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Andrew Friedman on the lives of chefs

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  • Ruminations: Ghost in the Machine

    Ruminations: Ghost in the Machine

    Anthony Bourdain's Presence, and Absence, Have Been Palpable at this Year's Cayman Cookout 

  • The Writing Life: How Bad Do You Want It?

    The Writing Life: How Bad Do You Want It?

    Publishing budgets aren't what they used to be. One author's tale of what it took to get on the road and promote a book in 2018.

  • Commentary: Julian Niccolini Goes Down, But Can Pete Wells Come Back?

    Commentary: Julian Niccolini Goes Down, But Can Pete Wells Come Back?

    The Intellectual Indefensibility of the Paper’s Four Seasons Review Just Came Into High Relief

  • Slice of Life: The List (a.k.a. Where Should We Go For Dinner?)

    Slice of Life: The List (a.k.a. Where Should We Go For Dinner?)

    Picking a Restaurant Has Become an Emotional and Social Minefield for Diner and Chef

  • Ruminations: For the Love of Pod

    Ruminations: For the Love of Pod

    A few of my favorite podcasts ...

  • Saturday Morning, 6AM

    Saturday Morning, 6AM

    Where I went this week, in the post I swore I'd never write

  • Ruminations: Ghost in the Machine
  • The Writing Life: How Bad Do You Want It?
  • Commentary: Julian Niccolini Goes Down, But Can Pete Wells Come Back?
  • Slice of Life: The List (a.k.a. Where Should We Go For Dinner?)
  • Ruminations: For the Love of Pod
  • Saturday Morning, 6AM

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January 8, 2016

Staying Alive!

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A Discussion of How Chefs Remain Relevant and Afloat in the Current, Short-Attention-Span Climate

In the studio with Jimmy Bradley (center) and Amanda Cohen. (photo courtesy Julia Grossman)

We have lift off! In the studio with Jimmy Bradley (center) and Amanda Cohen. (photo courtesy Julia Grossman)

THE FRONT BURNER WITH JIMMY AND ANDREW, our new podcast, debuted on Heritage Radio Network yesterday with guests Amanda Cohen, Gavin Kaysen, and Harold Moore. We discussed how chefs stay relevant and afloat in the current low-attention-span climate and devoted a Shop Talk segment to the ups and downs of time away from the kitchen. It was a terrific conversation and I hope you’ll give it a listen.  (If you read about the show here the other day, you can skip the preliminaries and start listening around the 6-minute mark.)

Next Thursday, January 14, we’re going to examine the complex subject of chefs and mental illness, including everything from OCD to anxiety and – of course – substance abuse. The topic has been thrust into the spotlight by writer Kat Kinsman, who just launched her Chefs with Issues project, centered on a survey of food professionals to which more than 100 people have already responded. Kat will be in the studio with us to discuss the project and Jimmy and I will share our own personal insights, of which we have many. We’ll be joined by chef Jesse Schenker, who’s been very open about his personal struggles with some of the very challenges Kat is tackling, and by chef Frank Crispo, who was a contributor to one of our (unaired) pilot episodes and was so eloquent and insightful (and boasts an irresistible radio voice) that we wanted to get him on the live show as soon as possible. We’ll also, of course, discuss any big stories that break between now and then. Thanks in advance for giving it a listen.

– Andrew

Published In The Front Burner with Jimmy and Andrew

January 5, 2016

The Front Burner with Jimmy and Andrew

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Announcing a New Current Events Podcast for and about Chefs and Professional Cooks

Heritage Format Front Burner Logo

Happy New Year, everybody.

Hope you had a joyful, restorative holiday season.

Personally, I had a productive late-December in service of a new venture I’d like to tell you about: In collaboration with Jimmy Bradley (chef-owner of The Red Cat in New York City), I’m co-producing and co-hosting a podcast that will debut LIVE on Heritage Radio Network this Thursday, January 7, at 11am EST.

It’s called The Front Burner with Jimmy and Andrew and, simply put, it’s a current-events show for and about people who cook professionally–chefs, sous chefs, line cooks, culinary students, caterers, and so on. Think of it as the industry’s equivalent of your favorite Sunday morning political commentary show–a venue for people in, or interested in, the pro-cooking trade to hear newsmakers, insiders, and experts talk about what’s going on in the industry right now. Guests will be booked from week to week, just days ahead of each edition, with an eye toward keeping things as up-to-the-minute as possible.

