Empellón Tacqueria is the Mexican restaurant run by former WD-50 and Alinea Pastry Chef Alex Stupak and his wife Lauren Resler. He runs the savory kitchen, while she handles the pastry side. When it opened last year, Stupak and Resler’s approach was to make tacos and more. Since that time, the restaurant has focused more on that style of Mexican cooking with a more adventurous and high end concept in the works for a sister restaurant. I had the opportunity to try Empellón when it first opened, but I hadn’t been able to make it back until recently, when my wife and I stopped in for a Sunday brunch before heading back home, Upstate.

The restaurant was still a bit sleepy when we showed up shortly after its 11AM opening time. Neither Chefs Stupak nor Resler were in at that point. I wasn’t surprised given the restaurant’s late hours. My wife and I were seated at a window table and proceeded to order our meal.

Guacamole

Sope Ranchero

Chilaquiles

As we had a three hour drive ahead of us, we resisted the temptation to order more. As it was, we were fully satisfied. I’m looking forward to my return at Empellón Tacqueria, but even more to the upcoming Empellón Cocina.

We gathered with about twenty other chocolate lovers for a tour of the factory on a cold and dark late Saturday afternoon. Mast Brothers Chocolate has become something of a phenomenon, rapidly gaining a cult-like following for the single-origin and blended dark chocolate bars. They are one of only a handful of bean to bar chocolate makers in the United States and have become one of my favorite makers of chocolate anywhere, joining the likes of Bernachon, Michel Cluizel, Tcho and Valrhona. The chocolates of Mast Brothers are rather distinctive, unlike any others I have tasted, echoing their makers unusual path into chocolate making. Mast Brothers chocolates remind me a lot of good wine. They are very complex with many undercurrents of flavor and very good acidity. In place of a wine’s tannins, the chocolate has a structure of bitterness, but like a good wine, enough without being unpleasant.

Derek Herbster

Our main tour guide, Derek Herbster, started the tour with everyone gathered around a table. He introduced, Jimmy, another Mast Brothers’ employee who is also now leading the tours. Derek likened the chocolate making process to that of roasting coffee, which is the world he came from before he started working for Mast Brothers. His previous experience was with Stumptown Coffee in Portland, Oregon. Herbster noted that Mast Brothers’ chocolate is entirely vegan with nothing but sugar added to the cocoa. Other ingredients such as nuts, coffee, salt, etc. may be added to specific barsand are always indicated. Their objective for their chocolates are for the individual origins to showcase themselves and let their individual terroirs speak. At the time of the tour, origins used were from Peru, The Dominican Republic (2), Belize, Papua New Guinea and Madagascar with each winding up with a different percentage (all dark – no milk chocolate) and taste.

Herbster continued, noting that the brothers Mast started making chocolate out of their apartment in 2006, formally becoming a company in 2007. The current chocolate factory is new, having only been open to the public for about three months or so.

Herbster described the harvest and seasonality of cocoa beans, mentioning that the beans are grown within a narrow longitudinal band around the equator and are generally harvested twice annually. The beans used by Mast Brothers comes from small growers, using about 100 tons per year, which Herbster said was about what the big chocolate companies like Hershey’s use in a day. They showed a video about one of their suppliers, La Red de Guaconejo, called “The Source.” According to Rick Mast in the video, “When it comes to making great chocolate, you need two main things – you need the best ingredients in the world and you need great execution.” In a much documented event, the Mast Brothers took a sailing vessel down to the Dominican Republic to pick up their shipment of beans to bring back to Brooklyn.

Everyone donned mesh hats to begin the tour. We started with the sorting of cocoa beans. Two employees sort through a 50 pound bag of cocoa beans, picking out any that are unacceptable.

The trays are then placed in the hot roasting oven with different temperatures and roasting times used for different beans. Though the process has similarities with that used for roasting coffee beans, the roasting is not as thorough, only intending to break down cell structure to impart a different flavor from the heat and allow the separation of the husk from the nibs in the next process. Herbster considers the roasting the first step in adding flavor to the chocolate. Roasting in small convection ovens with a temperature window from 275-325 degrees F, the actual roasting times and temperatures for a given set of beans have been determined over time by trial and error. Herbster was asked about where the Papua, New Guinea beans are smoked. His reply was that they are smoked at the source as part of the harvest process on one of the last days of fermentation. They are smoked with coconut husks, giving the chocolate an earthy, smokey, barnyardy flavor unlike any other chocolate I have ever had.

