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| Preface | xi | ||||
| Acknowledgments | xiv | ||||
| Leading Chefs Interviewed for Chef's Night Out | xvi | ||||
| Restaurants Mentioned in Chef's Night Out | xix | ||||
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1 | (20) | |||
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21 | (16) | |||
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37 | (10) | |||
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47 | (273) | |||
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49 | (4) | |||
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56 | (17) | |||
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73 | (15) | |||
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88 | (8) | |||
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112 | (17) | |||
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279 | (20) | |||
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299 | ||||
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297 | (4) | |||
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301 | (2) | |||
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| APPENDIX | |||||
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308 | (5) | |||
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313 | (3) | |||
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316 | (2) | |||
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318 | (2) | |||
| Index | 320 |
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Chapter One
What does it take to become a great chef in America today? Certainly education--either as an apprentice or, more than ever before, in professional cooking schools--and experience in the kitchen are important. A profound understanding of ingredients, and the flavors and techniques that will best enhance their taste, is vital--along with a commitment to excellence at every step of the way.
But leading professional chefs across America agree that the most important aspect of a professional chef's development is eating out. What most of the general public do for sustenance, and many restaurant lovers do for entertainment, is the lifeblood of an ambitious chef's professional development.
"I am a huge advocate of chefs learning to cook by eating in good restaurants," says Rick Bayless of Frontera Grill and Topolobampo (Chicago). "I recommend that constantly. The first thing that anyone who's serious about becoming a chef should do is save up every penny they've got and eat at the best restaurants in the country. And not just once--they need to go regularly."
Bob Kinkead, chef-owner of Kinkead's (Washington, DC), agrees. "I have always been of the opinion that I learn a lot more by dining in restaurants than by working in them," says Kinkead. "That's how I saw the big picture of what a restaurateur aims to achieve. A lot of the time, people get stuck in the restaurant kitchen or in the dining room and they don't get to see what the rest of the picture is all about. For chefs and cooks, it's important to see the context in which food is presented. The whole dining experience is not just about the food, the service, or the décor--great restaurants pull everything together into a great package."
Eating out offers professional chefs a chance to experience a taste of history; to learn the best practices of those restaurants that excel at one or more aspects of the restaurant experience, such as food, service, and/or ambiance; and to develop a sense of their own place within the context of the contemporary restaurant culture.
Suzanne Goin of Lucques (Los Angeles) believes that it's absolutely essential for young cooks to eat out. "I can't think of anything that is more important," she insists. "When I interview a cook, I always ask, `Where do you eat? What are your favorite restaurants? Have you eaten here?' That is how I figured out where to work--I wanted to work where I wanted to eat! When I walked into Al Forno [in Providence], I smelled the aromas, tasted the food, and just knew I had to work there!"
Despite the importance of dining out as part of a culinary professional's education, it's something that is not part of a typical cooking school's curriculum--underscoring the need for the book you're now holding. "In cooking school, we were never taught how to dine," recalls Rocco DiSpirito of Union Pacific (New York). "In fact, I don't think there's enough emphasis placed on the notion that you need to dine as much as you cook in order to really have a full understanding of the two sides of the experience."
Rick Tramonto and Gale Gand of Tru and Brasserie T (Chicago) concur. "Young kids should spend more money on travel and eating," argues Tramonto. Gand adds, "We think dining out is so important that we even recommend that cooks invest in themselves by maxing out their credit cards on restaurants instead of clothes!"
Investing in this book is an excellent place to start, to point you on your journey.
Eating Out as a life-Changing Experience
In the best of circumstances, dining in restaurants can literally be a life-changing experience. In fact, it was in this way that several leading chefs found their calling.
"My dad was a total Francophile, and took us to lunch at Roger Vergé when I was around twelve," recalls Suzanne Goin of Lucques, "I was served a whole fish, with slices of cucumber on top as the scales. As a kid, that fish completely blew me away! We had a cheese plate, and the waiter was so great to me and my sister as he showed us all the different goat cheeses, which I loved. Plus, the restaurant is a beautiful stone mill in a dreamy, fantasy setting. It felt like we were members of a little club.
"The experience was not just about the food, but about the restaurant--the whole magical world of it," says Coin. "It made me want to get closer to that world, not only by becoming a chef, but by opening a restaurant--so I could really be creating something, as opposed to just cooking something."
A visit to the Drake Hotel when she was sixteen was a turning point for Cindy Pawlcyn of Mustards Grill (Napa). "I had soft-shell crabs, which were sautéed tableside with sherry, and I remember thinking, `This is so cool-- I want to be a chef!' I had already been thinking of becoming a chef, but this was the experience that really convinced me. It was every single element of it, from the exotic aromas, flavors, and textures to the beauty of the dining room and their treating us like ladies--the whole nine yards."
