The NYTimes review

It's official: Three stars.

The gray lady's new reviewer, Sam Sifton, has granted Marea three stars in today's paper. Two of the dishes I prepare were mentioned: the lobster salad and the ricci with lardo. We actually were given copies of the review late last night in the kitchen, which prompted a BBQ party in the crudo bar after service (some dawdling diners had to put up with we rapscallion cooks invading their civilized personal space).

So what does three stars mean? It means the cooks are proud of their work, but have a bit of a chip on their collective shoulder regarding not getting four stars. However, getting four stars might have driven some business away, whereas three stars means we'll probably be swamped with reservations for a while.

More importantly, those three stars make some of the harder days working at the restaurant all worthwhile. And the timing couldn't have been better: this week I officially end my externship and receive my first paycheck. I, like Marea, am now a somewhat legit part of the culinary world.

What is love?

In cooking, you can be technically proficient—even masterful—and yet still produce a failed meal. You also can be sloppy in your knife skills and presentation, and yet create a wonderful, rustic dish. The cliché is that the difference between a good and mediocre chef, or dish, is that love is obvious in one and absent in the other.

Since embarking on my culinary adventure, I’ve grown exceedingly tired of hearing “you need to cook this with love” or “this dish is missing love” or some other variation. If some of the best sonnets are unable to truly define the romantic idea of love, so what hope does some stupid hunk of charred animal carcass or sautéed vegetable have of conveying the culinary version? I thought using the word love to describe cooking was silly.

Until recently.

To graduate, I’m required to complete a short internship at a restaurant. I’ve chosen Marea, a new Michael White restaurant in Columbus Circle that specializes in fish. It has a crudo bar, some amazing Southern Italian creations and is gunning for the coveted four stars from the New York Times. It’s even rumored that my former man-crush Eric Ripert of Le Bernardin has eaten there, telling the kitchen that he’d have to “fire up my own staff” to match some of the dishes at Marea.

Since working at Marea, I’ve helped manage the garde manger station, prepping and plating appetizers, soups and salads, as well as shucking oysters. I’ve seen the love there. Whenever I try to finish something quickly and it is not perfect-looking or tasting, I’m chastised with a “soignée!” from the line cook. Which is French for “make it look elegant, you buffoon! Make it taste awesome, jackass!”

I’ve seen the love elsewhere, as well.

In class today, we cooked some of Thomas Keller’s meals (the end portion of the curriculum focuses partly on “cuisine from great chefs”). This is the guy who created the French Laundry in NoCal and Per Se in Manhattan. A god amongst men, in other words.

And I think after reading his recipes (truffle custards), cooking some of his food (butter-poached lobster) and eating more of it (vine-ripe tomato sorbet), I have an idea of what love means, at least in the culinary sense and within the boundaries of my own sensibilities.

Culinary love is when a chef spends an inordinate amount of time and effort to create something seemingly insignificant with food, but which yields an enormous amount of flavor, complex taste and beauty. It is taking hours to create something that initially makes people say “all that for this?” and then converts them merely to guttural mumbles and groans and belches. Something that gives someone, so to speak, a culinary boner.

But perhaps the biggest difference between food that is cooked with love and that which is cooked without is the attitude of the chef. If the chef is constantly excited and challenged by food, attempting to extract and enhance every bit of flavor and then discover yet more, then he or she loves food. If the chef sees food as too many of us often do, a comforting, familiar, boring piece of sustenance, then love is absent, and often a cut-rate lust replaces it.

I like to say that I love food, and love cooking. Hopefully this is a long-term marriage rather than a cheap, lustful dalliance.

The Unassuming Chef

There are institutions, and then there are institutions.

When I trailed at Gramercy Tavern last month, I knew who Chef Michael Anthony was, I knew the reputation of the place, I knew what to expect of the food. Earlier this week I did an impromptu trail at Chanterelle, a French fusion place in SoHo. I had heard great things in terms of how they treat their employees, but—since they would not be able to take me on as an extern in September, due to renovations scheduled during that month—I didn’t bother to read up on the chef/owner, David Waltuck.

Laziness can make for some interesting introductions. I entered the restaurant via the service entrance during what would normally be the lunch rush (Chanterelle shuts down for lunch during the dog days of summer). Introduced myself, changed quickly into my chef whites and checks, and brought my knives into the kitchen, expecting plenty of prep work.