Derek and Jimmy picked up some cocoa beans to pass around, separating the nib from the husk. While they discard the husks, these have a number of potential uses from compost to creating a chocolate soda, as a friend of the company’s does.

The separation of nibs from husks occurs mechanically with a winnowing device custom made for Mast Brothers. The roasted beans are poured into a grinder and mechanically broken up but not pulverized, then in a way similar to a distillation process, the ground materiels are subjected to a vacuum. The heavier nibs fall into the first glass canister, while the lighter husks continue on to the second canister. The process can be adjusted by working an iris in the first canister that controls the level of pressure in that canister. They shoot for a 75% efficiency in the collection of the nibs, meaning that a mixture of 25% husks is acceptable.The separated nibs are then removed for the next step. We were able to taste some of the Papua, NG nibs.

Organic cane sugar is used to mix with the cocoa to achieve their specific percentages, although in a few specific blends, maple sugar is used instead.

Each origin is brought to a specific percentage of cocoa vs sugar to highlight the best flavor features of each one. They are all kept pretty “dark” with high cocoa percentages.

The nibs and sugar are brought to the grinding room where the processes of grinding and conching are combined in the unique, custom made conchers. The nibs are weighed and initially placed in the conchers where the stone grinders are started slowly and the measured sugar gradually added. The cocoa is gradually broken down through friction and limited heat with the natural butters (54%) and oils coming out. The photo above was taken about twentyfour hours into what is an approximately forty hour process. At this point, grit can still be detected in the chocolate, but by the end of two days it is like pure silk. More strongly flavored chocolates or chocolates with added flavorings like Stumptown coffee beans are ground in specific conchers to keep the flavors from bleeding into other liquors. Once it is ready, the chocolate is removed from the grinders and stored in bins to harden and age for a few weeks while awaiting tempering. One thing about visiting a chocolate factory – it is impossible to not be seduced by the aromas of chocolate!

The tempering room is another area with an overwhelmingly wonderful aroma of chocolate. Here, the hard, aged chocolate is melted down to a specific temperature so that it can be made into bars. The chocolate is melted at about 118 degrees Fahrenheit but then brought down to about 88 degrees to temper and pour into the molds.

Once the chocolate is poured into the molds, the molds are placed on a vibrator to release any air bubbles that may have been trapped inside.

The chocolate is then allowed to harden in the molds. Once the chocolate sets, the molds are turned over and  popped out. It is now glossy, brittle and ready to eat.

Detailed records are kept.

Each machine has a sign for the kind of chocolate being worked with.

They like their beards in Williamsburg.

Nuts and other ingredients are added into select bars while the bars are still warm.

The bars are then wrapped in foil.

Each bar is hand-wrapped.

The foil wrapped bars are then wrapped in house-designed paper.

At the end of the tour we got to sample a full variety of of Mast Brothers chocolates. Each was unique and delicious. I was particularly turned on to the Peruvian San martin and the combination Smoke and Vanilla, which had added vanilla to harness the funk of the smoky chocolate from Papua, New Guinea.

One doesn’t need the tour to sample the chocolates at Mast Brothers. There are always some to sample at the factory store, which also has the best selection and prices for purchasing. In addition, they recently hired a pastry chef to make truffles, cookies and more. If one is a fan of fine and unique chocolate, Mast Brothers in Williamsburg is absolutely worth a visit.

Rumors. It is sometimes difficult to know when to believe them and when not.Usually there is some basis in fact, but whether they turn out to be true, can be anyone’s guess. One such restaurant that has been the subject of recent rumors is the ambitious new restaurant, Pillar & Plough, located in the brand new Hotel Williamsburg, in, of course, the hot and trendy Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, NY. Having just opened at the end of November, the hotel is rumored to be in the process of being bought out by a company that has plans to jettison the restaurant in favor of a nightclub. Nightclubs can certainly be fun and possibly even profitable, but if this does come to pass, it would be a great pity, because, Pillar & Plough turns out to be a pretty damn good restaurant.

