Cooking For Danny Meyer

I contemplated posting my bio so that Chicago can get to know their wayward son a little better but who would really read it? I mean, wouldn't you rather I riff about my passion for food and what I think of the restaurant industry today? (yawn) Yeah me neither. It is assumed by now that if you are a chef, worth your salt, you are passionate about sourcing the best ingredients possible and celebrating their perfection with time tested method and techniques so they can reach their fullest potential. Ten years ago this was revolutionary stuff. Only a small handful of us knew what the Slow Foods movement was and I don't think we started throwing around the often misused modifier of "sustainable" until 10 years ago. There is a movement growing that still doesn't have a name. It's uniquely American and gathering momentum. I have heard it referred to as Haut American and Innovative American or better yet, forward thinking American Cuisine. All of them are accurate but when I try to explain it to Joe Diner, it never seems to make sense even to me. Let's put this into prospective so I can make my point about the future of American Cuisine. I am 42 years old last August. When I started cooking in NYC when I was 19, there were a handful of rock stars in America. Daniel Boulud, Jean Banchet, Wolfgang Puck etc. Most of them European in origin so they could call their food French or Alsatian or whatever. Over the pond, great stuff was happening in Spain, England and France but Americans couldn't care less. Much like our appreciation of World Cup Soccer, we didn't get it until a few innovative cooks started experimenting. Chef's like Charley Trotter, Thomas Keller and Jeremiah Towers blazed the path to what we now can proudly call New American Cuisine. I wanted to be a chef of this caliber. I wanted to be known for my innovations. I returned from my European training in London at The Gavroch, Eldorado Petit (Sant Feliu) and Jaume de Provincia to Chicago to find a bleak number of options. I worked for Charlie Trotter for a week but I got into an argument with him about my salary after my first paycheck and he ran me out of the kitchen. It certainly would have seemed like it was the end of the line for a European trained cook with lofty goals, but I found a position quickly in Winnetka working for Didier Durand at La Boheme. Before he became the prince of fattened duck livers, Didier was one of Chicago's hottest chefs. Didier was brought over by Carlos of Carlos's in Highwood on a recommendation from Jean Banchet himself. That was pretty tough street 'cred back in the day. I became his Sous Chef and for 2 years we did some pretty cool French-As-Shit food up there on the North Shore. I was 23 years old and I had a kid on the way already. You see, working for a French guy you pick up some bad habits. I become a slut and knocked up a Winnetka socialite. Needless to say, I needed a better paying job. Didier suggested I leverage my work experience at Relais Chateaux properties in Europe so I applied to the Whte Barn Inn in Maine. After flying out for a tasting I was hired as Chef du Cuisine. I ended up working in R&C for most of my career. You will not find a more fierce dedication to the art of customer service anywhere else. I have a very low threshold for mediocrity so I felt very much at home with the R&C properties I worked for. The down side is Relais Chateauxs are often at the end of a dirt road far away from civilization so while the hotel might be world famous and have 5 AAA diamonds, the chefs, unfortunately, are rarely recognized on the national level unless the property is a Relais Gourmand like The French Laundry, Inn at Little Washington, Ducasse, or Eleven Madison Park.

Back to the Sustainable movement for a moment, in 1998 I left the kitchen for 2 years and sold local sustainable proteins for a company called Specialty Game. It gave me a unique insight into the supply side of this business. I identified hundreds of local farmers nationwide and helped them get their products to a market starving for ethically raised sustainable foods. I am glad I had this experience and since then, when I haven't been able to find a suitable kitchen to work in, I have used this talent for selling to help out other companies like Mikuni Wild Harvest, Maui Seafoods and Rare Tea Cellar. In 2008 I headed east again to command the historic Hotel Fauchere Relais Chateaux 90 minutes outside of Manhattan. We were the only R&C hotel in the NYC area. Danny Meyer (Eleven Madison Park, Gramercy Tavern) often came to stay with us as did Eric Ripert and Alain Ducasse. Talk about pressure to perform. I felt like a rookie porn stud on my first shoot. Earlier that year, My Friend Michael Carlson of Schwa had a nervous breakdown cooking for Ferran Adria. What If Danny Meyer fell asleep on me at the table? I was an absolute mess until after the 4th draft of a tasting menu for Mr. Meyer I had the brilliant idea that would inspire my latest restaurant project, Gabba Gabba Hey. Why not just cook a dinner that I would want to eat if I was the owner of Eleven Madison Park. You see, we chefs don't eat our food every day. In fact, as much as we love our craft and are very proud of what we present to you night after night. We don't sit down and eat what we serve to you. A fresh roll dragged through foie gras fat or a grass-fed butter sandwich with a side of rabbit rillette and a swig of iced sencha tea is more accurate to what we would eat. We are surrounded by the finest ingredients in the world and yet we crave the scraps from your table like a faithful bulldog. So when we go out to eat, we want it simple, flavorful and we know when there are crappy ingredients involved so we search out places that use what we use. A factory farmed prime steak is no match for the local family farmed version. There are very few affordable places that meet this standard in this city. That is, until now. So the tasting dinner for Mr. Meyer was a success largely due to the fact that I anticipated what he wanted and delivered. He sat in our dining room with all of his GMs and chefs for 3 hours while they picked over family style platters of roast duck, Beef short ribs, BBQ goat shoulder, Catalan paella, grilled sardines, stuffed pigs trotters and head cheese to name a few. At one point they were all in such a great mood that they started dancing in our opulent Victorian dinning room; the very same room the legendary Master French Chef Louie Fauchere created some of this new countries most notable culinary delights. Chicken Marengo, Lobster Newberg, Baked Alaska, Eggs Benedict and the greatest dish never to be trade marked, the Delmonico Steak were all invented at the Delmonico Restaurant in NYC. Google it! Louis Fauchere was the chef and the hotel was his summer gig in the Poconos. You gotta visit this part of the country. Waterfalls and streams so clean you can see the future in them, Milford is a wonderful stop on your way to NYC.

I am fiercely proud of what I had accomplished that evening because of the maturity it took to pull it off. I could have just sent him a dialed up version of my grand tasting menu and called it a day but I knew it wasn't want they wanted regardless of how badly I wanted to show off my skills. I have cooked for 3 United States Presidents, the Rolling Stones and dozens more celebrities. I have worked for and with some of the greatest culinary minds in the world, yet this was the most fun I have ever had turning foodies on to food. Gabba Gabba Hey will be a continuation of that night with Danny Meyer. I look forward to you all coming in and having the time of your life with us soon.