consulting for two years, training their staff, I accepted Max & Me’s offer to become a partner.”
The new job offers some excitement, Lacroix told us. “It’s great for me,” he explains. “Catering is new for me, so it’s a new challenge. A challenge is not boring, is it?” Between stepping away from The Rittenhouse and signing on fulltime with Max & Me, the 69-year-old chef kept himself busy bicycling, traveling and working as a private chef for his wife. “She took good care of me for 40 years,” he said. “It is my time now to take care of her.” This Thursday, June 3, Lacroix will lead Gusti d’Italia, a cooking demonstration and small plate tasting at the National Constitution Center, which coincides with its exhibit Ancient Rome & America. Following that he will participate in a charity dinner at Loews Philadelphia Hotel on June 6 that benefits the Cardiovascular Institute of Philadelphia, and will turn up again at the Vetri Foundation’s Great Chefs Event benefiting Alex's Lemonade Stand on June 15. Restaurant deal maker and real estate guru Steve Kamali announces that he's opening an office in London to help his clients—that include Tom Colicchio and Marcus Samuelsson—scope out restaurant spaces overseas. He notes that he already working with the owners of Quality Meats and Bagatelle on their "trans-Atlantic mission."
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.” |
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