Having heard of the restaurant’s impending opening back in November, I stopped in to check it out when I happened to be in the neighborhood to buy a boatload of chocolate from the nearby Mast Brothers chocolate shop. I liked the modern dining room, but I became really intrigued by chef Andres Julian Grundy’s menu. This was not going to be just another comfort food haven. Unlike the vast majority of recent restaurant openings in NYC, Pillar & Plough, appeared to have ambition. Grundy’s menu was not using the same ingredients and styles to be found all over NYC. He was re-introducing luxury and creativity, two commodities that have been growing increasingly scarce in the NYC restaurant landscape. Add to that cocktails by Alchemy Consulting, and my interest was fully piqued. When I subsequently got wind of the rumors, I determined that I would visit at my earliest opportunity.

With a son still home from college, my wife and I availed ourselves of the opportunity to take a quick visit to the County of Kings and decided to spend a recent Saturday night at The Hotel after dinner at the restaurant. We arrived in time to check in to our hip room on the 4th floor. Billed as a deluxe room with a king sized bed, it had a very European sensibility. While not overly large (the bathroom was downright Lilliputian), it was quite comfortable and well-appointed even including a once again fashionable turntable, as well as a few LP’s (alas, I’m old enough to remember them well having had a fairly sizable collection of my own at one time). As hotels go in NYC, it was a good value and quite convenient to Manhattan as well as its own neighborhood. We even found a parking space right out front.

I had arranged a special Chef’s tasting menu as well as seats at the Chef’s Counter overlooking the kitchen. Including a small detail like a personalized menu certainly helped make my wife and I feel immediately welcome. The descriptions on the menu made us feel immediately hungry.

Another nice touch that helped us relax was an invitation from Branden McRill, the Food & Beverage Director of the Hotel, to a nice glass of bubbly, the 1998 from Jacquart..

Seasonal Pimm's Cup

Pineapple and Ham

Chilled Cauliflower with Sea Urchin and Bonito Jelly

Caramelized Onion Tart

Burnt Bread Soup

Country egg "en bru"

Chilled King Crab

Roasted Baby Leeks

Tripe "Molé"

I like tripe, but I don’t typically love it or go out of my way to eat it. This dish, however, elevated tripe to another stratosphere. An early candidate for one of the top dishes of the year for me, this was incredibly delicious. In Mexico,  mole is the core of a dish with things like chicken or turkey essentially used as vehicles to carry the complex, delicious sauce. In this dish, that role was given to the tripe, which couldn’t have carried it any better. Grundy’s molé (pumpkin seeds, almonds, tomatoes, cocoa nib, bruleed onions, leeks, chicken stock, chipotle and pasilla chiles) was deeply flavored, rich, intricate and extraordinarily delicious. The soft, tender tripe added some flavor of its own, but its real value came from its remarkably soft texture and tenderness.. Crunchy hominy added contrasting crisp texture that complemented the beautiful tripe. I will dream of this dish for some time!

This white Rioja from CVNE was well balanced, delicious and a great complement to the food. It was paired with the molé, morcilla and buratta. Branden McRill selected and poured the wines. His background is also quite impressive. Amongst other jobs, he was on the opening staff at Alinea. His pairings for this dinner were spot on from beginning to end.

Housemade Buratta

Homemade "Morcilla"

Pork Belly

Striped Bass

Jumbo Shrimp

Foie Gras Terrine

Lacquered Foie Gras

Hangar Steak

Allegrini Amarone Classico 2006

Veal Breast

Dessert Wines

Parsnip

Ice Cream Cones

Passion Fruit Curd

Chef Grundy and his kitchen team

Chef Andres Julian Grundy has an extensive background, having cooked at some of the country’s and the world’s best restaurants, from Bouley to L’Arpege to L’Atelier de Joel Robuchon to Clio amongst others. The meal served to my wife and I brought us through many culinary landscapes, all at an extremely high quality. This was a meal that was fun, luxurious and delicious without being stodgy or “fussy.” Chef Grundy has learned how to use a multitude of ingredients from around the world and the techniques to best employ them. His style, however, is his own. The restaurant is nicely designed, comfortable and well situated. I believe that it has the potential to be truly great – our meal certainly was – but at the moment it appears to be suffering from the rumors surrounding the Hotel management, whether they be true or false. Pillar & Plough certainly wasn’t empty the night we were there, but it wasn’t fielding the demand that a restaurant of its quality should. I hope that the rumors turn out to be false, but should they not, I’m glad that my wife and I made this trip as we have found another chef and a team to follow with great interest wherever they may be.

