Charlie Trotter

Charlie Trotter has just announced that his 25-year-old testament to obsessive restaurateurship is closing next August.  In recent years, even he admitted business was off a little, but  his reasons are to pursue other interests — a philosophy degree among them. His decision makes one remember both how very famous he was (and is) and what it means to be a chef.

In an era of quickly-minted TV reality show “celebrity chefs,” it can be hard to recall that chefs used to really cook — and to remember that cooking is doing the same movements, the same recipes, the same preparation and clean-up over and over and over. It’s not winning a contest or being the loudest in the room,  but instead perserverance, and as he once told me “just showing up.”

I looked up a piece I wrote on Trotter for The Boston Globe in 1999, when Charlie Trotter’s was a slip of 12 years old, and  the chef came to Boston for a cookbook event (remember when cookbook publishing was important?). He agreed to talk to me, but it had to be at 11 p.m. because he was cooking with Rene Michelena who had worked for him, in La Bettola, a tiny South End restaurant where Petit Robert Columbus is now. That meant that Chef Trotter, then one of the two or three best-known chefs in the US, was hoisting pans and cutting garnishes in a kitchen the size of a closet.

When we talked in the basement office, Trotter’s first words were about the valet service at the restaurant the night before. No one greeted him when he got out of the car, and he thought that was disgraceful. We talked for over an hour, and despite the lateness and the fact that Trotter had been cooking all evening, and would leave for Chicago early the next morning, he could not have been more engaged, thoughtful, and passionate. He’ll take those attributes into his next career. And his example, if not his style of restaurant, should be the plan to follow for the chefs of tomorrow.

We ate last night at Bondir, the tiny jewel of a Cambridge restaurant

Mangalista pig

by Chef Jason Bond. His is a short menu but so deliberate and carefully thought-out that it’s a little scary. All the newest, the most cutting-edge, the best-for-you ingredients are there: a bread with seaweed and dried shrimp, handmade burrata, teff polenta, periwinkles, burdock root, sassafras sorbet, triticale wheat berries. You almost need a glossary.

But luckily Bond is not only creative with his ingredients, but a really, really good cook. Lovely, pale green sorrel vichyssoise was velvety on the tongue with just enough hint of bitterness from the leafy vegetable, one of the first in the spring garden. The nutty, dark brown teff polenta provided a good foil for root cellar vegetables, and the morel and mousseron mushroom ragout for little scallops.

The best was an asparagus and calaminth risotto with lobster, mussels, and tiny periwinkles. All lovely, but draped across like a wisp of veil was Mangalista prosciutto, almost all transparent fat. It added a pretty terrific depth to the sea-clean tastes of the seafood, and in a funny way cut through the creaminess of the risotto.

The Mangalista, originally from Hungary and now being grown in the US, doesn’t really look like a porker, more like a sheep. Bond explained, as he talked to us for a few minutes after dinner, that he cured this prosciutto for two years, and that it was almost all fat.

Which was the beauty of it — the flavor is in the fat, and the proof of Bondir’s menu is in the eating.

Last night I dined on magnificent sushi for a cause – Oishii Boston’s benefit to aid the earthquake, tsunami, and radiation victims in Japan. Ting San joined with other chefs, including Dante deMagistris of Dante and Il Casale, Anthony Caturano of Prezza, Michael Serpa of Neptune Oyster, and Luis Morales of Tico, to raise funds for relief efforts.

Oishii sushi

The place was more than packed — a sold out house — and the food fantastic. Spicy pork meatballs with fonduta sauce from Dante;  oysters from Neptune, a spicy Asian-style taco from Tico, and pristine sushi from True World Foods, which supplies many of the sushi restaurants around town. But we found ourselves hanging around Oishii’s sushi bar where chefs, including this very young rockstar sushi chef (below), were putting out tray after tray of simple and irresistible sushi.

Sushi chef at Oishii

(By the way, we gladly paid the $100 each for the benefit — a belated and treasured Valentine’s Day gift to each other).

A display of cheeses

The food(ie) controversy du jour is the New York Times article last Sunday about USDA support and money spent surreptiously to encourage Americans to eat more cheese. Aaargh! Will cheese suddenly become as dangerous as high fructose corn syrup? Will there be a rush to de-cheese our diets? Or to push low-fat or diet cheese, one of the abominations of the dieters’ world.

Or, like so many other puzzle pieces in the American love/hate affair with food, is there an alternate view? As Walter Willett of HarvardPublic Health, the healthy food oracle for our times, says, cheese eaten in sensible amounts can be part of a good diet. However, when Domino’s Pizza and other chains are doubling down — cheese in the crust, more cheese on top, cheese hidden — we get the familiar American scenario. Instead of food as a life force and as a social joy, we seem determined to view food as an obsession or as a danger. 