The genial, frumpy looking gent working next to my station immediately assigned me some very basic duties: lightly peeling asparagus, shelling fava beans and chick peas, mincing garlic and shallots. Possessing passive-aggressive social skills, I remained silent for twenty minutes and prepped like a robot. Then began to make chit-chat with the Chef Nice Guy.

“So, how long have you been a chef?” I asked.

“Oh gosh, about 30 years or so,” Nice Guy replied.

“Wow, you must have worked at a slew of amazing places, right?”

“A few, but I’ve been here a while.”

“Really, how long?”

“Uh….about 30 years or so. I own the place,” said Chef NG, slightly embarrassed.

In a business where head chefs usually have the crispest aprons, the loudest mouths, and seek out the most glamorous jobs, Chef Waltuk was a breath of fresh air in the typically stench-ridden kitchen. This guy has won a number of James Beard Awards, opened Chanterelle in the late 1970s to a glowing four-star review by The New York Times, and here he’s working at a small wooden table, doing menial tasks.

Despite the lack of glam, he still puts out one hell of a menu. The assortment of Japanese fish looked great, his sous chef’s preparation of duck smelled wonderful, and I loved the taste of his potato risotto with foie gras (they mince up the potato to resemble rice). Some of the presentations could have been touched up, perhaps, but I was still fairly impressed. Too bad I won’t be able to extern there, but I wouldn’t mind having my first culinary job in that kitchen, especially since all the cooks were easily the nicest bunch I’ve encountered since embarking down this road.

The stand-out for me—granted, I didn’t taste very many dishes, unfortunately—was the Steamed Zucchini blossom filled with a mouse of chicken, Madeira and black truffles. It looked bizarre, like some kind of exotic sea fruit, but the taste was pure French decadence.

The lesson learned: you don’t have to be a show-off, media-hungry goon like David Chang to put out amazing food in the restaurant food.

Trailing triple play: Dovetail, Gramercy Tavern and Cru

It’s been a busy week for the Aspiring Chef. Worked on Sunday and today at the Fancy Food Show, helping at the Spanish section’s demonstrations of Serrano ham carving, tapas preparation and olive oil tasting. I had some friends over on Saturday for a dinner party, during which I braised some short ribs (good stuff), made a sweetbread marmalade (turned out mediocre, in my opinion) and an ugly but tasty pistachio cake.

And I did three days at three different restaurants: Cru, Dovetail and Gramercy Tavern.

Overall, I liked Dovetail the best, though both it and Cru were somewhat slow in terms of patrons. Dovetail had a lot of interesting food, and apparently is known for its sherry selection. But while I came for the work (manning the amuse bouche station, an inglorious job of plating three mini-apps and fresh cornbread), I stayed for the food. The roasted sirloin with beef cheek lasagna was particularly tasty, as was the brioche bread pudding with bananas, bacon brittle and rum ice cream.

I had less luck at Gramercy Tavern on the work side—for legal reasons, they don’t allow first-time trails to do anything but stand, watch and taste—but I was fed quite well. Stuffed, even. Gramercy is a legendary staple in New York, and while their look is a little dated, their food was pretty good. I was told that one of the signature dishes of executive chef Michael Anthony is the smoked trout with cippollini puree and pickled onion vinaigrette. It was easily my favorite. Some of the other dishes were a little boring, but I picked up some cool presentation tips (more on that later).

Finally, Cru, a West Village restaurant that some have said is on the skids. I had the pleasure of working with outgoing chef Shea Gallante, who is now going to work for David Bouley. A lot of folks had credited Chef Shea with the prior success and accolades at Cru, but sous chef Scott Riesenberger (who also worked at Gilt) definitely seems like a great chef, too.

But enough name-dropping BS. The food at Cru was as good as Dovetail, I thought, even though they did significantly less business. But I was most impressed by the plating (which was very beautiful). One plate, for example, was sauced to look like a flower, with stems, leaves and budding “blossoms” of scallop.

Each of these restaurants taught me a thing or two about plating and presentation, some of which I’ve also been taught in school. Here are a few tips: that might be transferable to home cooking:
-- The most heavily used utensil is not a pair of tongs, a fish spatula or some fancy Asian tweezers. It’s a saucing spoon. I’ve seen chefs use it to baste fish, flip all types of protein, transfer everything to plates, taste, etc. Frankly, I think most line cooks seem born with a saucing spoon in one hand and a folded up rag in the other to hold hot dishes and sauté pans.
-- Never put an even-numbered series of items on a plate. Always go with an odd-numbered amount.
-- Height on a plate is very important. At Cru, for example, they twist a lemon confit-like appareil so that it blooms upwards. Microgreens are constantly bunched together like ‘70s afros. And meats should lean against sturdy lesser ingredients so they look like collapsing buildings.