Doing a stage at a well known restaurant is no guarantee that a stagiere will come away from that stage with anything other than to say that he or she worked there for a period of time. The brief period of time that most stagieres spend in any particular kitchen is generally not enough to pick up more than a semblance of what is happening  in that kitchen. To really get a deep understanding of what a particular kitchen is about, most culinarians that I know would tend to say that one needs to work in a kitchen for an extended period of time to really get something out of it. While that is likely generally true, most serious aspiring chefs still go through the rite of passage and experience of securing stages at top restaurants in the hopes of capturing some of the feel, wisdom and experience of those kitchens. The best serious, aspiring chefs often do come away with experiences of real value and it is apparent in their food and cooking. Rene Redzepi, the chef of the much heralded noma in Copenhagen credits his stage at elBulli for giving him the freedom to cook the kind of food that he does. Benjamin Sukle, the young chef at the newly opened The Dorrance in Providence staged at Redzepi’s noma for the month in the fall of 2010, shortly after I had dined there. Based upon my recent dinner at The Dorrance, Chef Sukle’s stage was one of those valuable experiences.

The Dorrance used to be a bank, but not one of those modern banks that we see cropping up all over the place because the banks had to do something with the property they had repossessed. No, this bank went in the opposite direction. It was old style, built in a grand manner with high ceilings and ornate detail located right in the heart of Downtown Providence. In fact it was once a Federal Reserve Bank. Though the decor is quite different, the room has an airiness reminiscent of Eleven Madison Park in New York City, another former bank that had been built in grand style. The space of The Dorrance has a warm feeling to it, full of reds and golds with the warmth of the colors overpowering the coolness of the impressive marble floors and walls. Once the marble had been quarried, the quarry was wrecked so that the precise patterns couldn’t be used anywhere else. The space was a reminder of pre-Great Depression grandeur.

The first details I noticed as I entered the building were the elaborate stained glass window insets looking out onto the street. Each one represents the name of a prominent banking family from history. They are a little kitschy for a restaurant, which adds a fun touch. The restaurant is elegant, but playfully so.

What I probably should have noted first and what most patrons will probably notice, especially those who have been there before, is the large wooden bar directly in front of the entrance. The Dorrance may be playful, but when it comes to the actual food and the cocktail program, they are seriously playful. The cocktail program is superb and rightfully occupies such a central position in the restaurant. More on that later.

The Dorrance contains a lot of space. Situated above the bar is another level with a dining room suitable for private parties. As one walks in to the restaurant, the area to the right is another large space, also suitable for private parties. The main dining room is located to the left and the kitchen entrance is in the rear of that room. With all the space in the restaurant it would make sense that the spacing between tables is generous and it is, though not as generous as one would find in most Michelin three star restaurants. The seating is comfortable and the overall ambience is elegant, especially considering that  the prices at The Dorrance are quite reasonable for a restaurant of its quality and aspirations.

When I dined there in December with two of my sons, the restaurant had only been open for about a month. At that time, they were not regularly serving a tasting menu, though Chef Sukle served one for our table from dishes available on the menu as well as a few special items. The price I paid for our meals was in line with a very good value for what was received. The menu items appeared to be as well. We were seated at a corner table with views of the dining room and the bar and were greeted with a glass of champagne for my legal age son and myself.

The champagne was nice, but I had heard a lot about the cocktail program and was eager to sample it for myself, especially since we had a hotel room one easy block away. This program is a pet project of The Dorrance’s Co-owner, Michael Lester with Jesse Hedberg as the head bartender. The menu listed a variety of choices with prime spirits, fresh juices and all the other delights one expects to find in a world class cocktail program. The direction was more classic cocktail than a Modernist approach, but touches from that style were not totally eschewed. The challenge for us was to choose between so many alluring choices.

