Toqueland

October 15, 2015

Ruminations: Fine and Dandy

Chef Gabriel Kreuther Has Been Thrust into the Role of Traditional Fine Dining’s Savior. His Thoughts on What That Means and Where It’s Headed.

Gabriel Kreuther, outside his eponymous restaurant. (photo by Evan Sung)

Photographs by Evan Sung

Gabriel Kreuther has been running some of the best kitchens in New York City for almost two decades: he served as chef de cuisine at Jean Georges, executive chef of Atelier at the Ritz-Carlton, and as executive chef of The Modern. In June, in partnership with Eben Dorros, he launched his own restaurant, Gabriel Kreuther, on West 42nd Street. In recent weeks, the reviews (almost unanimously glowing) have poured in, along with a Michelin star. Along with the appreciation, what struck me about the notices was the extreme focus on fine dining (of the traditional sort, not the neo version hailed in this week’s succession of reviews for the new incarnation of Momofuku Ko) present in every appraisal. With that in mind, I asked Gabriel if he’d sit down with me, and we met for an interview on Saturday, October 3, in the dining room of the restaurant. Though we covered a wider range of topics, the below is what seemed most pertinent at the moment. (As a side note, an interview I’m running tomorrow, with chefs Jeremiah Stone and Fabian von Hauske of Contra and Wildair, provides an interesting look at both contrasts and similarities in two generations of chefs.)

[Ed. Note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.]

Friedman: Let me go right to the burning question I’d like to ask you: You’ve gotten great reviews. But every one I’ve read makes a point of talking about fine dining. The Bloomberg headline: “Fine Dining is Not Dead Yet, and Gabriel Kreuther has Proof.” Steve Cuozzo, The New York Post: “Sorry, kids. Fine dining is still my idea of the dining to beat.” Grub Street‘s Power Rankings: “Fine dining ain’t dead yet.” The New York Times, in a great review: “It is about as fashionable as acid‑washed jeans.” But then Pete Wells adds, “Before dismissing this grand Midtown dining room as a horse‑drawn carriage in the age of Uber, sit down and see how exciting some knifework can be.”

You see where I’m going with this?

Kreuther: [chuckles]

Friedman: Were you surprised to find yourself cast in the role of the defender of fine dining? Is it surprising to you that so many people are pointing it out and framing their praise in these terms?

Kreuther: No. It’s not really surprising. Because the way I’m looking at this over the past eight or ten years, I would say, is that in the US, when challenges arose with the economic downturn, one of the easiest fix‑ups for operators was to just sweep everything down. Because everything that you have on the table has some sort of a cost. A tablecloth has a cost. Everything has a cost and gives you headaches to operate. It’s much easier to maintain a bare table than a tablecloth table.

Friedman: So you trace the beginnings of this evolution, or perception of an evolution, away from all that to the downturn, all the way back to 2008?

Kreuther: Yeah. Even slightly earlier. And I also believe that in nice places what makes things stuffy is really the attitude of people.

Friedman: The front of the house?

Kreuther: The people who work in it. I don’t really think it’s just the tablecloth that scares people; it’s really the attitude, the way they get treated by the waiter, by the sommeliers, that kind of stuff. That makes a difference. I think that fine dining, there is something to it when you sit down, there is a calmness to it. If I want to just eat on a bare table, I can eat at home on a bare table. I’m going out for a reason …

Friedman: This is personally the way you like to dine?

Kreuther: This is personally the way I like to dine … I don’t think fine dining is dead, just it’s evolving. And I think it’s going to evolve in a way where it can be fun.

Friedman: Fun?

Kreuther: I think it needs [to be] a little bit not too serious….

September 24, 2015

DEPICTIONS: Bullish on Burnt

Why I’m Optimistic About Hollywood’s Latest Trail in the Professional Kitchen

The Great American Novel has nothing on the Great Accurate Chef Movie. There have been at least a handful of the former but, really, not one of the latter. For generations, those of us fascinated by the professional kitchen have yearned for a movie or television series that presents a classic, live action chef hero or heroine, along with a true-to-life supporting cast of cooks, front-of-house staff, customers, and critics, all in service of a narrative to which the industry serves as background.