Our fondest wish is for the show to become the place for chefs to share their thoughts on a pressing issue, to elaborate on some news they’ve made or find themselves attached to, to put forth a proposal for their peers or a solution to a widespread problem, and — perhaps, once we’ve earned it — to actually announce a new venture or career direction. At a time when the relationship between chefs and media can sometimes be depressingly adversarial, our intention is for the show to be a place for chefs and cooks to have their voices–their actual voices–and opinions heard, live and unedited.

That’s not to say that we won’t ask probing questions or challenge opinions we don’t necessarily agree with. But we will strive to foster a trusted environment in which these conversations can take place without fear of misinterpretation. It’s one of the reasons we decided to team up on this: The unusual pairing of a chef and a writer as co-hosts, we hope, will ensure balance, each of us keeping the other on the right track and bringing two very different points of view to our conversation with each other, and our guests.

To give you a sense of how we expect this to play out: Had the show been up and running in the last few months of 2015, we might have asked a Union Square Hospitality Group chef to join us to discuss the company’s shift to a no-tipping policy and the ripple effect it was expected to produce in the back of the house (one of this week’s guests, named below, has also been a leader in this area); we might have assembled a chefs round-table to analyze the cook shortage summarized in Julia Moskin’s New York Times piece, among other articles; and we for sure would have remembered the late Paul Prudhomme with a few chefs who started their careers under his auspices. (Were this week’s show not our first, we would have devoted a segment to the recently and tragically departed Gina DePalma–somebody I had long admired from afar–but it didn’t seem appropriate to a celebratory debut episode.)… 

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Published In The Front Burner with Jimmy and Andrew

November 6, 2015

Talking Shop: Kevin Sbraga (Philadelphia, PA; Jacksonville, FL)

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The Story Behind Philly Chef (and onetime Top Chef champ) Kevin Sbraga’s New Jacksonville, Florida, Restaurant Sbraga & Company

Kevin Sbraga. (courtesy Sbraga Dining)

Kevin Sbraga. (courtesy Sbraga Dining)

I’ve been a huge fan of Kevin Sbraga from the first time I met him, during tryouts for the Bocuse d’Or USA in Orlando, Florida, back in 2008. At the time, Kevin was culinary director for the Garces Restaurant Group. While he didn’t make the team, I was struck by how bad he wanted it, and what a humble guy he was. I wasn’t at all surprised when he won the next big-time competition he signed up for, taking the crown on Season 7 of Top Chef.  He swiftly parlayed that success into the launch of his first Philadelphia restaurant, Sbraga, where he serves a multi-course prix-fixe menu, followed by the more casual, pork-centric The Fat Ham, also in Philly.

Kevin’s launching a new restaurant, Sbraga & Company, in – of all places – Jacksonville, Florida, on November 14.  We caught up with Kevin by phone during our hiatus late this summer to talk about how this project came together and how he plans to keep his growing collection of restaurants functioning up to his standards.

How in the world did you end up in Florida?

A group of developers were out scouting chefs from all over the country, and they happened to make a pit stop in Philadelphia, where I got to meet them. I showed them around Philadelphia and cooked for them at Sbraga and Fat Ham. About a month later, I got an invitation to come down to Florida. This was April 2014.

I kind of fell in love with them. They’re not operators at all. They have nothing to do with operations. They are developers. They develop mixed-use properties. They said, “We have this space and we want a national chef.” Pretty much the way the deal was brought to me was that they’d build it but I’d manage it. It’d be my restaurant, my design, my team.

This brings up an interesting point. A lot of customers don’t realize that when you see a chef is opening a restaurant in so-and-so city, the chef’s commitment is actually pretty minimal. A lot of the time, they’re actually consulting, or there’s a management contract, but it’s not particularly hands-on. And, a lot of the time, that shows in the product. It sounds like you very purposefully did not want that to be the case.