My youngest son, not yet of legal drinking age, was happily not left out of the pleasures of the restaurant’s bar program, though the alcohol obviously was left out of his drinks. He had a mocktail based around citrus, using fresh orange and lemon juices, orange blossom water and simple syrup with the entire beverage infused with carbon dioxide via the Perlini System. It was very tasty and in terms of its excellent quality and deliciousness reminded me of the non-alcoholic juice pairings at noma.

Westminster Revival

Mezteca

The wine list was not quite as exciting as the cocktail list, but it was interesting for a restaurant less than two months old with some nice food-friendly bottles. The list as a whole represented very good value with prices ranging from the $30′s to the 80′s. A second list, the “Vaunted and Vaulted,” is available. It carries more exclusive bottles and  ranges upward in price, but is relatively limited in choice at this time. I suspect that given the owner’s background in the wine trade, the list will expand rapidly with a wide variety of food-friendly selections. At the moment, though, the real strength of the wine program is its value, which I expect will continue even as the list gets more fleshed out.

Fluke crudo with whipped buttermilk & charred, fermented tomatillos

Dry aged duck leg rillete with apples, pickled okra, turnips, honeycomb and an apple-duck fat puree

Mixture of Autumn Vegetables

Twice cooked sweet potato, tasso, smoked salmon roe, sour cream and fresh pine oil

The wine paired with these dishes was a nice light red along the style of non-Nouveau Beaujolais. It was made in Savoie from the Mondeuse grape by Jean-Charles Girard-Modoux. This is the kind of wine, an unusual varietal from an unusual area, that was fun to drink and once again was an example of value and accessibility.

Roasted scallop with uni butter

Aged Hen of the Woods Mushrooms with Pumpkin Fivel Different Ways

Air-dried and cured bonito

Bluefish Collar

Dry-Aged Duck

Apropos Barbados

Coffee Milk Flip

Meyer Lemon Icebox Cake

Parsnip Panna Cotta

Peanut Butter Mousse

The Negroni Smith

The restaurant as a whole is a fascinating and unique mix. Michael Lester and his lovely wife, Regina, own and operate The Dorrance, putting a lot of themselves into the restaurant. Their passion for cocktails shines through in spades. This is a truly topnotch cocktail program producing great cocktails. Michael Lester also has a passion for wine and keeping the prices at a reasonable level. While I don’t think the wine program is as exciting as the cocktail program at this point in time, it is a good one and should only get better as they continue to build the list. The ambiance of the restaurant provides a good mix of luxury and cool. The evening we were there, there was a live band playing a mix of jazz standards and Sinatra-type dance music with a number of people dancing on the dance floor infront of the band. This presented a bit of an odd juxtaposition, but it worked.

This was a real eye-opening meal. I expected it to be good, but not as good as it was. I expected to see some noma influence and we did, but it wasn’t simply a copy of what Rene Redzepi and his team are doing in Copenhagen. It is clear that Chef Benjamin Sukle took home a significant influence in terms of the process of putting food together as well as an overall kitchen philosophy, but he is making his own food.  Like Redzepi, Sukle is combining Modernist techniques with traditional ones and applying them to top-notch ingredients. At the moment, he is doing it with a thin staff, but I expect as time goes on and the reputation and success of this restaurant grows as it should, that will likely change and the kitchen will be able to do on a regular basis and for more people, more of what we enjoyed this night. Another trait of Redzepi that Sukle picked up or had reinforced from his stint at noma was an ability to convey place and time in a meal. This was a meal that was very contemporary, made a very strong statement of being from this part of New England and did so without resorting to cliches. The meal was creative, but still representative of its present time and its home. I’m looking forward to coming back and watching the evolution of this exciting young chef and this exciting, unique restaurant.

Disclaimer: I paid for our meals, but we did receive special consideration in regards to the service of a tasting menu, which at the time of our meal was not generally available.

The cocktail as made here is a nice, dry sipper. Robert Hess of The Cocktail Spirit offers a variation of the original Spencer Cocktail on video here.

In the photo, the egg, fresh from nearby Elihu Farm, was cooked for a couple of minutes in hot Spanish olive oil and placed atop a mixed greens salad with a Dijon vinaigrette dressing and a Parmesan crisp. The runny yolk adds another creamy element to the salad.

Is there a biologist in the house? The past few years have required the assistance of chemists, and miraculously they appeared. But 2012 is already headed down a much different path.

Really I need a microbiologist to make me smarter about bacteria.

