Charlie Rose interviewed David Chang last night for a full hour. It's a great dialogue in that inimitable in-depth Charlie Rose style. The video is an hour long, but well worth watching if you have the time.
Video after the jump, plus a bonus video of Chang making pickled eggs on The Martha Stewart Show.
Editor's note: Another Meet & Eat today with the folks behind Serious Eats. Today we're pleased to introduce Shane Lyons, Sunday night's dismissed contestant on The Next Food Network Star. His cereal-crusted chicken didn't make the cut, but he put up a good fight all season. —Erin
Name: Shane Lyons
Location: Colorado Springs, CO
Occupation: Cook
URL: thebluestar.net
Favorite comfort food? I LOVE Buffalo wings with thick and stinky blue cheese.
Guilty pleasures? Ben and Jerry's Cinnamon Buns ice cream.
What food won't you eat? Soy butter.
What would you like to try but haven't yet? Haggis.
Favorite food person? Alton Brown.
Learn more about renown French pastry chef François Payard of New York City's Payard Patisserie and Bistro in his interview on Nightline's "Platelist" series. If you're not craving chocolate right now, you will after watching Payard make chocolate French toast and chocolate cake. After watching the video, grab the recipes and read more of the interview at Nightline's website.
Gourmet Magazine's Laura Shapiro picked a strange time to bemoan the scarcity of female chefs. In yesterday's article "Where Are the Women," she writes, "I’m thinking in particular of a question that always bothers me when I read stories about chefs winning awards, chefs opening spectacular new restaurants, chefs starring in yet another new TV series—congratulations, but why are all of you male? Where are the women?"
After the jump, why she's wrong—Top Chef spoiler alert!
American rapper Coolio recently expanded his résumé to include "cooking show host" with his web show Cookin with Coolio. As the "ghetto gourmet," he aims to "use foods that poor people can afford" in his recipes, which he demonstrates with his inimitable Coolio-style.
Although he only has three recipes up so far, each one is for a different audience: Coolio Caprese Salad is to please the ladies, Fork Steak & Heavenly Ghettalian Garlic Bread is for broke college students, and Spinach Even Your Kids Will Eat is for kids who won't eat their vegetables. Check out his latest video each Wednesday to see what he comes up with next.
Serious Eats asked Coolio a few food-related questions to get a look at the culinary part of his mind. Check out our Q&A after the jump.
I'm happy to learn that Alain Ducasse and I have something in common (besides the first five letters of our names)—we both like Chicken McNuggets. Read more about the 15-Michelin-star chef in his recent Financial Times interview.
In My Last Supper: 50 Great Chefs and Their Final Meals
Is there a gender divide when it comes to cooking in restaurants? Mike Weiss attempted to find out in San Francisco. Take the Serious Eats "Mama" vs. "Show-off" Cook's Test and see for yourself. Below, you'll find Serious Eats' San Francisco correspondent Harold Check's take on the story along with some video that might help you with the test.
Joyce Goldstein, the retired ground-breaking chef-restaurateur behind Square One in SF, framed the argument this way:
Listen, there are two kinds of cooks, there's mama cooks and show-off cooks. Now, not all mama cooks are women but all the show-off cooks are men. Boys with chemistry sets. Boy food is all about: 'Look at me!'
Mama food is there to satisfy you, to feed you, to take care of you. You remember mama food and it makes you happy. That other stuff, it amazes you, but it doesn't make you happy.
Goldstein's argument is brilliant in how carefully she frames both sides. Let's parse what she said very carefully.
The San Francisco Chronicle's Sunday Magazine cover piece on women chefs is available online, as is a video round-table discussion with chefs Traci Des Jardins (Jardiniere), Nancy Oakes (Boulevard), and Loretta Keller (CoCo 500), as well as authors Ann Cooper ("A Women's Place is in the Kitchen") and Joyce Goldstein ("The Mediterranean Kitchen").
If you're a fan of ruminating over the differences between men and women in the kitchen, you'll definitely find something here to chew on.