That’s very accurate. You open one restaurant, then another that’s even bigger. Then you go national and that’s huge. At each step, you lose some control and you have to be okay with that, and other things you can’t be okay with. These guys were such great partners because they said, “We don’t want to operate it; you operate it.” That’s it. It gives us a sense of control and allows us to control everything. It happened to work out that everybody was on the same page.”… 

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Published In Interviews, Talking Shop, Uncategorized

November 5, 2015

Elise Kornack: The Toqueland Interview

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The Chef of Take Root on Time Away, the Intersection of Art and Cooking, and Forging Her Own Path 

Elise Kornack, outside Take Root. (photo by Melissa Horn; courtesy Take Root)

Elise Kornack, outside Take Root. (photo by Melissa Hom; courtesy Take Root)

Tonight, after a multi-month hiatus and renovation, Take Root reopens on Sackett Street in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn. The Michelin-starred restaurant is one-of-a-kind, even in the current anything-goes climate: a 12-seat jewel box offering a set tasting menu for just twelve guests, three nights a week. The restaurant is also noteworthy for the fact that it has a mere two employees, chef Elise Kornack, a former artist, and her wife and partner in the enterprise, Anna Hieronimus, who tends to the front of the house, wine, and other matters, and tailors playlists to accompany the menu, which changes roughly eight times per year.

Turns out there was more to the story of the hiatus than most people realized — Kornack and Hieronimus almost packed up and left town, fatigued on the rigors of life in New York, and of the climate of the industry here. That, and the details of the renovation, are discussed in Sierra Tishgart’s interview with Kornack over on Grub Street.  I sat down with Kornack about two weeks ago, and we kicked around a number of related topics over coffee in Take Root’s newly refurbished dining room. What emerged was an understanding that the restaurant is, as much as anything, an expression of the two lives that converge there. Here, along with best wishes for their relaunch tonight, are the highlights our conversation:

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

FRIEDMAN: Very often, one takes a vacation and it’s not until you’re away from your home base that you gain perspective on your life. Are there transformations or new ideas that came to you by virtue of not doing this on a weekly basis that wouldn’t have come to you if you hadn’t had this recent break?

KORNACK: One hundred percent… I needed to see my family. I needed to go to my source of inspiration which is Nantucket, which is where I grew up. I needed to walk the places I walked and breathe and just see something other than this little corner that I walk around. [Ed. Note: Kornack and Hieronimus live a stone’s throw from Take Root.] So creatively, it opened my brain again. It let me see things a little bit clearer, and just laugh with my brothers and cook with them and just relax. And I don’t get to do that when I’m here.

And also just straight-up inspiration. Eating other food, just being in nature. Going to the farms that we work with, talking to our wine makers, it really gives you inspiration… The food is still my food. It’s still my style. It’s no different. But it definitely reminded me to just cook my food and be confident in it and not be so wrapped up in the things that are going on around me… Chefs get very quickly influenced by [other] people. They’re looking at Instagram. They’re saying, “Oh, they’re doing this.  How can I do it?” I’ve tried not to do that because I need to just focus on what I’m doing. The second I try to play somebody else’s game, that’s when shit’s going to hit the fan.

FRIEDMAN: That reminds me of a friend I had in college who wanted to be a poet. He didn’t read poetry because he felt there was no way he’d be able to keep the influence from seeping into his own work.

KORNACK: Exactly right. I remember back in college in, like, Drawing 101, we would all be with our charcoal and everyone’s pages were all smudged and crazy and the teacher would sometimes say, “When you look at it and you are just about to change something, stop, because that’s when it’s done. Don’t keep fucking with it. Don’t keep changing it. Don’t keep testing it. Just leave it alone. Go home to your dorm room. Go do whatever. Come back tomorrow. If you still think that it needs something, fine, do it.”

But if you’re constantly fucking with things and looking for the answer somewhere else… that doesn’t work for me. I need to go have a drink with my wife, go walk my dogs. So that’s the time off we both really needed.

