The Making of a Chef: Breaking Down Culinary Inspiration, By the Numbers

Mentions: 5

Highlights

Chef: Wylie Dufresne Dish: Mashed potatoes I knew about them well before I ever got to eat them. The last step is adding sort of an insane amount of fat to the process. And there’s a part in Jeffrey Steingarten’s book [The Man Who Ate Everything] where he talks about how instant mashed potatoes are prepared. It’s a very interesting technique that involves bringing science into the kitchen. When we combined the old techniques like Robuchon’s and the more modern techniques, that’s when we really began to make leaps forward at this restaurant. Chef: Shaun Hergatt Dish: Iberico ham with toasted tomato bread Going to L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon in Paris, the original in Saint-Germain, was a crazy experience. It was a restaurant where they had to let you in, and I wasn’t used to that. We ordered the thinly sliced Iberico ham platter. I had never been to Spain at the time, and it was when people were on the verge of discovering this ham. Traditionally, for tomato toast, tomatoes are rubbed over the bread, but this version has chunks of crushed tomatoes with basil. We sat for another twelve or thirteen courses after that and drank a lot of wine. Chef: Michael White Dish: Langoustine wrapped in brick paper When I was coming up in cooking, it was the end of nouvelle cuisine and the start of a more natural style. I’ll never forget my first time going to eat at Robuchon's [now-closed Jamin] in the early ’90s: We had this langoustine wrapped in brick paper. It’s an Arabic paper, almost like a phyllo, but just served simply with pesto and a beautiful raw langoustine. Then it’s pan-fried, so you get this crispy-sweet combination. It was just an epiphany moment. I got to see Joël the other week, and every time I’m with him, my mind immediately goes back to this dish. Chef: Alfred Portale Dish: Foie gras Another defining French experience was eating at Joël Robuchon’s restaurant in Paris. It’s common now, but I had never seen a foie gras torchon before. Back then, as a young cook, I didn’t know how he came up with this fantastic foie cylinder. He served it with beautiful, thick slices of brioche.

Mentions: 5

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Chef: Gabriel Rucker Dish: Foie gras en terrine The only time I have ever been to the French Laundry was for my 21st birthday. I had eaten foie gras before and I had worked with it, but I had never had it prepared so perfectly. It was a terrine and it was layered with black Perigord truffles, salad, and hundred-year aged balsamic. It was four things: foie gras, truffle, mâche, and balsamic, but it was just so perfectly done. The texture was so perfect and all the layers were so perfect. It still stands out to me as a benchmark of foie gras. That means a lot too coming from someone known as “the foie gras guy" in Portland. Chef: Jonathan Benno Dish: Potato agnolotti with white truffle Nearly 20 years ago, Ron Siegel was opening sous chef at the French Laundry. I was working as a cook at Aqua and remember driving up to Napa in the cold and rain four or five months after it opened. In the dining room, white truffles were under a cloche, and I had never had them before. Ron created an agnolotti with potato puree, mascarpone cheese, and truffle oil in a butter sauce with white truffles. I remember having that dish at that moment and not knowing how to pay for it. I can still taste it. Chef: Alfred Portale Dish: Oysters and pearls My first meal at the French Laundry—many years ago—there were practically forty courses. I was scratching my head. I had no idea how Thomas Keller did it. Everything was so incredibly well-presented, and I could appreciate the amount of labor that went into it. One dish that jumped out was his Oysters and Pearls with a sabayon of pearl tapioca and white sturgeon caviar—just brilliant. Chef: Tory McPhail Dish: Foie gras The seared foie gras in Thomas Keller’s The French Laundry cookbook is pretty darn sexy, and another image that stays with me. It has a drop of fat that looks like it is just about to splatter. It looks so fresh, hot, and amazing.