If those of us who love cheese — definitely count me among them — can agree that cheese is not a diet food and should be eaten in moderation, couldn’t we join the French,  known for eating a lot of cheese, but not known for obesity? Enjoy cheese, really good cheese  – on your cheeseboard, in fondue, even on a pizza. But know what you’re eating. Cheese, glorious cheese!!

Roasted garlic and Spanish anchovy pizza, Spaghetti with cracklings and hot peppers

Before you tell me I should know the answer, I do know the answer. Umami is the reason that I can’t get enough of anchovies. The flavor is part of it. The saltiness has a key role, and the crunch of barely remembered bones plays into my texture mania. But even so there’s just….something about them. And I guess it’s umami.

Last night, I ate a Roasted Garlic and Spanish Anchovy pizza at Scampo’s bar. I’d been craving pizza, and this one was just what I wanted — nothing wimpy about this pizza. Oh, it was nothing to look at, not a pretty thing like tomato and mozzarella or one with zucchini blossoms and figs. This one included some potato slices and red onion but it was basically a chunky mass with distinct curves of anchovy on a crackly, puffy edged crust. (To her credit, Lydia Shire is never afraid to let flavor trump everything.) And it was sooo good.

In fact, there’s a cold slice left over in my refrigerator that’s calling to me. Will I be able to resist?

Food truck at Boston Festival

Food trucks are big news in the culinary world. Food cultists may think New York, LA, or even lately  Boston, have the trend covered. But last week, I stopped by the sparlingly clean truck parked in a shopping center lot in Dodge City, Kan. It’s there every day, and has been for years, selling tacos, tortas, and a few other specialties. No monster burritos, no orange cheese, no Americanized fast-food tcochkes.

The temperature was about 96 at 7 p.m. as I went up to the window. A teenager took my order for three tacos — al pastor, barbacoa and lengua. And, yes, they had tongue, he said, a little confused that I had to ask. “Do you want everything on it,” he inquired. That turned out to be onions and cilantro. Then he told me he’d bring it to me in the car. In Kansas, people seldom emerge from their cars in the heat, so I probably seemed deluded.

Two older men in cowboy hats and boots were talking in back of the truck, but I seemed to be the only customer. Up the street is a new Wendy’s, one of a string of fast-food places where there was a line of cars at the takeout window.

In a few minutes, the teen was back with my order, on a heavy paper plate, carefully wrapped with foil. The small tacos, each in several fresh corn tortillas, were beautiful, plenty of tender meat, adorned only with sprigs of fresh cilantro and chopped onions. The bill was $3.75. I gave him a $5 and told him to keep the rest. (And the tacos, with a little bottled salsa added, were delicious when I ate them later).

Amazed by this, he was even more dumbfounded when I told him that food trucks were the craze on the East Coast. “You’d be a hit in Boston,” I told him, as he walked away, shaking his head at the craziness.

Listening to Anthony Bourdain last night on Tom Ashbrook’s show, you would have thought that restaurant food had been in a steep decline until Top Chef, the Food Network, and of course, his road trip docudramas “No Reservations” came into being. All good, according to Bourdain, who seemed to have been defanged for the occasion. Isn’t nastiness his appeal? He sounded like he was chatting about new trends in Episcopalian religious services.

Now that regular folk have seen chefs vying to cook weird things in trumphed-up contests, everyone understands the finer points of cuisine, he seemed to believe.

This made me think of Patricia Yeo, chef of Ginger Park, telling me recently that she thinks food TV contests are ruining the work ethic of beginning chefs. They all think they do a short stint, get on TV, and make Bourdain’s bucks (he went on and on about the cushy, travel-filled life he leads). “Showing up for work,” Yeo says, isn’t on the agendas of this would-be stars.

Saturday evening I get an email from Gordon Hamersley. Would I like to blog about the Chefs Stand for Haiti dinner at Rialto the next night? This was not a difficult decision — the cause is so stellar, the chefs are so fantastic, the idea is so fun — no contest. So Sunday June 6, I drive through torrential rain to Rialto. There, the kitchen is full of some of the best and most celebrated chefs in Boston — Gordon, of course, and Jody Adams of Rialto, Frank McClelland of L’Espalier, Ken Oringer of Clio and Toro, Jamie Bissonette of Toro and Coppa, Barry Maiden of Hungry Mother, Steven Brand and Susan Regis of Upstairs on the Square, Tim and Nancy Cushman of O Ya, Dante deMagistris of Dante and Il Casale, Louis DiBicarra of Sel de la Terre, Joanne Chang of Flour and Myers & Chang, Andy Husbands of Tremont 647 and Sister Sorel, Rich Valente of Legal Sea Foods, Peter Davis   of Henrietta’s Table, Patricia Yeo of Ginger Park, and Ron Abel and Nookie Postal  of Fenway Park.