Oh, sure, there have been glimpses into the culinary soul: Not surprisingly, in this golden age of television, the small screen has provided a slew of incisive looks at the inner working of Toqueland, with two of the best coming from the good people at Zero Point Zero (Mind of a Chef, parts of Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown) and one — Chef’s Table — originating on Netflix. And there have been others: Once upon a time, Marco Pierre White’s BBC series showed chefs on the line, and in dialogue with each other at the table. Jiro Dreams of Sushi, a feature-length documentary, captured the soul of a chef as well as one imagines it’s possible. And Ratatouille evoked some essential truths, but – to be honest – my longing for a chef protagonist wasn’t fully satisfied by an animated rodent.

Inevitably, when filmmakers go for scripted, live-action entertainment set in the pro kitchen, something always gets lost in translation. In far too many television shows and movies, the prep-time banter seems canned; critics come off as Monty Burns-grade caricatures; and diners either swoon absurdly, or complain with all the verisimilitude of community theater scenery-chewers. (I know many readers of this blog loved Chef, but while I think it got certain things right, many of these shortcomings apply.)

Is chaos the problem? A live restaurant has as many moving pieces as a Swiss army knife, all of them interrelated and impacting one another in real time: Cooks might be flowing in perfect synch until, suddenly, an unexpected rush of orders comes pouring out of the POS system, or a cook falls victim to a cut or a burn, throwing things into triage mode for a good forty minutes; the front of the house might be humming along, until a critic darkens the door, sending a ripple of anxiety through the service squad, throwing the kitchen for a loop, and redirecting the attentions of the chef. And those are just two of the endless possible curveballs looming at all times….

September 21, 2015

TALKING SHOP: Jonathan Wu (Fung Tu, New York City)

The Surprisingly Dense, Intensely Personal Backstory Behind the Menu at Fung Tu

Jonathan Wu. Photographed at Fung Tu. (photo by Evan Sung)

Jonathan Wu at Fung Tu. (photo by Evan Sung)

Photographs by Evan Sung.

The menu at Fung Tu, which is appropriately located on the border of the Lower East Side and Chinatown in downtown Manhattan, is an unfussy document, on which dishes are described simply, such as “Smoked & Fried Dates Stuffed with Duck” and “Masa Scallion Pancake with Cilantro and Cashew Salad and Smoked Chicken.” But behind each dish there’s a story, and more history than one might imagine, not just from Chef Jonathan Wu’s own life, but from his extended family and, more broadly, Chinese culinary heritage. As you will learn below, Jonathan, who cooked at Per Se among other restaurants before opening his own joint, invested years of research and experimentation in the development of his own, distinct style, and much of that work was carried out — rather bravely, in my opinion — away from the public eye.

This interview was booked after Evan Sung, who shot the accompanying photographs, and I dined (anonymously) at Fung Tu, and were knocked out by our dinner. We both left our sit-down with Jonathan eager to return and experience the menu armed with all the backstory he shared with us. (Also of note: It was a tribute to the kitchen that we did not have any idea that the restaurant was operating without gas at the time of our meal; a situation that has since been rectified.)

The following dialogue runs a little longer than most of the ones here; and the full transcript was quite a bit longer. But I think it’s a fascinating look at the evolution of a chef and his style (and, purely by chance, a nice companion piece to last week’s interview with George Mendes). Enjoy:

How did you find your way to your own style? As I understand it, you grew up eating rather eclectically at home.

It was quite eclectic. There was an Asian market. I grew up outside Hartford in the suburbs of Connecticut. And there was an Asian grocery store but it was, like, 40 minutes away. And Stop and Shop was 10 minutes away, 15 minutes away. So weekly it was a Stop and Shop run and then probably [semi]‑weekly for Asian goods. That meant that there was everything from fermented black beans to pork floss to fermented tofu and thousand year‑old eggs. We had those in the pantry and then things like corned beef and El Paso taco shells, College Inn broth, Ronzoni pasta, and Ragu.

Literally? You’re not exaggerating.

Literally. My mother was not formally trained. Her mother was a good cook, but she didn’t sit my mom down and [tell her], “This is how you make these dishes.” It was through osmosis.