Mentions: 4

Highlights

Chef: Wylie Dufrese Dish: Liquid mango ravioli I believe Ferran’s mango ravioli sparked the hydrocolloid revolution, and hydrocolloids have been very important to our identity, particularly in the first five to eight years of the restaurant. Every cook has been using gelatin since he was a wee lad—gelatin is a hydrocolloid, various types of starches are also—so it’s interesting that there are those who say nay to hydrocolloids and yet have been making mousses or doing JELL-O shots since they were a kid. We’ve done fried mayonnaise, which led to fried hollandaise; the carrot-coconut sunny-side-up; the various dishes using mock ricotta. Early on, when we weren’t in a position to either negotiate for or even purchase some of the more expensive pieces of equipment that are now in our restaurant—things like centrifuges and rotary evaporators—hydrocolloids by comparison were a relatively affordable way to set ourselves apart. Chef: Erik Anderson Dish: Abalone con panceta I got a chance to eat at El Bulli the August before they closed. It all started with a bunch of us sitting around in Minneapolis. We were really close friends, but we didn’t always get a chance to see each other, because we all worked in restaurants. Sunday was always the common day off, so Sundays we’d go to our friend Jim’s house and make brunch and hang out and catch up. So one day, Jim was like, “Hey, if I could get a reservation at El Bulli, would you guys want to go?” and we said, “Yeah, of course.” A month later, he was like, “Alright, I got a four-top,” and we thought, Oh shit, I guess we’ve got to start saving our money. I’ve always loved abalone, and I’ve always loved ham, so to me this was the one dish that really stood out. It was just ham fat with little mushrooms, and a roasted abalone. It was really, really savory and really unctuous in your mouth. The meal as a whole was just incredible—the stuff tableside that they were doing, every table was getting a slightly different menu—it was mindblowing. I won’t say that every single dish was the greatest thing I’ve ever tasted, but it was the greatest restaurant experience I’ve ever had.There are two sides to food, and [El Bulli served the type] that hits you mentally; it doesn’t really hit your soul too much. One is not better than the other—it’s always nice to have a good mix—but I don’t think people should have gone to El Bulli just because they wanted to have dinner and get full. They should go because they want to get their brains scintillated. Chef: Jason Neroni Dish: Pistachio truffle cooled in liquid nitrogen After working in New York for 15 years, I was invited by the country of Spain to take a tour, and we were allowed stage times in various restaurants including elBulli. This was at the height of its popularity, in 2005. It was different. I had come from an Alain Ducasse kitchen, which was very ‘tac tac’ [efficient; in order]. And elBulli was not tac tac! For me, some dishes worked and some dishes didn’t. But that’s why it was so revolutionary—Ferran Adrià just dared to do it. There was one dish that was so incredible; a puree of pistachio with tarragon, dropped in liquid nitrogen. You put in your mouth and your whole mouth was instantly cold but then it all warmed up with this effervescent pistachio concentrate. At Superba, we don’t use the term molecular gastronomy, but we do employ some modern techniques. We have siphons, aerated burrata, some gels. We have absorbed some of Adrià's techniques, and we respect them, but we don’t use them heavily. Chef: Matthew Lightner Dish: Snacks at El Bulli Everyone in the world loves chips, they love sweets, they love all these different snacks. But for some reason Ferran Adrià was one of the very first guys to go, Well, I’m going to make an awesome snack that is going to make you rethink food, rethink cuisine, and I’m going to give it to you as the most enjoyable thing that you could possibly have. Before, you would go to a restaurant and they’d give you hors d’oeuvres, and it was like, Aw, really? Do I really have to eat that? [Adrià] completely changed the process of finger food. And he had no shame; he would make Bugles, he’d make chicken wings, he made all that kind of stuff—at a three-Michelin-starred restaurant. A standout one I had was a brioche that he steamed almost like a pork bun, then seared it and filled it with the best jamón I’ve ever had. It was the best goddamned ham sandwich in the world. I think that way of thinking changed the game throughout the world, not just the techniques he came up with.