Last week on Ed Levine Eats, I wrote about the problems I had with a blogger writing about lobster rolls and not crediting New York City restaurant Pearl Oyster Bar chef and owner Rebecca Charles as the woman who introduced the lobster roll to, and popularized it with, many New Yorkers. Unfortunately that's just the claw of the problem. In fact, there's something else going on with Pearl and its imitators that is relevant to every creative person and craftsperson in the food world and beyond.
Apropos of almost* nothing, I give you this: David Chang is the RZA of chefs, and Momofuku is his Wu-Tang Clan.
Chang leads a crew of like-minded foodslingers, each of which he wants to help make a star in his own right. Hip-hop mastermind RZA did the same with the Wu, helping O.D.B., Ghostface, Method Man, Raekwon, etc., spin off successful solo careers.
Not buyin' it? Consider the evidence.
"I don't believe in that whole superstar celebrity chef thing. I've worked in too many kitchens where the egos got in the way of the food. I appreciate the honor; it's amazing, but it's also surreal and absurd. Sometimes I feel like I'm on the Truman Show. I always considered myself one of the worst cooks in any kitchen I ever worked at."
"I think our stuff is overrated. And now I sort of feel like a hypocrite because I'm doing less and less cooking and more business. I never intended this to happen. People say, 'Oh, he's a genius, he's so talented,' but it's all hype. Who cares about that fluff?"
"My last good idea was my worst idea; every time my ego comes into it, it hinders the restaurant. Turns out the people in this neighborhood want real food, not fast food. We just want to make great food at an affordable price. And we don't copy. I've got the Emersonian take on that: Imitation is suicide."
— David Chang, in the New York Times last Friday
All right, already. I get it. David Chang, recipient of this year's James Beard Rising Star award award for best new chef and co-proprietor of New York's Momofuku and Ssäm, doesn't want to be a rock star chef.
The Vows column in the New York Times is one of my all-time guilty pleasure reads even when it's not about chefs, but the column featuring Butter chef Alexandra Guarnaschelli is a must-read for anyone interested in love stories starring quirky, lovable eccentrics (and who isn't?).
It's not every chef who can say they've cooked for royalty, but after this Saturday's Kentucky Derby, Gil Logan will be able to say exactly that because Queen Elizabeth II will be visiting Churchill Downs and choosing from the menu he's put together:
"When it was decided that they'd be visiting the Derby and eating here, the queen's staff Googled me," Logan said. "The royal family prefers to eat organic, natural foods, and they travel with their own food service staff.
"But when they saw that I buy as much as I can from local farmers who are growing and raising food without pesticides or hormones or antibiotics, they were quite happy to eat from our regular menu."
Logan actually planned out this year's menu last June, long before the queen's trip was decided. He chose to do it so far in advance so he could have the time to properly source the ingredients from local organic providers.
So what's on the menu? One dish he'll be serving is his "Kentucky-fied" version of the classic French dish cassoulet: "Instead of just white beans, I use black-eyed peas. I use country ham, which is just as good as, if not better than, European ham like Serrano. And I splash in a little bourbon too." And among the desserts will be sugar cookies colored after the silks that Derby jockeys will be wearing on the day, "so you can bet on your cookie."
According to both the British Culinary Federation and the Master Chefs of Britain, chefs in the UK are becoming thinner—there's apparently been a 75 percent drop in chef obesity over the past 20 years!
Gordon Ramsay thinks he knows why: "Running a kitchen is like running a marathon," he says. "It demands stamina and the ability to pace yourself. Being on your feet for 18 hours a day requires a level of fitness and strength that doesn't work well with excess weight. Most chefs rarely sit down for a square meal: you don't want to start service weighed down by a heavy dinner." Fat or skinny, I don't really care—just make me something delicious to eat! (Oh, and please pass the lardo...) [via The Food Section]
Reading in the New York Times about seminal French-American chef-restaurateur Jean-Jacques Rachou's (Brasserie LCB) struggles with depression following the New York City Department of Health shutting down his restaurant had me thinking about another famous depressed French chef, the late Bernard Loiseau.
