Archives for the 'Chefs' Category
Head Chef and Chief Economist
Daniel Patterson is the chef and co-owner of Coi, a restaurant that San Franscisco foodies love to love. He’s opening a new place in Oakland. In an otherwise non-political interview about his new joint, he hashes out what it’s like to run a restaurant in the ultra-regulated city by the bay and explains how S.F. city supervisors are ruining the upscale neighborhood restaurant.
SFoodie: Would you ever open a restaurant like Coi in Oakland?
Patterson: It would be hard to open a restaurant like Coi in San Francisco today. When Coi’s gone I would be really surprised to see another one like it.Because the economics of fine dining don’t make sense anymore?
I’m sure Thomas Keller could always make it work here. I have 10 people in the kitchen, about a one-to-two ratio of staff to diners. San Francisco has become a very difficult place to have any restaurant, because of the policies that the Board of Supervisors put in place. They didn’t anticipate what would happen with things like the minimum wage increases, with no tip credit. What happens when the minimum wage is $12? Or $15? Product costs keep rising, especially for things like pastured meats and organic vegetables. Rents are still pretty steep. The restaurant model that we all knew no longer exists—the Supervisors took it and crumpled it into a little ball.For us [at Coi], we’re a little bit more protected. I can’t complain — we’ve done fine all through the downturn. I’ve been so grateful and a little bit surprised at how strong the local support has been. But I’m more concerned about neighborhood places, which are the heart and soul of our dining scene. What happens when they all have to charge $30 for a chicken dish? Can they all afford to keep using the best ingredients? Or to have enough staff? There’s going to have to be a fundamental rethinking of how restaurants in San Francisco are run. In the meantime, we’re operating in a no-man’s-land, and I don’t see a clear path out of it.
Via Jason Gollan.
Standing the Heat
TIME Magazine (not Time but TIME!) has a review of five new books, fictional and non-, about life in a restaurant’s back office. Writer Lev Grossman frames his roundup in “the post-Bourdainian era:”
It was invisible then. Now we recognize it right away: this is Anthony Bourdain’s world. … He changed our whole cultural idea of what a kitchen is. Pre-Bourdain, it was a warm, cozy, maternal place. Now it’s a profane, brutal, masculine crucible, where human frailty is rendered away like so much tasty bacon fat.
A fun read even if you have no intention of picking up the books discussed.
Chat with Top Chef Finalist Carla Now!
Top Chef finalist and DC native Carla Hall is online right now (2p EDT) at the dying WaPo taking questions about everything except what we really want to know. Which is to say she won’t be talking about who won.
I saw Top Chef head judge Tom Colicchio on a kids & food panel (with Rachael Ray!) at SoBe Food & Wine Fest over the weekend. Tom, who was great, also failed to mention the winner.
I’ll have more on the SoBe panel in an upcoming article. But like tonight’s Top Chef finale, you’ll have to wait for it.
New Law Protects Customers from Murderous Restaurateurs, Peanuts
A new Massachusetts law sponsored by the marvelously named state Sen. Cynthia Stone Creem (D-Middlesex and Norfolk) aims to protect food allergy sufferers from the scourge of restaurants keen to kill their customers, and restaurants from the scourge of allergic customers keen to kill themselves.
In addition to basic awareness-raising poster and video mandates, the law contains this forehead-slappingly stupid requirement:
Every person licensed as an innholder or common victualer, when serving food, shall…include on all menus a notice to customers of the customer’s obligation to inform the server about any food allergies.
That’s right: The law requires restaurants to use their menus to remind people whose throats will close up upon encountering a peanut to ask if there’s any peanuts in their food. Really? We needed Sen. Stone Creem to make that conversation happen?
The law graciously allows restaurants until January 1, 2010, to add the warning sentence to their menus. Meanwhile, allergy sufferers will likely be dying in droves, without that vital reminder to ask if the food they’re about to eat will kill them.
There’s also a voluntary program where restaurants can create a book with all the ingredients they use in every dish and thus be certified “Food Allergy Friendly.” Hilarious syntax aside—are the restaurants pro-allergy?—this program is a classic example of legislation that need not be. If restaurants want to make their ingredients list available and advertise that to allergy sufferers, more power to them. In fact, Chef Ming Tsai of Blue Ginger, who has been pushing this legislation for years, already does this at his restaurant.
***
My former boss and New York Times science columnist John Tierney like to tell this tale of pro-regulation bias in the media:
I once sat in on a newspaper story conference the day after an armored-car company was robbed of millions of dollars bound for banks. The first idea that came up for a follow-up story was: Does this robbery show the need for stricter regulation of armored-car companies?
We kicked this idea around until I suggested that companies in the business of transporting cash already had a fairly strong incentive not to lose it—presumably an even stronger incentive than any government official regulating their security arrangements. That story idea died, but not the mind-set that produced it.
This goes double for legislators.
Via Mike Riggs
Origins of Rubber Chicken in French Recipe?