Mentions: 3

Highlights

Chef: Chris Cosentino Dish: Venison kidneys, beets, and horseradish We were serving cuts of offal at Incanto, but it was really interesting to see kidney cooked so beautifully at St. John. Kidneys are daunting—the smell is strong, and texturally it’s challenging. This dish was so balanced, so perfectly done, and unapologetically simple. It was wild venison kidney seared in brown butter, with grated raw beets cut into matchsticks, and watercress and horseradish. The venison was strong and pungent, and the balance of the minerality in the kidney with the sweetness of the beet and the pungency of the horseradish was just so beautiful. It was seasoned perfectly and cooked exactly right. Sometimes the simplest things are the most perfect. Chef: Jackson Boxer Dish: Roasted bone marrow and parsley salad St John was my first grown-up restaurant, where I fell in love. Almost everything I adore about restaurants is distilled in it—its unshowy confident glamor, the happy chatter of full tables, the whoosh of white-jacketed staff gliding about—and in this dish, with its dark brown savory aroma of sweet wobbly fat, preceding the arrival of the monumental plate and attendant lobster pick. I always remember watching my mother eat toast as a child, by spreading a small nub of butter onto a corner, spooning over some of my granny’s damson jam, delicately eating, and repeating, mouthful by mouthful. I thought this was the most chic thing, composing each mouthful so thoughtfully, and bone marrow and parsley salad is particularly appropriate for this delightful endeavor. On my first visit to St John when I was 12 or so, I ordered chitlings in a rush of bravado. They proved beyond me, so my father very kindly traded his bones for my guts. I’ve never traded back.

Mentions: 3

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Chef: Alfred Portale Dish: Egg caviar The egg caviar at Jean-Georges is just phenomenal. He takes the egg and cooks it in a circulator at a low temperature, for a long time, so it gets a caramelized texture that is chewy, gooey, and amazingly unctuous. Then, he puts that on a thin sheet of toasted, buttered brioche and tops it with a shit ton of extra caviar. It’s one of the greatest things to put in your mouth. Chef: Wylie Dufresne Dish: Jean-Georges shrimp in spice carrot juice Jean-Georges wanted to take stocks and butter and cream out of the kitchen and bring them back in the form of juices and vinaigrettes. I knew I wanted to work for him, and he got me in my formative years. There was a shrimp and carrot dish: It was carrot juice made with lime leaf, lemongrass, Thai chilies, and a little bit of butter, [then] served with poached shrimp. It was amazing to me that a soup could be built off of a juice. Jean-Georges is also fundamental to how I plate food and how I think about food—always thinking, “Take more away, less is more, less is more.” There’s nowhere to hide when there is less on the plate, but the food is less busy. And his philosophy has stuck with me to this very day. Chef: Gabe Thompson Dish: Scallops I was there with my wife and our friend who had introduced us. I don’t remember a lot of the meal, but I remember this so well, and it was so simple: It was just like diced scallops, chives, and a sherry vinaigrette, and I’m sure there was some kind of oil in there. And it was so damn good that at the end, I was rubbing the bowl with my finger and licking my finger. Our friend was so embarrassed. I don’t care. It was perfect.

Mentions: 3

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Chef: Gabe Thompson Dish: Raw fish The raw seafood dishes [I had working at Le Bernardin were influential]. The simplicity of the scallop livers, or the geoduck dish, or the hamachi tartare, or the fluke ceviche, which was the four different tastings of ceviche—all of those dishes that were just so ridiculously simple and so out-of-control delicious. That’s where I learned about using lemon juice to season. Citrus juices are such a huge part of what you do at Le Bernardin. I still, to this day, think about those dishes when we’re doing crudo stuff. Chef: Roy Choi Dish: Black truffle ahi tuna I worked there for my first job as a real cook coming up out of culinary school. That was the dish I cooked every single day; it was a part of my station. It was a dish that was a part of my life. I fucked it up, I did it well—I really loved it. It was the first time I ever ate truffles in my life. It's the first time I tried cherry vinegar, on a level like that. First time I was in a four-star restaurant in the middle of Manhattan. It changed the course of everything in my life. That was like… I don't know how to describe it. It was my first fuck (laughs). Chef: Tory McPhail Dish: Chicory-laquered quail I’d only been chef for a month, and we decided to orchestrate a trip to New York and do an event at Le Bernardin. I was 28 and cooking six courses in Eric Ripert’s kitchen. Then, Eric asked if he could give me a hand, if he could help plate food in his kitchen. And, he called me chef. One of the dishes that stood out was chicory-lacquered quail. We still do versions of it today.