Gone nerding: Another trail in the (vacuum) bag

Last week I worked a two-day shift at Aldea, a “modern Iberian” restaurant in the Flatiron district run by George Mendes. I think it’s more modern and less Iberian, and while I took a day to warm up to it, I think the food is still pretty amazing.

I think I’ll always remember Aldea because it was my first foray into the world of nerd cooking. Or, more properly, molecular gastronomy, which merges mad science with classic culinary technique. Ferran Adria of el bulli fame is the godfather of the movement, but others like Wylie Dufresne and now Mendes have taken it and run apace.

The two molecular gastronomy techniques I saw firsthand at Aldea were sous vide, which is taking the process of vacuum-sealing food and cooking it in low-temp water, and spherification, which is basically the process of making everything into a water balloon.

First, sous vides. I was told by a line cook there that if they could, they’d sous vide everything on the menu. I must admit the vacuum bag machine was cool, and I’ve been told sous vide meat tastes pretty good (I didn’t taste any at Aldea). There are drawbacks to trying this at home, though, including massive amounts of botulism bacteria.

The second process is no easier for the home cook, but it is safer. It involves using chemical or natural emulsifiers like sodium alginate (seaweed and other stuff) or calcium chloride to “poach” a liquid, creating a thin skin around it. The result is a liquid that pops in your mouth when eaten like a rotten grape. Ok, it’s much better than it sounds.

At Aldea, they use this method to create little mushroom ravioli for a consommé dish. The flavor was okay if you like mushroom stock, and I didn’t taste it with the rest of the dish’s ingredients, but the texture was incredibly interesting and worth trying out. If I had an ample supply of sodium alginate handy, that is.

The best thing about the experience at Aldea is that it’s an open kitchen. So when I was sweating like a pig and had my dirty side towel at the ready, it was for all to see. A photographer from the Village Voice even came in before service on the second day to take some shots.

Good thing I wore my best chef’s coat and not the one I stained pink in the laundry a few weeks back.

Mostly happy trails: Haute Greek cuisine

There’s very little theoretical learning in culinary school. Damned near all of the knowledge is imparted via the practical, hands-on approach. But there’s practical and then there’s practical.

And so begins my secondary learning, a little process called stagiaire or trailing. Or as it should be called, short-term slave labor. Basically an aspiring chef agrees to work a shift at a restaurant in the hope that you’ll learn a bit more and get a job offer later on.

My first trail was a two-day stint at Anthos, a fine dining Greek restaurant in Midtown. Despite the fact that my two-day trail combined with my usual 4-hour school day for a relaxing 17-hour day cooking, it was a great experience. The menu there is fairly impressive, they work with a lot of fish, and the people were very nice.

I also got to learn a little about line cooking jargon. At one point the co-owner of the joint, Donatella Arpaia, sat down with some guests, including who I think was actor Kyle McLaughlin. We were told to "fire" their meals "very VIP." That translates into "cook" your meals "extremely well, because if you fuck it up we'll gut you on the spot."

My first day trailing at Anthos was spent almost wholly prepping, with mixed success: julienning red onions (the cuts seemed fine but I didn’t cover them properly and thus stunk up the fridge, slightly pissing off the pastry chef); cutting oyster mushrooms; rolling cheese balls; and picking beans, among other things.

The second day was much better. I did a little prep, but I also got to work the deep-fry station. It’s not much more glamorous than a stint at McDonald’s, but it was a good entre into the world of restaurants for someone who has no such experience. I was in charge of prepping meze—Greek appetizers that are typically brought out as a complement from the chef—for diners as soon as they were seated.

They consisted of Greek-style mini-hot dogs (using pita bread, pomegranate ketchup and mustard seeds) and a small plate of deep fried cheese balls, sweetbreads, aqualemon foam, tipiti sauce and mini-pita.

Aqualemon foam
2 eggs, separated
2 oz. lemon juice
salt to taste
1 oz. chicken stock

Whip the two egg whites, the lemon juice and a good amount of salt in a blender until moderately stiff peaks form and it tastes very lemony and very salty. Take the two egg yolks and some chicken stock and heat it briefly (in a microwave for 8 seconds or over very low heat). The egg yolk mixture should not scramble at all. Then pulse the yolk mixture into the peaks. Et voila.

Or, as the Greeks would say, εκεί.