The mood is jovial, the banter quick, the connections those close and vital ones that bind chefs together no matter how short the time or strong the competition. Jody Adams explains it best: “We didn’t quite expect them all to say yes,” she says. She, Gordon and Andy were contacted in the winter after the devastating earthquake in Haiti by Billy Shore of Share Our Strength and by Partners in Health. “Could the chefs help.” Chefs and restaurants are known for their charitable work. But this query was unusual because of the urgency and the dedication of those involved. And the response was immediate. So a winter tragedy led to an early summer feast.

Susan Regis works

The kitchen was humming with chefs working quickly against a tight deadline to feed 91 guests who had paid $1,000 a plate. But the conversation flowed, showing the tight bonds that bind Boston’s chef community. And the appetizers were gorgeous. Regis and Brand worked to on boudin blanc with topped with rhubarb from a friend’s Marblehead garden and garlic crisps. Maiden prepared hoe cakes to go with lamb crepinettes with a pistou of basil and black walnuts. Yeo fried foie gras and short rib dumplings to be served with a spicy chili sauce. Davis finished house-smoked duck with a rhubarb chutney on pumpkin bread. DeMagistris patiently pressed 200 servings of veal tonnato paninis, an irresistible Italianate version of grilled cheese.

There was urban gardening: Bissonnette’s green pea and sheep’s milk ricotta with lardo was garnished with sweet cicely from his garden next to Toro in the South End. And rural farming: All the greens for the dinner to follow (by the Rialto team) was from McClelland’s Hamilton farm. And he also provided beautiful French breakfast radishes with sweet butter and salt.

French breakfast radishes

Hamersley passed out succulent lamb chops with an apriot jam. Cushman stirred a spicy Thai tomato and chanterelle soup, musing that at O Ya, he might have added lobster. Oringer composes a delicate oyster Royale (oyster cream with coconut milk, sake, and thyme) on shrimp toasts. Abell passes around lobster rolls, quickly snapped up by the chefs “Only the Red Sox could afford lobster,” one quips.

As the chefs worked, guests begin to filter in, eager to meet them. “This is so much fun in here,” says one as the stainless-steel restaurant kitchen began to resemble a house party.

In Rialto’s bar, Jim Ansara, formerly of Shawmut Construction who has been working in Haiti as well as raising money, talks proudly of a Partners in Health teaching hospital that’s about to begin in construction. “This would be challenging here,” he says. In devastated Haiti, “it’s really challenging.”

Hamersley's lamb chops

As the guests take their seats, and begin to look at the Rialto menu of a light summer vegetable antipasto and organic chicken, nibbling on breads brought out in huge wooden baskets, Adams introduces the chefs. Then she gives a benediction of sorts, the reason that chefs came together to help others in a time of ongoing need.

Quoting Gandhi, she says: “There are people so hungry that they cannot see God except in the form of bread.”

Breaking bread together to help those in need: It’s a beautiful thing.

NEXT: An auction followed the dinner. Find out about the dream venues and the chef matchups, plus how much money was raised!

Chefs laugh in Rialto kitchen

Is it because spring, early if fitful this year, has sprung? Or that the economy has stabilized a tiny bit? Or pent-up demand? Or cheap rents?  Whatever. There seem to be new restaurants bouncing up like pink tulips in my yard — just as freshly minted, just as hopeful.

Esti Parsons

Bergamot in Somerville, EVOO now in Cambridge plus ZA. Mumai Chopstix about to open on NewburyStreet. Chez Jacky late this month in Brighton. Towne Stove with Lydia Shire and Jasper White in Hynes Convention. A new restaurant, Sam’s Place,  in the new Louis in Seaport  area — reportedly with Esti Parsons in charge — we’ve missed her.

For an insufficiently-reformed restaurant junkie, it’s a little overwhelming: How to sample them all! I’ve just finally eaten at Coppa (great pork rillettes with a hit of Saba), sampled Mumbai Chopstix at friends and family (intriguing flavors and good hits of chilies and spices) and haven’t yet been to Barbara Lynch’s Menton. It should be a busy summer.

Remember when the experts advised real foodies to eat out only in the middle of the week, avoiding the dreaded suburbanites on weekends? Remember when being a Special Occasion restaurant could brand a place as cluelessly old-fashioned? Remember when the chef’s word ruled — no substitutions, no questions, no mercy? Remember when prices at even scruffy places were astronomical, and money was thrown around at will on $200 plus wines? Remember when?

I was struck by a comment by Mc Slim Jb, the Everyman’s King of Boston dining, tweaking Valentine’s dining as Amateur Night. I don’t think too many in the restaurant industry are  scorning Special Occasion dining this year. When chefs are bemoaning empty rooms and lost revenue, any packed house is welcome. Bring on the amateurs. Every night should be Valentine’s!