Mentions: 3

Highlights

Chef: Ashley Christensen Dish: Baby eel and smoked goat butter This meal blew me away, and to some degree it informs a piece of our next restaurant concept. The baby eels are seasonal and happened to be in during our visit. They have a silvery, smokey crunch, and a sweetness that can only be attributed to youth. Like most things at Asador Etxebarri, they are shaken over the chef's homemade charcoal in a custom-made, perforated sauté pan, barely singeing them with equal parts smoke and heat. Towards the end of our meal, I received a text from Mike Lata of FIG in Charleston stating, "If you don't order the smoked goat butter, I'll never forgive you." He was right—it would have been an unforgivable offense. Chef: Matthew Lightner Dish: Grilled oyster and seaweed The way that [chef Victor Arguinzoniz] got in the smoke flavor and the fresh seaweed… even though I was far away and hadn’t been home in a few months, it reminded me of being at home in the Midwest. It reminded me of fresh-mown grass and the smell of barbecues. For me, it was really important because it was a transcendent dish; it was a realization that you can [give people transcendent experiences] through food. Where I grew up we didn’t have oysters or seaweed, but for some reason that dish made me think of grilling hamburgers and hot dogs in my backyard. Food can do that on multiple levels. I think we [strive for] that in everything that we try to do. We try to take away some of the ties that people have, that they attach to food, and make it more of a novelty, and have the flavors bring them back into their memories. The great thing is you don’t have to work on specific memories, because everyone has their own. Chef: Seamus Mullen Dish: Grilled woodcock I went with a chef that I worked with to Etxebarri, and we just had an amazing meal; it was the first time I’d ever had woodcock, and it was the first time I’d ever had game that was really ripened. I think it was a friend of [chef Victor Arguinzoniz] that had shot it, and it was definitely funky; it was in the autumn, so they just hung it outside in its feathers for, like, two weeks. They have an area in the back where they keep all the firewood, because everything’s wood-fired there, and they have game hooks where they hung the wild game that they would get, which was definitely illegal. In Spain you can’t serve anything wild—same thing as in the U.S., you can’t serve any real wild game. The cool thing was that they cut the head in half, because the whole thing with woodcock is you’re supposed to suck out the brains. It’s the only bird that you can cook whole, with the intestines in, because the bird takes a shit right before it flies.

Mentions: 3

Highlights

Chef: Michael White Dish: Duck a la presse It’s something I enjoyed doing as a young person at San Domenico. I’d leave the kitchen and go press the ducks for the diners—it’s a bit of tableside theater. You cut the carcass into small pieces after you bone it at the table, and run it through this crank to get it to release all of its juices. It’s just unbelievable, especially when you add a bit of something luxurious, like foie gras or black truffles. Chef: Alfred Portale Dish: Lemon pasta A dish I got a lot of mileage out of—and by that I mean was inspired by and riffed on—comes from Ristorante San Domenico, in Imola, Italy. At the time it was the only three-star restaurant in the country. [Valentino Marcattilii] had a dish that was simply fresh pasta, either linguini or spaghetti, tossed with what I thought was just a lemon butter. It was swirled around a bowl with a huge spoon of caviar—can you tell I love caviar?—and a sprinkling of chives. To me, it was a revelation. Chef: Andrew Carmellini Dish: Uovo in ravioli In the early 90s, I worked at San Domenico [in Emilio-Romagna], and this dish was a signature on the menu. It was supposedly invented by chef Nino Borgese, known as “the Chef of Kings.” It’s basically an egg yolk cooked inside pasta served in a brown butter sauce with Parmesan and white truffles on top, and if you make it correctly, the pasta is cooked perfectly but the egg yolk is raw, so when you put your fork inside, the yolk runs off into the brown butter and makes a delicious sauce. It’s intoxicating. The over-the-top luxuriousness of it means I eat one a year. It’s my tradition. At the start of truffle season, I make one for myself and shave the truffles on top. It’s pure pleasure, one of the great dishes of the world. I run this as a special at Locanda Verde during truffle season. It’s what Italians would call alta cucina—fine dining.