That in itself was an interesting story. My mother was born in Taiwan. Her father was a chemical engineer and moved the family to Pakistan for work at a paper mill, so my mother spent ages six through thirteen in Pakistan. And it was rural Pakistan. But that meant to make Chinese foodstuffs like soy sauce, my grandfather used his chemistry knowledge to make soy sauce from chickpeas. This is before Dave Chang. So I saw a soy sauce product from chickpeas. He made his own thousand-year-old eggs: He would take sodium hydroxide and put duck eggs in them. My grandmother would make pork floss and braise it like red cooking, pork shoulder, and then dry frying it while agitating in a wok to make that fluffy product.

So I guess in a way my mom was exposed to some very interesting, deep preparations of Chinese food. So she’s comfortable in the kitchen and used what was available to her. And there is that Middle Eastern influence, I think.

My parents worked a lot. I would find myself at home and, you know, all right, “I guess I’m going to make my after‑school snack.” Sometimes dinner. And I would reach for what was available in the cupboards. And there’s that sort of comfort with a varied pantry. So we have a very varied pantry here. It’s everything from fish sauce to dried fava beans to gochujang.

In terms of developing your own style, how did that start to happen for you? Did you keep a notebook through your education and stages and various jobs?

Yes. All throughout the training years it came back to the flavors of my mom’s kitchen. The combination of soy sauce, star anise, bark cinnamon, those sort of five spices and a stewy context, like the red-cooked flavors. Those always kind of migrated in and out. My mom’s dishes like sautéed soy bean sprouts with black vinegar and bacon. It did always kind of migrate back to the American-Chinese cooking of my youth.

When you began training for the pro kitchen, did you have in your mind that this is where you were headed?

It was not a conscious decision… it was pretty blank… it was about acquiring knowledge. And the end product was not in mind at all.

After being a private chef, that’s when it started to happen. After working at Per Se I took a job as a private chef in New York. In terms of cooking, it gave me a lot of freedom, the time to explore my own ideas. Most of the creative stuff happened outside of work because I had time. The cooking I did for the family was largely mandated by them….

September 16, 2015

George Mendes: The Toqueland Interview

The Chef of Aldea and Lupulo on Finding Himself on the Plate, Maintaining Standards, and “Fast Forward” Cooking

Georges Mendes at Lupulo. (photo by Evan Sung)

Photos by Evan Sung

It’s been an insanely busy 2015 for George Mendes. Back in April, approximately six years into the life of his lauded Chelsea favorite Aldea, he opened his casual restaurant and beer bar Lupulo. Mendes, who came up cooking for such greats as David Bouley and once served as chef of Tocqueville, has also recently instituted changes at Aldea, including a shift to a prix-fixe-only menu. If you’ve eaten George’s food at Aldea and/or Lupulo, you know that his is a very personal and singular cuisine based on his Portuguese heritage.

With all of the goings-on in his world, this seemed like a good time to sit down and kick around George’s career and evolution. This interview was conducted in two parts, one before Lupulo opened and the other toward summer’s end; they have been spliced together here, with some minor editing to help them gel.

Let’s talk about your evolution: You grew up in Connecticut, eating Portuguese food. You start cooking professionally and fall into a very serious fine-dining realm. How did you come to this notion of taking the flavors you grew up on and formalizing it, or interpreting it, or whatever you call what you do?

I think it’s giving it structure. I think it’s giving it order. I think it’s organizing it. I like to think about it as a circle or a clock: you start at one point, you go in a direction, and then you find yourself back at the beginning.

I’ll start with the ’80s growing up in Connecticut. The late ’70s and the ’80s I started eating the food that my mother would make. You know: The bottle of olive oil and vinegar on the table, salt cod preparations, the smell of a charcoal grill with sardines, with green peppers blistering, the garden alongside the driveway, even if it was only ten feet by three feet, growing collard greens and parsley. I was eating food like tomato rice and simple battered fillets of sole that were dipped in flour and water and whipped into a batter and fried like a tempura. I was eating dishes like boiled salt cod with potatoes, hard-boiled eggs, and turnip greens…

[In my late teens,] there was a trip to the Culinary Institute of America. I fell in love with the whole scene of the toques and the professionalism and the artistry. Because simultaneously I was already drafting and was interested in architectural design and interior design and just working a lot with my hands. But I was also very athletic. I was playing soccer, I was playing basketball and that kind of thing so I knew that I couldn’t sit still.

