nittany, have you ever shared with us where you work? Would you want to do that or no?
At some point, I'm sure I will.
Dining out, WELL, in the greater DC/Metro area can be a challenging thing. For one, although there are many awesome places to get well-prepared, authentic/honest, reasonably priced meals (mostly ethnic), there are literally hundreds of ethnic restaurants, and an overwhelming number of them are none of the above. There are also many awesome places to get well-prepared, honest/authentic expensive meals, but again, there are many that don't deliver value for the dollars spent, and when one dines at that level and winds up disappointed, it stings on multiple levels, and in a professional sense, I get pretty upset about that. Not everyone can afford to eat out at that level regularly, and for folks who make an occasion out of it, it hurts when that's the outcome, and that really bothers me. The cost of living around here is very high, and for various reasons (mostly location, even moreso than ingredients) it's passed on in one's bill. For how much it costs to dine at a high-end establishment, not a lot of people can afford to make those kind of mistakes, and I think it can have some lasting negative effects, that can sour folks on the whole experience, which isn't fair to the hundreds of really talented Chefs out there cooking with integrity and trying to make an honest go of it, and who deserve to be given the opportunity to earn those dollars.
I am a professional Chef by trade, and I'd like to think most of my peers consider me a reasonably talented cook, but I'll be the first to tell you that I have MILES to go before I'd consider myself at the level of many of my peers and ALL of my mentors. Food - cooking, eating and drinking - are my passionate pursuits, and a I consider it the journey of my lifetime to improve my knowledge and skill on a daily basis. Over the years, I've learned a heck of a lot about ingredients, techniques, food, wine and beer. Passing on any and all of that knowledge to anyone willing to read any of this, in an effort to enjoy those things more is my absolute pleasure.
What I hope to achieve over the life of this thread is to help anyone who takes the time to read here, to make solid, educated/informed choices, based on my own experiences, about where to spend their dining dollars without getting burned, so to speak, at any price point, but certainly with an emphasis on high-end, again, because those mistakes aren't as easy to absorb. I do some teaching, here and there, on ingredients, cooking and nutrition. I'm very heavily involved in the greater DC/Metro culinary scene, I mingle with a lot of Chefs, cooks, and restauranteurs, and I eat out a lot. A lot. For two primary reasons:
First, I eat at a lot of inexpensive ethnic restaurants because their cuisines fascinate me, and my 'culinary soul' has no connection to what's going on with those cuisines, and I'm always trying to learn the 'why's' behind why those cooks are doing what they do. Not to replicate it myself, necessarily, but just to dig deep into how different ethnic cuisines use/combine ingredients in ways I'm not familiar with in my own cooking and culinary background. Their philosophy, if you will. I think it would be incredibly classless and conceited to 'look down on' ethnic restaurants who choose to cook an 'Americanized' version of their cuisines - after all they're in business in an industry that's incredibly hard to be successful in, and they have families to support, but for the most part, a satisfying dining experience for me is as much a learning experience as anything else, and there's just not much learning to be done at places like that. Also, I can't afford to eat out as often as I do, and eat at an 'Obelisk-style' restaurant every time, so when I'm opting for something reasonable and ethnic, authenticity is a real driver for my choices. So I won't spend much time discussing places like that here, but if someone mentions a cuisine they enjoy, I'll offer them some choices that I feel represent that cuisine authentically, cooked and served with passion and integrity.
I'm not of Greek descent, but I was raised on Greek/Mediterranean food and culture due by way of religion (Eastern Orthodox Christian), as well as Eastern European. I enjoy Eastern European food immensely, but I've always been drawn to the cuisines of the Mediterranean, The culinary school I attended was French, based on French Techniques, and I've made it my business to study under Chefs from Greece/Cyprus, Spain, Portugal, Southern France, and Italy, with a smattering of Turkish, Moroccan, Tunisian and Lebanese thrown in for good measure. I call what I do 'Mediterranean Rim'. I don't 'fuse' cuisines, but history and culture have played a major role in drawing parallels between all the various cuisines of the Mediterranean countries, both from an ingredient and technical standpoint, for sure. Those connections are really fascinating, to me at least.