Loiseau, a Michelin 3-Star Chef, took his own life when his restaurant's ratings dropped in the Gault-Millau guide. Loiseau's despondence was also fueled by his (unfounded, as it turned out) fears that Michelin was about to take away a star.
Rachou had been contemplating retirement anyway, but he can't bear hanging up his toque after this incident. "That’s all I know how to do: work, work, work,” he said. “Cooking is my life.”
Andrea Strong wonders in Time Out New York if firing a chef is the appropriate response to receiving a bad restaurant review: "Just tweaking the food with the same chef takes time, and it’s tough to get that sense of change out there," says Stephen Loffredo, who brought in a new chef after Jovia, his Upper East Side Italian restaurant, suffered negative press. "When you say you fired the chef or the chef has left, that’s great news, because the public hears there’s been a change and wants to go back, and the media writes about it."
Sam Mason, the former pastry chef at Wylie Dufresne's wd-50 who is about to open his new place called Tailor, tells New York Magazine about a club he joined yesterday: "I just got out of a seminar on progressive cookery. Hervé This, who invented the term ‘molecular gastronomy,’ was there, as well as a few other scientists. I was listening along with about 50 other people: Wylie [Dufresne], Paul Liebrandt, Johnny Iuzzini from Jean Georges, Daniel Humm from Eleven Madison Park. It was a real community. There’s even going to be a name: the Experimental Cuisine Collective."
For a venture so exciting, they've sure come up with a dull name. Maybe if we're lucky, they'll jazz things up by wearing little red fezzes and driving tiny cars around town every once in a while?
Maureen Jenkins of the Chicago Sun-Times wants to know, where are all the black chefs? "In an age where chefs are celebrities and a regular TV gig turns the classically trained and mere personalities alike into culinary rock stars, the shortage of chefs of African descent is noteworthy if only by their striking absence."
The magazine heaps praise on ...
April Bloomfield: The Spotted Pig; New York
Gabriel Bremer: Salts; Cambridge, Massachusetts
Steve Corry: Five Fifty-Five; Portland, Maine
Matthew Dillon: Sitka & Spruce; Seattle
Gavin Kaysen: El Bizcocho; San Diego, California
Johnny Monis: Komi; Washington, D.C.
Sean O'Brien: Myth; San Francisco
Gabriel Rucker: Le Pigeon; Portland, Oregon
Ian Schnoebelen: Iris; New Orleans
Paul Virant: Vie; Western Springs, Illinois
Biographies and more info on Food & Wine's site.
Gothamist.com interviews Jeff Henderson, the Las Vegas chef whose crime-to-kitchen story Cooked: From the Streets to the Stove, from Cocaine to Foie Gras
Can you talk a little about the evolution of Cooked?
I started writing the book eighteen years ago when I was in prison. I was inspired to write my life story in the effort to steer wayward youth away from buying and selling drugs. The book is about redemption, although there’s some entertainment in it- the kitchen stories, the fast paced kitchens of Beverly Hills and Las Vegas, and the dark kitchens inside federal prison. The book to me is a road map, for inspiration, for change. It’s a vehicle that people can use to get to a point where they can say, “If he can do it then I can do it.” That’s my motto.
Anne-Sophie Pic is the first female three-star Michelin chef in France in more than 50 years. This interview in the Observer Food Monthly also includes some great background on and comments from the other female three-star Michelin chefs. One of Pic's observations of the differences between men and women chefs: "Yes, I see the way male chefs shout, the macho thing. Fine. But it's just not the way I want to run it. I think it's an odd way of getting through to people. Not a good way. If you shout it gives out the impression that there's something wrong. But I don't mean there's some kind of peace. We are very tense. People are very, very concentrated in the kitchen. More women chefs—quieter kitchens! And better food."
