The most perfect of holidays is here. Thanksgiving is celebrated of course in the United States, but also in Canada, Liberia, and Norfolk Island in Australia where it was brought by visiting American whaling ships. Not too long ago it was celebrated on a very small scale in Guatemala by a friend of mine in the Peace Corps who spent a year fattening up a turkey so that her American colleagues could observe the feast and give thanks together. The beauty of the Thanksgiving holiday lies not only in its special traditions but also in what is not involved. Though originating as an American holiday, it possesses no real patriotic significance. While it is common to say grace or give thanks before the meal, the holiday also contains no real religious distinctions. Getting together with family on the last Thursday of November is a tradition but one can stop and give thanks even in solitude. It is not necessary to buy gifts for anyone on Thanksgiving. One is not required to attend a church service. It is a day on which what is celebrated is not a gift or lofty goal. What we take time to celebrate on Thanksgiving is the most valuable thing of all. We celebrate and give thanks for what we already have.
Thanksgiving is perfect to a food and wine lover for another wonderful reason. Thanksgiving is a holiday that is, above all, dedicated to a meal. Businesses close for the day. Families take last minute flights at grossly inflated prices. Hotlines are operated to answer questions about turkey, green bean casserole, and sweet potatoes with marshmallows. Why? All for a meal. All so we can sit and enjoy a great plate of food and, if we are truly lucky, enjoy that plate of food with people that are important to us. Grandma gets out the good China. Dad gets to stand and ceremoniously carve the turkey. Little kids giggle over spray whip cream on their pumpkin pie. Thanksgiving is a holiday that has even spawned spin-off institutions. For instance, who doesn’t know about “the kids table,” or plan on falling asleep in the recliner to football games on Thanksgiving afternoon?
I have quite a bit to be thankful for. So do all of us that make up Bleu Restaurant. Ups and downs happen to all of us. Good and bad happens. There are great years and there are tough years. But there is at least one thing I will always be thankful for and I think anyone that cares about good food, good drink, and good friends should be thankful for as well. I am thankful that one of the most important and sacred holidays we have exists solely so that we can all sit down together and enjoy a good meal.
Monthly Archives: November 2011
The Library
You can argue with me all you want but I firmly believe that in any discussion of the five greatest inventions of modern civilization the public lending library, as an institution, must be included. Not the first sentence you were expecting in a restaurant blog post? Where is this all going? Be patient. If you can’t be patient how are you ever going to slow cook that pot roast? Or make those ribs? Geez.
Speaking of pot roast; how long do you cook it? At what temp? Is it better to brown it first? Why all these questions? Because this post is about finding answers and those answers come from your mom, your grandma, and your cookbooks (which you probably got from Mom and Grandma. That’s where I got most of mine). Would it surprise you to learn that professional chefs use cookbooks all the time? The picture above is the library in our very own kitchen at Bleu. If you look closely you will see amidst all the famous names like “The French Laundry,” “Au Pied de Cochon,” “Ad Hoc,” and others, is a familiar face. You know the one. It’s put together like a three ring binder and the cover has the red and white look of a picnic blanket. We all have a copy in our cabinet at home; its crusty with pancake batter because it gets used all the time. We all bought the fancy cookbooks by Thomas Keller, Mario Batali, and Heston Blumenthal. Our houses all have Wi-Fi so we can read allrecipes.com on our iPads in the kitchen. But…I’ll let you in on a secret. Everyone that cooks, whether they do it for a living, a hobby, a passion, or just has hungry kids that want scrambled eggs with ketchup for breakfast on Sundays, gets the most use out of the good old, beat up, red and white “Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook.” If you need to make a simple pie crust or find out at what temperature to cook your pork loin, it’s the first, best option. That’s why it has its place in the Bleu Restaurant library. The library itself has its place at Bleu because being an expert cook isn’t about knowing all the answers, its knowing how to find them.