Paul Bartolotta, formerly of Spiaggia (Chicago), found himself working in restaurants in Milwaukee as a teenager, but his job developed into a calling. "I ended up working for a Florentine chef," he remembers, "and I would sit around late at night, listening to his stories about growing up in Italy. I was enamored with all the folklore. He told me, `If you want to get closest to real Italian food, you need to go to Doro's in Chicago.'
"So, when I was seventeen, I put on my white polyester suit and took the train to Chicago for the first meal I had ever had by myself. Doro's had white leather chairs, white linen and fine silver, and served northern Italian food. They were wondering what this kid was doing eating by himself in a restaurant, but I was totally excited by the whole experience. At the end of the meal, I asked to thank the chef. When it was explained to me that the chef didn't come into the dining room, I asked to go into the kitchen. At that time, diners weren't allowed in the kitchen, but I finally got back there, where I found all these cooks speaking Italian. The chef was a big burly guy with a waxed handlebar mustache, a floppy chef's hat, and a little tie around his neck. He looked like the quintessential Italian chef.
"I asked if I could watch for a few minutes, and just stood by the wall, watching him call orders. It was an epiphany for me--that's when I knew that I wanted to cook," says Bartolotta. "I subsequently went back several times, ultimately becoming friends with the chef. I would come in and watch them cook in the morning, then go sit and eat lunch, and then take the bus and train back to Milwaukee."
Allen Susser of Chef Allen's (Miami) recalls eating at La Grenouille in New York when he was seventeen. "It was very classic, fabulous French cuisine. It was the first time I ate frogs' legs and had the adventure of eating something new and different. The whole combination of food, wine, and service was transformational. The experience at La Grenouille showed me what classic cuisine could be like, and it brought together all the information I was learning in school [New York City Technical College]. That meal compelled me to go to France to work."
A fellow student at New York City Technical College, Michael Romano of Union Square Café (New York), befriended an instructor who nurtured his interest in the field. "Tom Arends, who taught a wine course, and I became good friends. He saw a real spark for this profession in me. He was influential in getting me a job in Paris at the Hotel Bristol, and while I was there, he visited and we had many meals together.
"One was at the Bath Hotel in England. It was like one of those meals you read about in the old books. We were drinking Burgundy from the thirties and eating roasted grouse--in England they hang grouse, and they get pretty ripe. The experience of having all this food that I had read and heard about, accompanied by forty-year-old Burgundies, was a great education.
"He also took me to most of the three-star restaurants in Paris at that time. Those meals were very classic, and they brought to life in a spectacular way the things I was learning about in school. If you've never had that kind of experience, you just don't know it exists. It doesn't matter what you're cooking if you've never seen what it can be. I am very grateful for those experiences. Knowing how much they influenced me, I encourage aspiring chefs to seek them out." says Romano.
Dining as Professional Development
Any serious creative professional must first devote time and effort to mastering his or her creative domain. While it's possible to simply pick up a paintbrush and start painting, the serious study of painting involves not only learning the basics of paint, paintbrushes, and canvases, but examining and analyzing the techniques and philosophies of great painters in history.
"No professional operates in a vacuum," observes Robert Del Grande of Café Annie (Houston). "If you look back, Mozart knew Haydn's music backward and forward, and Beethoven knew Mozart's music backward and forward, and all three of them studied Bach's music. You always want to study those who came before you, and then your peers."
The same is true for professional chefs. Their concerted efforts to learn from those who came before them send them not only to books but to the restaurants in whose hallowed halls cuisine came--and is coming--into its own.
"Reading good art criticism will allow you to develop a sense of how a certain piece of art fits into the whole world of art, both historically and conceptually," says Rick Bayless. "In terms of cuisine, I think it's very hard for young chefs to get that perspective. You can't get it in the kitchen--you've got to be in the dining room."
A TASTE OF HISTORY
A generation ago, any self-respecting professional chef in America needed to make a pilgrimage to Europe to learn from some of the world's best restaurants. Today, many of the world's best restaurants can be found in the United States, but still, because of the importance of particular European restaurants and chefs in culinary history, many of the most serious professionals with the resources to do so still make it a point to visit these restaurants.
The anecdotes that follow in this section are representative of story after story we heard from leading chefs across the country. While the specific details differ, we suspect that the other chefs who have made pilgrimages to the same restaurants will nod in recognition of their own similar experiences.