For their March edition of their Chef Talk series, Wine Spectator Online interviewed Thomas Keller of Napa's French Laundry and New York's Per Se, the only chef in the US to have two three-star Michelin restaurants. It's a great piece, covering his philosophy of wine at his restaurants, how his personal wine cellar is stocked (a Zinfandel man!), and the 20 guest room inn he's looking to open across the street from the French Laundry, but to me his thoughts on having choices made for you was the most interesting part:
WS: What advice would you give to a diner who's intimidated by a large list like the ones at French Laundry and Per Se?
TK: That's a real dilemma for us. It's great to see that in our country, we've become more knowledgeable—yet the result is more choices, which can be confusing and overwhelming. I think the best way to go is with the sommeliers. As we've been seeing a resurgent interest in cooking and great American chefs, now we're seeing a resurgent interest in wine, and great American sommeliers. What I would like to see happen at our restaurants is no menu, no wine list. [The staff] would talk to our guests, find out what they want, and talk with the chef. It's about talking to the guest and finding out what flavor profiles they like, and choosing some options for them, both from a varietal point of view as well as from a cost point of view. Wine lists are intimidating, they're so big and take so much time to review that you're actually forcing your guest to be rude to the rest of his party … When you go to someone's house who knows wine and has a decent cellar and knows how to cook, you're going there to have that experience. You're not going to choose the wine from his cellar; he's going to choose it for you, because that's what he wants you to drink. It's a really wonderful experience to have someone do that for you.
Chicagoist has a really fantastic interview with Grant Achatz of Chicago's highly-acclaimed Alinea, talking about all sorts of things like his philosophy as a chef and restauranteur, and how his creative process works in his kitchen and with his colleagues. This was my favorite thing to read:
C: What food-related websites or media do you keep an eye on, for ideas and feedback?
GA: I do it a lot less now, but I used to be really into all the blogs, like eGullet, LTHForum, all of those. I don’t read them so much anymore, I don’t know why. I feel that some of it is that they’re losing some credibility. There’s a lot of good, honest material there, then there’s a lot of … bullshit. You know, where, at the beginning (of these sites), there was a lot of useful information, honest information. Now, somehow, I feel that maybe it’s a lot of people using it as a microphone to hear themselves. Then it becomes less credible. But what I’ve always enjoyed about it is it's the voice of the guest. If people come here and have a lousy time for a particular reason, are they ever going to come back to the kitchen and tell me? No, it’ll never happen. You might get a phone call the next day, or the occasional letter. But, if they immediately go online and list their complaints, I’ll know and then I can fix it. So it was always about the instant understanding of how people perceive the experience. That’s why I read them.
Every once in a while I read interviews with chefs or owners talking about how much they hate that people can so easily write negative things about their food or their service on the internet, and every single time I've immediately put their names and establishments on my "never give them a dime of my money" list. Don't they realize they're badmouthing customers? And, in my case, turning off potential customers? Heaven forbid I eat at one of their restaurants and the food is bad or my waiter rude—what's to make me think I'm going to be treated any better if I complain about it there? My list of places that I know for sure will do right by me is pretty long, and life is too short for me to spend any of my time or money somewhere that might treat me like dirt.
Getting poor reviews for what you've basically put your entire life into is hard and hurtful, no matter what industry you're in. If someone's just talking smack, life is too short to spend time worrying on what crazy people think—let it slide right off your back. If the criticism is valid, then it does you a service to learn from what's been said and move forward.
Related: Danny Meyer on fixing mistakes, Danny Meyer and hospitality
Today marks the debut of our Q&A feature on Serious Eats. Each Friday we'll be asking various food lovers what makes them tick. Here, we're happy to have chef and author Anthony Bourdain kick off the series.
Photo credit: iStockphoto
Sitting on chef Chris Schlesinger's desk is a framed picture (right) of a hastily scribbled, stained recipe for his Inner Beauty Hot Sauce: Five pounds of Scotch bonnet chilies, one gallon of yellow mustard (preferably the cheap stuff), plus molasses, brown sugar, honey and spices. The method: Throw it all in the blender, and serve: "I don't know why people buy hot sauce," Schlesinger says in a country drawl he should have lost after more than 20 years in New England. "It's ridiculous when it's so easy to make yourself."