Molecular gastronomist Heston Blumenthal of Fat Duck, speaking to the Daily Mail for its food issue, relates the craziest recipe he’s ever come across. And it’s a real doozy.
The most outrageous recipe I found was from an antique French cook book – although I’d be amazed if anyone actually made it. You pluck a chicken while it’s still alive, brush its skin with a wheatgerm-and-saffron dripping, then tuck its head under its wing and rock it to sleep.
Then you put it on a serving platter between two cooked chickens, bring it to the table and wait for someone to try to carve it – at which point this apparently roast chicken wakes up, squawks and runs down the table. You then take the poor bird, kill it, stuff its neck with mercury and sulphur, stitch it up and roast it, and as you bring it back to the table the chemicals in its neck are still making a clucking noise – as if it were alive.
Wow. And wow.
That’s probably the highlight, but there are several other fun nuggets in the article, which features Brit celeb chefs Blumenthal, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Gordon Ramsay, and loathesome crumb opponent Jamie Oliver.
Also this weekend across the pond, Brit chef Antony Worrall Thompson came out against nationwide plans for a menu-labeling scheme in The Sun.
The Perfect Furry Storm
Everything about this story is a joy. 1) New York Magazine, 2) Nigella Lawson, 3) Fur, 4) peeved PETA. What’s not to love?
PETA is not pleased with television chef Nigella Lawson. When asked on BBC1’s The One show if she thought the fashion industry should outlaw fur, Nigella replied that she would wear it if she could kill the animal herself. The host asked what she would think of fur-wearing celebrities who started wearing dog or cat fur, and Nigella blurted out, “I’d love a dog or a cat!’’ Then she made a stabbing motion and added, “Going into a shop and buying a fur coat would be an act of weakness. But if I could go into the woods and kill a bear myself, I would wear it proudly as a trophy.’’
Anton Ego, Age 12
Read the great feature on David Fishman, probably the first twelve-year old Manhattan restaurant critic profiled in the NYT. It’s cool that he takes notes and all, but WTF with the kid not having a blog?
I’ve got $50 that says he was inspired by the Ratatouille character.
This Week in Bacon
England for English snouts! That’s the message the utterly horrid Jamie Oliver is communicating, saying he likes his bacon best when it’s not all foreign and stuff.
…Oliver will go to war with European pork producers in a new television show.
In Jamie Saves Our Bacon, the campaigner will fight for British pork farmers who are being hit by cheap imports.
He said: “Seventy per cent of the pork we import is from countries with lower welfare standards than ours and would have been illegal to produce here.”
More here. Reminds me of the racist BBC presenter who was fired this week because she didn’t want her daughter to have to ride in a taxicab with some “guy with a turban on.” Nice.
Lunch Buffet
Another death by smoking ban, this one in Chicago.
D’Artagnan may have duck dogs, but my friend Veronique goes one better, pointing me to a NYT Freakonomics post on foie gras dog biscuits.
Parents who bring their little devils to UK bars are ruining the pub scene there, reports the Glasgow Herald.
Those alarmists at the Center for Science in the Public Interest are yammering on about the need to ban food dyes, again, reveals the LAT.
The reprehensible Jamie Oliver almost ready to endorse a government Ministry of Food, reports the Times of London.
Lunch Buffet
–Gym’s new bacon smell not conducive to client’s austere treadmilling, reports the Bolton News.
–Why fake foods? “Because we can,” says a food marketing professor, thus explaining Tofurky and Bacos, in the Chicago Tribune.
–Happy National Pretzel Month!
–Cooking in a restaurant (shocker!) harder than it looks for home cook/reporter, notes Miami Herald writer.
–Demand in China is fueling turtle poaching in the U.S., laments the Lakeland Ledger. (Thanks, Brad, for the tip.)
For a Limited Time Only: Colicchio Back in the Kitchen
Tom Colicchio announced yesterday morning his plans to open a new restaurant, Tom: Tuesday Dinner (although he is open to suggestions on the name):
The restaurant will probably serve about 80 diners a month, which is almost certain to make this one of the toughest tickets in town. Reservations will be taken by telephone six weeks in advance, and the price of the meal ($150 to $250 depending on the menu) will have to be prepaid with a credit card. Menus will only be announced about a week before each meal; they will be posted on a website, tomtuesdaydinner.com.
[...]
He said that he had “no plan” to keep the restaurant going for more than a year, but hinted that he was taking a wait-and-see attitude.
So, not only do I have to plan my dinner six weeks in advance (which, let’s be serious, will probably end up being more because it’s Tom Colicchio), I have to pay for it in advance and I won’t have any idea what I paid for until a week before I eat it (at which point I can’t change my mind, because, well, I already paid for it). And why is he only going to be open for a year? This isn’t a concert tour – it’s a restaurant . . .
I have a suggestion for a name . . . how about Tom: Get Off Your High Horse and Open a Real Restaurant That Serves People Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday too. I’ll give him the weekend off. He’s busy.
Will I still try to get a reservation at his place? Heck yea . . . his food is delicious. But, I still think that this idea is a little ridiculous.