So back to this circle that I was referring to: I went to culinary school, seventeen-years old, youngest in my class. I was getting my ass kicked every day. I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing, to be honest with you. There was something about it that I really enjoyed. Did my externship in French kitchens. And it all started in 1994, working with David Bouley. I arrived at David Bouley’s kitchen in TriBeCa, the original location, and I was kind of shaken up and mesmerized.

You’re describing so far a very French‑focused education.

Sure. The beginning was….

September 11, 2015

In Memoriam: Gerry Hayden (1964-2015)

A Great American Chef, in His Own Words

Gerry Hayden (photo courtesy North Fork Table & Inn)

[After a long hiatus, Toqueland begins posting again today. There are several new interviews queued up, but unfortunate circumstances demand that we resume by paying respect to a fallen chef, taken much too soon. – AF]

As most of you surely know, Chef Gerry Hayden passed away last week after a long, dignified fight with ALS. Gerry began his professional life in New York City restaurants as a core member of Charlie Palmer’s legendary River Café crew. Highlights of his career included serving as sous chef (and long-forgotten pastry chef duties) at Aureole, where he later returned as executive chef, and Tribeca Grill, as well as his own restaurant, Amuse, in partnership with Steve Tzolis, in Chelsea. Following Amuse, Gerry left the city to launch, with wife and pastry goddess Claudia Fleming, and partners Mary and Michael Mraz, North Fork Table & Inn, which opened in Southold, New York, in 2006.

I had met Gerry a few times over the years, but never for more than a handshake. Last summer, a mutual friend asked if I’d interviewed him for a project I’d been working on. When I answered that I knew he’d been sick and wanted to give him peace and privacy, my concern was discouraged. “He’d enjoy it,” was the promise.

And so, I emailed Gerry and after a fun exchange, found myself cruising out to Long Island on a lazy summer weekday, and pulling up to the house where he and Claudia lived. She was off at the restaurant, and Gerry was in the living room. For all his gathering frailties, and the slight barrier of a breathing apparatus, Gerry was unbowed and unselfconscious, this despite his confinement to an electric wheelchair.

I sat on the edge of a nearby sofa, leaned in close, and we began a long dialogue. (The recording of our conversation runs a hair under two hours; we spoke much longer than that.) He was disarmingly open, reflective, and funny, and when it was all over, I walked to my car in an unexpected fog of uplift.

As tribute to this wonderful man, I wanted to share some excerpts from our interview, which covered the early years of Gerry’s life and career. That focus is why you’ll note scant reference to his illness or the North Fork Table & Inn, and just one mention of his beloved Claudia. But I think it captures a portion of his life that was clearly formative, both personally and professionally, and who among us wouldn’t like to be remembered as we were in our twenties and thirties?

My great thanks to Mary Mraz of the North Fork Table & Inn for her help securing photos and photo approvals during this sad time.

And with that, I give you the late, great Gerry Hayden, in conversation, from July 10, 2014:

Tell me about your childhood.

I grew up right here on Long Island in a town called Setauket. I was the youngest of seven children and I was sparked by food at an early age watching my mother cook for all of us.

She had a job, then she would take care of all of us. She would cook dinner, actually she would finish the dinner she started the night before, we would clean up, and then she would go back to cooking again so she would have dinner ready the next day. I was enamored by that as a small child.

Being a big family, she had many sisters and we would have big holidays. She would get her whole plan for how Thanksgiving meal was going to go. And I would help her roll out the pie dough at a very early age. She would give me a piece of dough. She didn’t think I was going to do much with it; it was more of a distraction for me so I wouldn’t bother her so much. But to her surprise, when she turned around, I had rolled out three pie crusts, crimped edges and all, by watching her. And that’s really where I got my love for food.

My dad was a fireman in New York. He worked on the fire boats down by the World Trade Center before the Trade Center was open. When I first was growing up, looking for a job, he drove me around to a couple local restaurants. He said, “Why don’t you go in there and get a job washing dishes?”

My first job was in a local restaurant. I got to really love that environment just being in the kitchen. I didn’t love school very much. I didn’t feel like I was a kid that was going to go to college or Harvard. That was not how I was brought up. We didn’t talk about my education. We talked about going to school, getting good grades, don’t get into trouble, and life will work itself out.