LA PYRAMIDE
La Pyramide is one of the most influential restaurants in France's restaurant history, as it is in many ways the "grandfather" of several of the country's other most important restaurants. Some of the cooks who once worked under the restaurant's legendary chef-owner Fernand Point include Paul Bocuse, Alain Chapel, Louis Outhier, and the Troisgros brothers, all of whom went on to become Michelin three-star chefs in their own right. The restaurant is also credited with giving rise to nouvelle cuisine.
Fernand Point was succeeded after his death by his wife, Marie-Louise, who continued to run the restaurant and maintain its Michelin three-star rating. Point's book Ma Gastronomie is considered a classic. It was published posthumously in 1969 as a colorful history of La Pyramide, Point's culinary philosophy, and his signature recipes. Its broad influence--as well as the restaurant's reputation--naturally led chefs from around the world to make pilgrimages to La Pyramide.
"When I was younger, I read a lot and was very taken with Fernand Point and La Pyramide," remembers David Waltuck of Chanterelle and Le Zinc (New York). "When I graduated from college I went to Europe to travel by myself, and I had to have lunch at La Pyramide. Fernand had already passed away, but his wife was still there, as were many of the staff members I had read about.
"It was extraordinary. I had built my expectations up so much, but the experience didn't let me down. I still remember everything I ate. I started with a crayfish gratin, one of La Pyramide's signature dishes, then had trout mousse with a black truffle sauce, followed by beef with red wine and marrow, and finally dessert. I remember being very, very full--I didn't eat for a day afterward!
"I drank a half bottle of white wine and a half bottle of red wine, and I was struck that the sommelier treated wine without any kind of pretension. He had a workingman's hands, which wrapped around each bottle. I saw him open a very expensive bottle of wine at another table; he poured a little wine right onto the floor because he thought there was some cork in it, and then he just continued to pour it into the glasses.
"I feel that a lot of what we do at Chanterelle was influenced by La Pyramide," acknowledges Waltuck. "I did not work with Point and make no claims to be Paul Bocuse, who did, but reading Ma Gastronomie and understanding what the place was like in the thirties and forties definitely influenced us. Chanterelle has a handwritten menu, like La Pyramide. And we too believe that food can be done in a careful and special way without being pretentious."
Carrie Nahabedian of Restaurant Naha (Chicago) recalls backpacking through France on her first visit to Europe, at age nineteen. "The only place I really wanted to go was La Pyramide," she recalls. "It was a big escapade--we took the train from Paris to Lyon, and then to the sleepy town of Vienne. In the train station we changed from our T-shirts and grubby jeans into nicer clothes, and gave a kid a dollar to watch our backpacks. We walked over to La Pyramide, all dressed up, and there was Madame Point, writing the menus by hand. I felt like I was walking back in time.
"The experience was incredible," she remembers. "The dining room was amazing. The women were dressed as if it was their last day on earth; they were in Chanel suits, with all their pearls. The restaurant had stools for their purses and stools for their dogs. I still remember the butter--it was shaped like La Pyramide, the statue in the middle of town. The sommelier, who had been there since the restaurant's opening, presented me with the wine list. When I opened it, it smelled like the 1800s! He told me that they kept the wine lists in the cellar.
"I ate all the classic dishes, like the gratin of crayfish. Whereas a chef today might create a dish in an hour and just play around with it a little bit, Fernand Point worked seven years perfecting that dish. We had Bresse chicken with truffles stuffed under the skin, and potatoes swathed in cream. I even remember how crusty the bread was. We had a bit of an introduction from Jean Banchet [the founding chef of Le Français in Wheeling, IL], who used to work at La Pyramide and for whom I had worked, and they sent us every dessert on the menu, including the signature gâteau Marjolaine, which was named after Point's daughter. Then they sent us after-lunch drinks! The chef came out and spoke to us, and everyone could not have been nicer. I still recall signing the American Express bill after the meal. I figured out that it cost a hundred and forty-five dollars--and that was twenty years ago! I sweated that one out, wondering how I was going to pay for it after having spent three months in Europe!
"After all this, we still had to get back on the train. I remember feeling like Cinderella after the ball, because we had to convert back to the traveling fools that we were. We stumbled back to the train station to the laughs of the kids who were watching our bags. The restaurant had given us a bag of macaroons and cookies for the train, and I remember skipping meals until the next day.
"I still have the menu Madame Point gave me, written in her big, flowing handwriting," Nahabedian muses. "And I still have my travel diary, tied with ribbon, with all the details written in it."
(Continues...)
Copyright © 2001 Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page. All rights reserved.
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