Breakfast à la carte
–Aspiring chef dies after consuming too-hot chilis on dare, the Times of London reports.
–If fat woman had been skinny woman, she wouldn’t be alive right now. “Being big saved my life.” More here from the Herald-Sun (Australia).
–Colts fan* breaks into home, hangs out in attic with pilfered beer and bologna for hours until he’s eventually caught, reports The Indy Channel.
*Presumably.
Good Stuff Eatery 1, WTOP 0
I just picked up some ground beef at DC’s best meat market–glorious Wagshal’s–and drove home withit in the car. Took about 10 minutes to get from point A to point B, and another 2-3 minutes to get into my fridge. Am I going to die or even get sick due to the transit? Of course not. Else we’d never be able to buy any perishable at a market, and all our food would come from a can or box.
Nevertheless, everyone from TMZ to Crispy guestblogger extraordinaire Kim has seen fit to rush to judgment against Spike Mendelsohn, the former Top Chef contestant who is the public face of the embryonic and highly regarded DC burger mecca Good Stuff Eatery on Capitol Hill.
The fracas began after WTOP, the local all-news multimedia empire here (TV, radio, online) reported that Good Stuff allegedly stored beef in the alley behind the family-owned restaurant. The same alley where (like most urban eateries) their deliveries arrive. Mendelsohn legitimately claims the food had just been dropped off.
Does it make any sense that a restaurant would store valuable food outside? Of course not.
But I want to take this opportunity not just to counter the Mendelsohn haters–and, to be sure, his hat fancy annoys the hell out of me, too–but also take on the silliness that is WTOP.
First and foremost, should we really trust a report about where a restaurant stores its food from a news station that boasts every ten minutes about its mockworthy and puzzlingly named glass-enclosed nerve center?
Who encloses a vital “nerve center” in breakable glass? What’s next for WTOP? Radio towers made of Lincoln Logs? “Hard-hitting” Muppet reporters?
But I digress.
It’s not just the G-ENC that bugs me about WTOP. I’ve heard WTOP radio reporters slant the news to their liking before, and others have criticized the station’s blind embrace of all things regulatory at the expense of business. Maybe the station is just biased because blasting business in the news business is good business.
Whatever the case, Good Stuff is good stuff in my book. And WTOP’s credibility just took another hit.
Mendelsohn, for his part, shows that he’s got a sense of humor in addition to his culinary chops. Good Stuff Eatery sent out an email to subscribers the other day advertising an apropos and scrumptious-sounding new special. Mendelsohn’s Back Alley Burger comes with bacon, sautéed mushrooms, muenster cheese, and Thousand Island dressing. Now that’s good stuff.
Top Chef Loser Cited for Filth
Beef: it’s what’s for dinner – and it’s being stored in Top Chef Season 4 contestant Spike Mendehlson’s back alley. WTOPnews.com reports that Spike was recently cited by the DC Department of Health for several “critical” violations at his new restaurant, Good Stuff Eatery.
[A] Sept. 4, 2008 D.C. Department of Health inspection report shows an inspector found raw meat in the same location.
[...]
The report also shows the hamburger joint was cited for three critical violations on Sept. 4 for the following risk factors:
• Hand washing facilities were not accessible to employees;
• Food contact surfaces (cutting boards) were not properly sanitized;
• Food was not segregated, separated and protected
Spike claims that the meat in the alley had just been delivered, and insists he does not store food in the alley normally. He fought back, “I know how to run a restaurant . . . you can come right here and you can eat off the floor . . .” If Spike’s poor attitude and always mediocre dishes on last season’s Top Chef weren’t reason enough to stay away from his new place, the meat stored in the alley should drive the remaining believers away.
Spike, once again you should pack up your knives and go.
‘Kitchen Nightmares’: The Game
Gordon Ramsay is busy. And when you have 53,000 things going on, this is bound to be your life: lots of crazy highs mixed in with lowly lows.
As his cooks scatter, he forges ahead on strange ventures with even stranger people. As he looks aghast trying to breathe life into the kitchen of yet another crappy Long Island eatery, Fox re-ups him.
Just out: a new Kitchen Nightmares video game. From the product description:
Hell’s Kitchen is a TV phenomenon featuring world-renowned chef Gordon Ramsay putting aspiring chefs through rigorous culinary tests. The game recreates the show’s pressure-cooker atmosphere as players complete a series of kitchen and dining room challenges to find out if they have what it takes to be a “Five-Star” chef. Fulfilling an order requires three important phases – preparation, cooking and service, all of which players must master to progress. Prepare ingredients, cook them to the correct quality and get food out of the kitchen on time. Each complete meal is scored by Chef Gordon Ramsay to make the kitchen boot camp experience come alive.
More here at the game’s official website. The game, which apparently features trademark Ramsay tirades, is rated T for Teen in the States but earns a mere PG in Australia, where one writer wonders WTF is up with that?
The game markets at about $40. Buy for Wii and other formats here.