Life was difficult growing up with seven children. My parents worked very hard. Where was the money going to come from? That all crept into my ear not because they wanted it to, I was just very aware of my surroundings. So I thought, “Well, I don’t want to be a burden, so I’m going to do something different. And when I got in the kitchen, that something different was right there.”

I went to prep cook making salads, making dressings. Then, for some reason, I really liked to bake and so I was starting to do desserts for them….

January 28, 2015

Wylie Dufresne: The Toqueland Interview, Part 2

The Chef on His Upcoming Book, Generation Next, Flirting with the Mainstream, and Formal Education in the Kitchen

Wylie Dufresne. Alder Restaurant. December 22, 2014. (photo by Evan Sung)

Photographs by Evan Sung

We’re delighted to share Part 2 of our extensive interview with Wylie Dufresne, conducted shortly after WD-50’s closing last month. If you missed Part 1, you might want to read that before continuing below…

On Finding Your Own

Friedman: We’ve mentioned a couple of chef communities that have sprung up over the years ‑‑ nouvelle cuisine and California cuisine and New American Cuisine–and you have mentioned your contemporaries. As these movements have happened over the years, the people who fall within each group always seem find each other from coast to coast, and now internationally. Do you remember as you were becoming more known, how you first started to connect with these people and feeling like you were part of this group? Do you have a memory of that coalescing?

Dufresne: I think it probably to a certain extent started around … you know, the aughts were a time when this food conference notion blew up. I was early on the Spain train, and stayed on it for a really long time. When I was at 71 [Clinton Fresh Food] I went on a trip. They may still do it today, I don’t know, but back then ‑‑ we’re talking somewhere around 2000, ’99 — the Spanish government was trying to promote Spain as a culinary destination, like a lot of governments still do today, not including ours, of course; they get behind their chefs and put a lot of money into them in an effort to generate tourist dollars.

Friedman: There’s also often a national pride in that culinary tradition.

Dufresne: Correct. Which is sorely lacking in our country, probably due to size, it’d be almost impossible… And so I went on a trip. I’m not even sure how I got invited, but it was awesome… It was Paul Kahan, it was Michael Schlow, it was Gabrielle Hamilton, it was Susan Goin. I knew who all of them were. I was a fan of them all, kind of surprised that I was included in the list because I felt like I was a rung or two below them, easily, on the ladder, [and I] admired them.

And we went on this trip and we went all over Spain: El Bulli, San Sebastian, Arzak, the Navarra region. I unfortunately had to cut my part of the trip short because I was in a wedding so I missed the part in San Sebastian where they took the group to the gastronomic societies, which I would have loved to have gone to.

But going to Arzak, going to El Bulli at that point was like, whoa! I, at 71, had begun to sort of develop my own style and my own approach, and went there and saw how these people were thinking freely. And it was incredibly liberating. Before that I had my parents who always encouraged me to be a free thinker, and I had JG [Jean-Georges Vongerichten] who was very much, I think, a creative chef. But here were people that were encouraging taking the model, the existing sort-of dining formats, and destroying them. It was really eye opening.

And so I got excited about Spain and started going back to Spain every year for something like twelve years……

January 26, 2015

Wylie Dufresne: The Toqueland Interview, Part 1

One of Our Most Influential Chefs on Life After WD-50, the State of Fine Dining, and Moving the Ball Forward

Wylie Dufresne, outside Alder restaurant. December 22, 2014. (photo by Evan Sung)

Photographs of Wylie Dufresne by Evan Sung

Wylie Dufresne is a chef in transition. As everybody reading this surely knows, he closed his landmark restaurant WD-50 after service on November 30, 2014, and continues on at his East Village restaurant Alder, which he launched in 2013. We’ve long been meaning to ask Wylie for an interview and he graciously agreed to one during the final days of WD-50, asking only that we wait until after the last dish had left the pass, and he and his team had cleared out of the space before we sat down. And so, this interview was conducted in two sessions at Alder, the first on December 22, and the follow-up on January 15; with Wylie’s blessing, I have spliced the interviews together. As a side note, there are not many chefs of Wylie’s stature who are as unassuming and generous as he is. We don’t know each other well, but during a busy and emotional time, he could not have been more accommodating in making himself available, not once, but twice — our great thanks to him for that.

Here’s Part 1 of our conversation, in which we discuss the last days of WD-50, as well as the first days of his career and the evolvement of his style:

Friedman: To start with the obvious, if I just throw it out there: Since you closed WD-50, how are you feeling? What are the emotions that you’re going through right now?