Although I would have been fine just leaving the subject of dangerous micro organisms to Danger Milk, -R went and made the following comment, which really got me fired up:

All it takes is one careless swipe of an ungloved hand, and poof – E. coli or salmonella for the masses. I actually find it rather amazing that we don’t see more outbreaks of food poisoning, especially given the lax hygienic standards adhered to by most food distributors and eateries. A short review of Albany County’s DOH Restaurant Inspection site, shows how even the most upscale places have more than the occasional unwanted pratfall.

-R’s overall point was that risk exists everywhere, and that should not stop us from eating tasty food. I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment. Where we part ways is on the importance of gloves and the relative danger of “an ungloved hand.”

Forget for a moment that we are talking about disposable gloves here that clog up landfills and can end up polluting our oceans. And disregard just how many of them are required by local governments all over the country in a misguided effort to keep us all safe.

Now try to ignore the facts about how much E. coli and salmonella are already in food thanks to lax regulator oversight, inhumane and crowded conditions for animals, and big agricultural businesses that prioritize profits over safety.

Gloves are not magic bacteria reducing devices.

I really liked this story from Memphis that details some common health code violations of restaurant workers who are actually using gloves. They are:

* NOT WASHING HANDS BEFORE THEY APPLY GLOVES
* NOT WASHING HANDS WHEN CHANGING GLOVES
* USING THE RESTROOM, THEN DONNING GLOVES WITHOUT WASHING HANDS

Gloves are a problem in and of themselves. When people put on gloves, they think they are clean. Here is how the matter was explained by registered environmental health specialist (whatever that means), Michael Dodd in an ostensibly pro-glove post.

When people work with food using their bare hands, they immediately notice when juices get on their hands and will most likely wash their hands before continuing with their next task. This is not necessarily the case when people are wearing gloves. They may not realize it is time to wash their hands.

But the issue isn’t just with the wearer. When consumers see gloves, they get the mistaken impression a restaurant is clean.

So in a sense gloves are simply a marketing gimmick that in some very serious ways are dirtier than hands. And if you think this isn’t at least in part about consumer perceptions, then I encourage you to take a look at the New York State Department of Health Q&A on hand washing and the use of gloves.

Here’s the question: Must I change my gloves after touching money with gloves on?
It’s a good question. Money is filthy stuff.

The answer is that it’s not illegal, but that really you should. Why? Because despite the fact that, “Food outbreak investigations have not identified the handling of money as a cause of illness” the DOH has found, “Many patrons complain to the local health department if they see food workers using the same gloves to prepare food and handle money.”

And do you know one of the kinds of food that cannot be touched with bare hands according to the NYS DOH? Fruit or vegetables for mixed drinks.

When is the last time you saw a bartender anywhere in New York put on a pair of gloves before reaching into the garnish tray for a lime? Sure, there may be some places that stab garnishes and plop them in the drink. But you can’t put a lime wheel on the rim of a glass with tongs. That’s crazy talk.

Seriously, someone is getting rich off this and laughing themselves all the way to the bank.

The answer to keeping harmful bacteria from restaurant workers out of the food is good old-fashioned hand washing and a little bit of common sense. There is no magic in plastic. But if you are truly concerned about the safety of your food, you have a lot more to worry about than whether or not the guy at the pizza shop was wearing gloves.

Re-posted with permission of the author, Daniel Berman and Fussy Little Blog.

Pastry Chef Michael Laiskonis is an industry icon—a leader, innovator, and mentor who has inspired generations of cooks both in the kitchen, as well as through his thoughtful prose and active participation in the world’s culinary dialogue. After eight years in Le Bernardin’s three Michelin starred kitchen, Laiskonis has stepped down from his prominent platform and the pastry community is left wondering what this luminary will tackle next. In what I can only imagine is one of the final lectures he gave while holding his former position, Chef Laiskonis details the philosophy behind his approach to pastry and the techniques he uses to keep his staff constantly motivated and forward-thinking.