FRIEDMAN: Do you feel that the food’s actually going to come back closer to what it was when you first opened? Is the evolution that you actually got back in touch with yourself?… 

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Published In Interviews

October 16, 2015

Talking Shop: Jeremiah Stone and Fabian von Hauske (Contra and Wildair, NYC)

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Two of New York City’s Rising Chefs on Pushing Themselves, Young Success, Kitchen Collaboration, and Restaurant Lifespans

Jeremiah Stone and Fabian von Hauste. Photographed at Wildair. October 13, 2015. (photo by Evan Sung)

Jeremiah Stone (left) and Fabian von Hauske. Wildair, October 13, 2015. (photo by Evan Sung)

Photographs by Evan Sung.

Jeremiah Stone and Fabian von Hauske are riding high on the Lower East Side. Their tasting-menu hit Contra turned two-years old last weekend, and their sophomore effort, the wine bar Wildair, has shot to the top of New York diners’ must-visit list on the strength of strong reviews, such as last Wednesday’s two-star love letter in the New York Times. Contra is also a popular stop for European chefs, such as Chateaubriand’s Inaki Aizpitarte, who did a guest stint there last weekend. The two chefs collaborate on their menus with Stone taking savory duties and von Hauske bread and pastry, and tag-team expediting turns at their two businesses. We sat down at Contra earlier this week to talk about this moment in their lives and careers, how they do what they do, and how they see the restaurant business in 2015.

[Ed. Note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity; some of von Hauske’s answers have been “spliced” into the first part of the interview as he had to join a few minutes late due to unforeseen circumstances on the day. – AF]

Friedman: I had dinner at Wildair the other night. At the end of the meal, it was late and the kitchen was winding down. I saw you, Fabian, with some of the cooks outside on Orchard Street, and I was watching you, thinking, “Two-year anniversary coming up, two-star New York Times review this week, two days away from the Chateaubriand weekend.” It was a beautiful night, with a light breeze, and you just looked so happy.  At the moment, I thought, “I wonder what it’s like to wake up and be you guys right now?” I think you must be feeling like you’re on top of the world. What’s the feeling you have in the morning when you get up these days, when you come over here?

Stone: I’d say it’s definitely not Cloud 9. I mean, it feels good in the sense that it’s motivation. And I think we’re both the type of people to be constantly pushed by those things instead of content. I was thinking of that the other day. It’s all happening this week: Things are going super well. The review was super ‑‑ it was really great and a sense of relief almost. And with bringing in Inaki and celebrating the two‑year, it felt good to have these really comfortable things, but …

Friedman: Does it also create a pressure?

Stone: Pressure is not the word. It’s more that it keeps us on our toes just to make sure we’re still driving. For example, this morning I woke up and I was very much thinking what to do at Contra next to really keep up with what everyone is expecting and making sure that it’s still very comfortable and how we can … not keep making it more upscale or fancy or expensive, just how to elevate it in small ways.

Friedman: So keeping the identity but tweaking?

Jeremiah: Yeah. It could be something as little as what farm are we looking to next to help us get the right product all year round, or how do we need to change the schedule to make everyone perform at a really high level? I think all those things are just motivation to make us do better. They’re not really rewards to say, “Oh, we did a good job.” They’re like, “You’re doing okay.”

Friedman: Well, that’s the nature of what you do, of cooking, right? You have to prove it every night.

Stone: Don’t stop now, yeah. And we always feel that. The fact that we change the menu here weekly means it could be going smooth and the reservations are good and everyone’s happy, but that small thing of changing the food is a reminder that everything needs to constantly change in its own way.

von Hauske: Me personally, I feel that we’re at a cliff the entire time and someone’s trying to push us off it…. 

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Published In Interviews

October 15, 2015

Ruminations: Fine and Dandy

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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)

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…. 

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Published In Interviews, Ruminations

September 24, 2015

DEPICTIONS: Bullish on Burnt

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

Is this the face of Hollywood’s first great chef character?  (©2015 THE WEINSTEIN COMPANY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED)

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…. 

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Published In Depictions

September 21, 2015

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

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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…. 

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Published In Interviews, Talking Shop

September 16, 2015

George Mendes: The Toqueland Interview

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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)

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…. 

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Published In Interviews, Restaurants

September 11, 2015

In Memoriam: Gerry Hayden (1964-2015)

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A Great American Chef, in His Own Words

Gerry Hayden (photo courtesy North Fork Table & Inn)

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…. 

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Published In Chef Profiles, Interviews

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