Dufresne: You know, I feel sad. We surrendered the keys on Friday, and we had an auction on Tuesday, which I was only there briefly for because I didn’t want to watch the stuff go.

Friedman: Had you always planned to leave the auction? Restaurateurs have told me that auctions are surprisingly emotional events for them.

Dufresne: I anticipated it being an emotional event and so I didn’t want to be there. And then a guy came up to me and said, “Chef, I’m a cook” or “I’m a chef” — I don’t remember. “You’re one of the reasons I do this. This is not a restaurant; this is a museum. I will bid on an item or two with the utmost respect for you.”

And it kind of hit me that I’ve got to go … you know, I have sort of been following Derek Jeter in his [retirement]… I watched how he did his thing. There were moments where he knew he was going to get choked up and didn’t necessarily want to do that in a public forum and so he kind of extricated himself from those moments. And I found myself having very similar experiences where I could see that I was going to get choked up so I just was, like, “You know what? I’m going to move on.”

I had my moment with the space all by myself after I turned the keys in. Everybody left and I just sat there on the street and had my final communion, whatever you want to call it. Said goodbye to my friend. And that was that.

Adios amigo….thank you !!! pic.twitter.com/iFONWQbxBD

— Wylie Dufresne (@wyliedufresne) December 20, 2014

I still feel emotional about it but, as my wife points out, it’s gone but the things that you’re emotional about remain. The things that mattered to you about that place don’t go away. But I guess, there’s a newness to that emotion… I’m grateful for all that that space has done for me, for the people I met, for what it allowed me to learn as a cook, for the people it allowed me to meet, for the food it allowed me to create. But all of that can still happen.

And I love Alder. Alder is a great place. Alder is a different place than WD-50 but Alder is a great restaurant doing great things. But I think the feelings that I’m feeling are probably fairly normal.

Friedman: Are there things that you find yourself thinking about as you reflect on WD-50 that surprise you?…

January 23, 2015

Talking Shop: Kevin and Alex Pemoulie (Thirty Acres, Jersey City, NJ)

The Couple Behind Thirty Acres Discuss Their Pending Shift to a Tasting Menu Format, Operating a Restaurant in Jersey City, and Culinary Inspirations

Kevin and Alex Pemoulie, with daughter Viv, at Thirty Acres. (photo by Lauren Bloomberg)

[Editor’s Note: I’m delighted to welcome guest poster Lauren Bloomberg to Toqueland. Not sure how much or how often she may drop in but her first piece for us is a timely visit with Kevin and Alex Pemoulie of Jersey City’s Thirty Acres, that Lauren serendipitously had booked before the this week’s testing-menu news broke. Enjoy! – A.F.]

There are many things to consider when deciding whether to leave the non-creature comforts of a Manhattan apartment to jump the river to Jersey City. The most important in my mind: the quality of local restaurants. Which is why, upon taking an apartment-search break to dine at Thirty Acres, my-bullish-on-Jersey City husband questioned, “Can we still move here or have you blown your load?”

Thirty Acres is the first love child of Kevin and Alex Pemoulie, Momofuku alums (he was chef de cuisine at Noodle Bar and she ran financial operations). The second is their new daughter Viv (“seven months old is still new”) who joined us for a sunny afternoon chat about the restaurant scene in Jersey City, their inspirations (Paris and cookbooks that aren’t “self-strokey”), and the tasting-menu-only format they will debut on February 5th.

Bloomberg: You’ve been open for almost three years…what’s different now from when you opened three years ago?

Alex: Well, for one, we got our liquor license. We opened BYOB, which was a new experience for us.

Kevin: The menu hasn’t gotten a ton larger but, it’s definitely gotten more focused. And now we’re moving into a very different menu. I think that the comfort level of operating a restaurant, it’s not easy now, but it’s more comfortable. Alex and I mark opening day as one of the top three worst days of our life. It got easier but opening day, week, month were really tough.

Alex: Staffing has always been difficult. You know, there’s always a lot of turnover in restaurants and with a restaurant this size, it requires that we have a small staff; it’s felt a lot more–when somebody leaves that’s a third of your staff. The staff that we have now we are really comfortable with and they’re all really skilled and know the way we do things and it’s a good team.