Okay, so that covers books for those that cook. What about for those that eat? Our front-of-the-house staff has its own library, albeit much smaller. In this library one would find a couple bartending books, food and wine magazines, a wine reference book or two, and, most importantly, “The Food Lover’s Companion.” We look at it every day. That’s why your server seems like an expert when you ask about a particular term on the menu. Don’t feel bad. They most likely didn’t know what saltimbocca was when they got to the restaurant that night either. They consulted our library. A quick glance at a recent features menu yielded a good sized list of terms that we all knew we better be ready to define. Here’s just a few: harissa, aioli, arancini, paella, fontina, beurre rouge, Bolognese, pappardelle, and hearts of palm. Not to mention that, on the fly I’ve got to know the difference between a beschamel and a sauce Mornay, explain “confit,” or why crème fraiche can be used on a dessert and is also served with the pasta. I’m not an expert. I’ve got a chef and a great library to answer my questions.
So ask questions. Don’t get intimidated by French and Italian words on the menu. It’s okay to not know. That’s what we have cookbooks for. Most importantly I guarantee that as I’m standing at your table sounding like an expert in French cuisine, five minutes earlier, having just read that night’s menu, I was in the kitchen shouting across the line “Chef! What the hell is duxelles?”
Family of Foodies
Years ago, when I was still relatively new to the restaurant industry, I was engaged in my usual Sunday routine of having dinner with three other bartenders who all worked in restaurants on the same street as mine. The four of us, and sometimes wait staff, bouncers, or hangers-on from our respective establishments all had Sundays off and all got together for drinks, dinner, and usually more drinks. In a moment of reflection, feeling like I was living the same week over and over again, I looked up from my steak and said “We need a hobby.” My friend Mike, the guy that gave me my first job tending bar, looked at me and said “We have a hobby. We go out to eat.”
Until then I had not thought at all about how much my coworkers at the restaurant, my friends in the industry, and I all obsessed about where we were going to eat this week. What would we have? If we mentioned to one another that we had eaten at a particular place we were barraged with questions. Everyone would want to know what was ordered. How was it? Why that and not the short ribs? Which dressing did you get on the dinner salad? Wine? Beer? How was the service? We could spend half an hour talking about a dinner the way baseball fans can rattle off stats from the 1960’s or relive a game from decade ago. It really was, and is, a hobby.
Now I am at Bleu and what had been a hobby among the coworkers of my youth is now full-blown obsession. You may have seen our print ad in Inside Columbia Magazine. Our management staff and culinary team standing together amidst food and wine. I’m in the back with a bottle of Petite Syrah. The ad says “A Family of Foodies.” It’s absolutely true. Never have I worked in a restaurant in which the staff is more excited about the food and drinks we serve. Our chef has a bin of plastic spoons for constantly tasting, trying out, and giving samples to the staff. We all eagerly taste whatever new concoction is being worked on. Never a hesitant “what’s this?” from anyone. Everybody just takes the spoon or fork excitedly. Short responses come like this: “Wow, what is that?” or just a nod from Chef and a “That’s served with the duck tonight.” My personal favorite was a night I walked into the kitchen in the middle of service and our chef handed me what appeared to be a chunk of thick cut bacon. No explanation. He studied my face as I chewed. My eyes must have signaled awareness of something new because before I could even ask he said “Yep. Lamb bacon.” Just a few weeks ago our pastry chef came behind the bar with a spoonful of a new crème brulee she’d been working on. As she was handing me the spoon she was also backing away. “What are you doing?” I asked. “I’m backing away because this is so good you’re going to slap me” she said laughing and clearly proud of her work.
I see this same enthusiasm in our guests. Believe it or not every one of us loves it when we see a guest at Bleu get excited about a dish. We love it when people order our favorite thing off the menu or, better yet, when they order the crazy thing Chef just got us to try five minutes ago. We love to see that same light in someone’s eyes that was in mine the first time I tasted lamb bacon. It’s not just the owners, servers, cooks, and bartenders at Bleu in the family of foodies. It’s you, too. It’s the chefs and wait staff at the restaurants next door, and up the street. Its all of us that share this same crazy obsession. My hobby is going out to eat. So is yours. Otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this. Welcome to the family. I hope to see you at dinner.