Second, I eat at a lot of high-end Mediterranean-influenced restaurants simply to keep tabs on my peers, superiors and mentors, and to constantly improve upon what I'm attempting to practice, myself. From a professional sense, I think it's pretty much mandatory.
Prior to Culinary School, I studied nutrition and exercise physiology in college, so sourcing and using high-quality ingredients plays an integral role in what I do. My first professional culinary experience involved working under the culinary minds responsible for the now-defunct DC restaurant Ruppert's, which I'm pretty sure few, if any local folks know of, on 7th Street, where the Brown Brothers Passenger/Columbia Room is now located. Tremendously educational and impactful experience that set the tone for the rest of my life. So dedicated to fresh, seasonal, local ingredients long before those terms became cliches (late 90's).
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/local/longterm/restrnt/rupperts.htm - this is an old review from about the time I studied there.
Outstanding ingredients, simply prepared just enough to enhance their natural goodness. Everything made from scratch, in house, that could be, most of the time using only oils, vinegars, bone broths, salt and pepper. They didn't even have a freezer, except for a small one to hold the house-made sorbets and ice creams. Wrote a new menu daily from what was coming in through the back door. For the first several months, I arrived in the early AM to receive and prep, hours before dinner service. We didn't get deliveries from restaurant supply companies for anything fresh, but rather from farmers and fishermen on their way to the local markets - they'd let the Chef hand select whatever he wanted before they reached their destinations. So while I do use a lot of organics, it's far more important to me to know the folks growing/harvesting/raising the ingredients, because there are plenty of honest folks out there doing things the right way, like their fathers and grandfathers before them (especially the Amish and Mennonites), who just can't afford to be certified, but don't use chemicals and pesticides or shortcuts, but take a tremendous amount of pride in what they do. Cooking for those people, using their own hand-grown stuff, was amazingly fulfilling. Over the years I've developed a network of farmers and purveyors located from all points of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed, from upstate NY down to the Carolinas from whom I try to source exclusively, whenever possible, and whoever I'm cooking for, I make absolutely sure they get credited for their amazing products.
In the early 2000's, well before Top Chef was even a rumor, I read a book 'Think Like A Chef', by Tom Colicchio, taking that whole idea to a new level, at his new restaurant, Craft. I traveled to NYC and sat down with him for an hour or so, after which he gave me an week's worth of itinerary of places to eat, and Chefs to meet in the City. Through him, I met Dan Barber, Bill Telepan, and Marco Canora, among others, and ate some of the best food, well, ever. Easily one of the best weeks of my life. I've made that trip every spring since then. In 2007, I lived in Manhattan for most of the year, staging in restaurants across the city, while interning in the cheese caves at Artisanal and taking classes there and at Murray's Cheeses. All on my own dime. Lived right near Esca, and spent plenty of time eating and drinking there, and meeting most of the Batali group - Dave Pasternak, Lydia and Joe Bastianich, Jason Denton, Ilan Hall, and many more great folks. Learned an obscene amount. NYC was hard core. By the time I came home, I was burnt out, and needed a while to rest and recover. IMO, Manhattan is the mountain-top, with very respectful nods to Chicago and San Francisco, and not denigrating New Orleans, Philadelphia, Seattle, Boston or Charleston in any way. DC is getting much, much better, but there's still a lot of room for growth.
As far as locally, although I no longer work directly for them, I'm very strongly affiliated with the Black Restaurant Group. Jeff and Barbara Black are close personal friends and mentors. There's no one, absolutely NO ONE more business-savvy in the DC restaurant community, IMO and I owe everything I know about the business side of owning and operating a restaurant, to him. Tremendous individual that I'm very proud to be associated with.
http://www.blackrestaurantgroup.com/
Jeebus, where did the time go? FFS, I was just planning on laying some groundwork to give everyone a frame of reference for where I'm coming from when I talk about DC/Metro area restaurants and food, and wound up writing a sermon.
Oh, well, happy to help out with this thread any way I can. Keep calm, and carry on...