Bloomberg: Coming from Manhattan, are there different challenges to finding staff in Jersey City?

Kevin: I don’t think so. It’s very hard to find anyone, both front and back of the house, with the certain skill set that you’re looking for. Momofuku certainly got enough attention to draw resumes, good or bad. I think the difference is that we maybe get more people just responding to Craigslist, but quality-wise it’s pretty much the same….

January 22, 2015

Talking Shop: Jesse Schenker (Recette and The Gander, NYC)

The Chef and Author of All or Nothing Talks Addiction in the World of Professional Cooking, Running Multiple Kitchens, and Work Ethic

Jesse Schenker, in the private dining room at The Gander (photo by Evan Sung)

Photographs by Evan Sung

It’s been a busy year for chef Jesse Schenker. His West Village jewel box Recette recently turned five years old, last spring he debuted The Gander in Chelsea, and fall saw the publication of his first book, All or Nothing: One Chef’s Appetite for the Extreme. The book is a staggeringly revealing, first-person account of Schenker’s years-long tussle with addiction, one which saw him toggle between pro kitchens and the streets, rehab, and jail. It also, not incidentally, recounts his culinary development, and the steps that led to his success in the high-stakes world of New York City restaurants and in his personal life (he’s happily married with two young children). We recently sat down with him at The Gander to discuss the book, addiction and the pro kitchen, and how he’s adjusting to life with two restaurants.

Friedman: The kind of stuff you talk about in this book, in this very revealing way, a lot of people don’t want to talk about. They certainly don’t want to talk about themselves doing it or having done it. At the same time, it’s often what publishers want from people. You clearly had no problem doing it. But it didn’t seem crass or commercial to me. I don’t know if it’s the right word, but to me it has the tone of almost a confessional ‑‑ it’s very soul‑bearing. It seemed to me that you must have wanted to do it. But I’m wondering why. Was it for yourself? Did you think it would help other people?

Schenker: A hundred percent. Both. Ultimately, for me, the first thing that I thought of, and I still think of to this day, and I’m going to quote it. I’m not going to get into the whole AA literature, but “you can’t keep what you have unless you give it away.” That’s the truth.

Friedman: Which means what to you?

Schenker: Which means I need to show people… Ultimately I was an anxious kid. I self‑medicated, so I got hooked on drugs because I was trying to numb my feelings… You know the saying, “I’m going out of my mind?” You’re not going out of your mind, you’re actually going in your mind….

December 30, 2014

That’s a Wrap!

As the Kitchen Closes for 2014, a Look Back at Our Favorite Posts

Dear Toqueland readers,

I’m writing to you from a rented house on the outskirts of Great Barrington, Massachusetts, where my family and I are winding down the year. Before the ball drops, I wanted to take a moment to thank you for reading this site — whether you are a regular subscriber, occasional visitor, or found your way here once or twice thanks to some love from one of the major food blogs or via social media. However you came to Toqueland, I’m grateful for your attention and hope something of value greeted you whenever you’ve dropped by.

Running a site like this is mostly a blessing, but also a curse: One wants to post all the time, but contracted (i.e., paid) work and personal commitments must come first. So I find myself constantly wishing I were able to share something every day, if not several times a day. The result is often dissatisfaction, sometimes even anxiety. But I recently glanced over the last twelve months’ worth of posts and find that it’s actually been a rather productive year on Toqueland. With that in mind, I wanted to briefly consolidate my favorite posts in one place; I thought it might be a good way for causal readers to catch up on anything you might have missed and for regulars to have one last look at a piece or two before they fade into the past. (I’d also shamelessly suggest that if you have friends you’d like to turn on to Toqueland, this post would be a good way to do it.)

With that, and with my thanks for your readership, here are the highlights of our 2014:

Anthony Bourdain: The Toqueland Interview

“I wrote an article wanting to sell it for $100 to the New York Press.”…

« Previous Page

Ruminations: For the Love of Pod

Saturday Morning, 6AM

Clocking Out: Code of Conduct; Critical Condition; On the Road Again

The Cutting Room Floor, Volume 1

Clocking Out: McBride's Stylistic Migration at Maysville; JBF Curveball; We Don't Need No Stinking Stars

The Toqueland Interview: Jesse Cool

Toqueland Wire