I know why. Chilies are intimidating. You only need to screw up once—like the time I accidentally made a stir fry with an Indian Naga pepper, which clocks in at 1 million on the Scoville chili scale, making it one of the hottest chilies on earth—or perhaps twice, like the time I failed to notice that I had put extra hot chili powder in my Super Bowl chili, instead of the regular stuff, and almost blew the heads off all of my guests.
When something's bottled, I figure, someone knows what he's doing.
SF Chronicle restaurant critic Michael Bauer: "The cult of the celebrity chef continues to grow, and unfortunately, what's lost is the integrity that made the chefs popular in the first place."
We love chefs who write (Tony Bourdain, Michael Ruhlman). We love restaurateurs who write (Danny Meyer). We love farmers who write (Wendell Berry, Verlyn Klinkenborg, Andy Griffin, David Mas Masumoto, and our favorite Arkansas homeboy/Slavok Zizek devotee, Ragan Sutterfield).
But we LOVE writers who happen to be all three rolled into one, and cute to boot.
Dan Barber's latest in the NY Times: Amber Fields of Bland.
US News & World Report, the fickle weekly that gets its kicks from judging everything under the sun, has released its list of Best Careers for 2007. According to the article, terrorism-related jobs, urban planning, and the clergy (median salary $78,690!!), are emerging as promising fields for young guns looking to get ahead. Tops on the list of overrated careers, where the "mystique exceeds reality": being a chef.
An excerpt from Shuna's most excellent answer to "Why is being a chef interesting?"
Why is being a chef interesting? Because when you're a chef life is never dull. Someone is always calling in sick from jail. The dishwasher is constantly breaking. Customers fight in the dining room. Or pass out. New fruits and vegetables are always arriving at the farmer's markets. Ovens catch on fire. Managers have sex in walk-ins. People misunderstand each other in broken Spanglish. Cooks stab each other. Cooks cut off bodily parts in meat saws. People dine with their mistresses. Tempers run hot. No body has a life. General managers are constantly being sent to detox centers. Chefs line up for knee and hip replacements. Pastry chefs arrive at work with guns, threatening anyone with cocoa on their collar. Freezers always break down in the summer. Purveyors hire ex-cons as delivery men. The mafia picks up your garbage. Vermin of all shapes and sizes run into the dining room and/or die in the walls. The post office destroys honey sent through the mail for Homeland Security reasons. Or you find your wife/husband having sex with someone besides you in the kitchen, during service. Because people quit in the middle of a Saturday night with everyone on the books.
Because no matter how many hours you stay at work every day, every month & year, no matter who you work for or with--
YOU WILL NEVER LEARN ALL THERE IS TO KNOW ABOUT FOOD*
"Cooking is the most massive rush. It's like having the most amazing hard on, with Viagra sprinkled on top of it, and it's still there twelve hours later."
From Bill Buford's brilliant, enormously entertaining book Heat, a quote from the irrepressible Gordon Ramsay.
The New York Times food section was full of interesting, fun and thought-provoking stuff this morning, but for me the most mouthwatering (and poignant) story was on page 3. There Kim Severson reported on the Edna Lewis memorial dinner, held this past Sunday in Atlanta. Edna Lewis was, as Kim described her, "an icon of Southern cooking."
Although she was born in Virginia and lived out her life in Atlanta, New Yorkers were graced by her presence and cooking skill for many years, first at Cafe Nicholson and then at Gage and Tollner. I recall eating her food many times, first at Gage and Tollner and later at the City Meals on Wheels benefits at the skating rink at Rockefeller Center.
I remember one hot June evening at one of those benefits biting into a piece of her fried chicken and thinking I had never tasted anything that good in my life, and then thinking the same thing after sampling one of her incomparable flaky, moist biscuits.
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