The theme of this year’s Starchefs ICC was the 6th Sense; Chef Laiskonis described this as inspiration, or, how chefs stay creative on a daily basis. Brainstorming is the preeminent tool he utilizes to access his staff’s combined imagination. Chef described how while working twelve years ago at Tribute restaurant in Farmington Hills, Michigan, the cooks would use their downtime to play a game—one person would choose an ingredient, and together they would suggest as many ideas as possible about what could be done with it. Additionally, after staff meal on Saturday nights at Noma, René Redzepi’s groundbreaking restaurant in Copenhagen, the cooks are asked to create a new dish (after an entire night of service). With this, we were tasked with our own brainstorming challenge. After breaking into groups, we were asked to list associations with the words apple, crunchy, and water: pie, fall, cinnamon; potato chips, carrots, cereal; sous vide, fish, ice. The exercise unfolded as one idea begat another, demonstrating the power of collaborative thinking. The question then becomes how to sort through these ideas and flush out which will work on a plate. Chef Laiskonis addresses the concept of food as nostalgia; “It’s more exciting to me to think about what makes something familiar rather than what makes it new and different.” As an example, he cited that the taste of pineapple with star anise connotes a pineapple dum dum—the flavors of haute cuisine through the lens of a childhood memory. Chef Laiskonis likes to look to the past and the classics for inspiration. When one of his cooks approached him and said that he’d like to create a dessert based on Tres Leches, Laiskonis instructed him to begin by making a version of the original. Through much trial and error, they eventually made a deconstructed “Tres Leches” of Sponge Cake soaked in Tres Leches paired with Yogurt microwave sponge, roasted White Chocolate, and Coconut puree. Chefs are often criticized for deconstructing plates or using modern techniques (such as the microwave sponge cake, originally devised by Pastry Chef Albert Adria at El Bulli). This reproach usually comes when those who do not have solid classical technique experiment with more elaborate preparations –putting the cart before the horse, so to speak. One reason why Laiskonis’ desserts have received such acclaim is because he is able to successfully translate the integrity of the original dish, using perfect technique, to offer diners a familiar, yet novel experience.

Editing (often referred to as restraint) is another crucial step in the process of creating a new dish. It can be a cook’s natural inclination to include an extra ingredient, garnish, etc. Chef Laiskonis believes in working by subtraction rather than addition, simplifying a dish as much as possible without compromising the final product. Finally, Chef Laiskonis discussed the symbiotic relationship between savory and pastry. “As pastry, you’re part of a greater vision,” he explained. A collaborative understanding in the kitchen is essential in any restaurant wishing to create the optimal dining experience for guests. Chef Laiskonis has become somewhat infamous for his motto “Cuisine or Death,” aka suck it up, you’re a chef! This refers to an incident involving a cook requesting to leave due to a headache, and the unspoken rule in a kitchen that short of losing a limb, you stay to finish service. Slice off a chunk of your finger chopping an onion? Sear the wound on the flat top, throw a piece of duct tape on it, and get back on the line. Many outside of the industry would find this disconcerting—to a chef, it’s a matter of pride. A credence that separates “us” from “them.” This brings to mind a quote from renowned chef Charlie Trotter, who Laiskonis himself referenced in an article he wrote for Salon.com: “You have to be so earnestly devoted that if you were any more devoted it would be perverse, and any less, it would not be enough.” While this could theoretically apply to any profession, it holds uniquely true in the culinary world. The fact that Chef Laiskonis spends his minimal down time constantly brainstorming new ideas, writing articles, and participating in lectures demonstrates the type of obsession needed to achieve his level of accomplishment. The irony is not lost on me that only this past weekend, Charlie Trotter announced he would close his namesake restaurant later this year to, according to the Chicago Sun-Times, study philosophy and political theory while he still has the chance. I can’t imagine Laiskonis has similar aspirations, but we’ll surely wait with bated breath for their next moves.

In the age of the celebrity chef and the starry eyed CIA grad looking for the quick rise to the top, Laiskonis is a cook’s cook. Put your head down, work hard, pay your dues, constantly challenge yourself, spend everyday learning, appreciate the input of your peers, read, write, share, discuss, give back, and maybe, just maybe you’ll be able to achieve the respect that he commands. I say respect, not success because in this industry, respect is truly the ultimate measure of achievement. Despite his high-profile departure, the one certainty is that Chef Laiskonis will continue to be looked upon as a leader in the field and to inspire future cooks—after all, it’s not “cuisine or Le Bernardin”…

Photos by John M. Sconzo, M.D.