Mentions: 2

Highlights

Chef: Shaun Hergatt Dish: Duck a la presse I went to Daniel with a good friend and a few more people during a big snowstorm. We had the off-the-menu canard à la presse, a historic tradition. The bones were pressed and the juice just came out. Daniel Boulud himself made the sauce. One of the leading chefs on the planet, and here he is cooking for you, whisking sauce and placing it perfectly on this beautiful duck. Chef: Michael Anthony Dish: Crisp Paupiette of sea bass in Barolo sauce When I moved to New York, I worked for Daniel Boulud. For me, not only is his crisp paupiette of sea bass in Barolo sauce a delicious dish, but it marked the evolution of a French chef in New York. It was an eye-opening experience—the crunchiness of the potato with red-wine sauce, not overly garnished. Daniel has a knack for making fish dishes a bit more approachable for Americans. Technically, it’s a challenging dish to pull off at this volume. It gave me gray hair early.

Mentions: 2

Highlights

Chef: Harold Dieterle Dish: Celtuce lettuce with cashew butter I’d never had celtuce before, and it was the first meal I’d had at Stone Barns. So, they bring this very simple dish out, and I remember thinking, what is this shaved celery-looking thing? Oh, some cashew butter. I thought, pretty fucking boring. And then I ate it. Wow. Now, I do a lot of research looking for new ingredients, but four or five years ago [when I hade this meal] I’d never seen or heard of celtuce. I’ve done a bunch of dishes with it, but nothing has ever been as magical as what I had at Stone Barns. I’ve gotten very spoiled living in New York City—there’s great food everywhere—but that dish remains vivid in my mind. I remember exactly how it tastes. Chef: Jason Neroni Dish: Caramelized foie gras, smoke eel, and apple terrine This dish was a direct replica of one served at a restaurant called Berasategui in Northern Spain. [Blue Hill’s executive chef and co-founder] Dan Barber took foie gras, apples, and eel, slow-cooked the terrine, covered it in sugar, and then brûléed it. I went and had dinner there and I was like, Holy shit, that’s next level. I thought I had everything figured out and then this just opened up another dimension. Again, I was like, Cool, I have to learn how to do that. So I sat on the doorstep one day and waited until he gave me a job.

Highlights

Chef: Harold Dieterle Dish: Hot fried chicken at Gus's World Famous Fried Chicken I’m just a sucker for fried chicken. Even bad fried chicken, I still enjoy. The hot fried chicken at Gus’s is pretty sick. It's a game-changing bird and I definitely look at fried chicken in a different way now. Chef: Edward Lee Dish: Fried chicken Fried chicken has made a huge impact on my life. It’s a very simple plate of food, but it’s something so Southern, and represents an incredible technique-driven food that’s very democratic. It’s an everyman’s food. I think every chef from every restaurant, whether it’s fast food or high-end, loves fried chicken. Everyone chases the perfect recipe, but there isn’t one. It’s one of those foods that is deceptively simple, but once you get into the intricacies and layers of regional food, it says who you are. It’s a lot of what Southern food and culture is. Chef: Erik Anderson Dish: Bar-style cheeseburger The cheeseburger is one of my favorite things, especially when you’re kind of drunk. But I’m kind of a stickler for the classic bar cheeseburger: American cheese, shitty ground beef, a nice bun, lettuce, onion, tomato.American cheese is the only cheese that belongs on a cheeseburger, and I’m a sucker for a good secret sauce. Let’s be honest: McDonald’s Big Mac sauce tastes good. Whenever I make cheeseburgers, I always try to make something that tastes as similar as possible. I’m not a fan of the brioche—I want something like a soft potato bun, or a milk bun. I don’t want a duck burger, you know what I mean? Some things don’t need to be reinvented, some things just need to be thought about. Don’t reinvent my cheeseburger, but when you’re making it, just put some thought into it. We would make them when I was a kid, but the first kind of eye-opening one was when I was living in Milwaukee, there was this place called Kopp’s that was owned by this German guy. It was a custard stand, and it was like the epitome of German efficiency; all the stainless steel was polished, everything was perfect, there’d be sheets of custard pouring out of the machines. The burgers there were just incredible. I was in my early 20s, and I realized, This is what a cheeseburger is. They were simple, it wasn’t anything fancy, but again, it was well-thought-out. Chef: Jason Neroni Dish: Dumplings at Vanessa's This was another place I used to go when I was in New York, as often as four or five times a week. It’s just this little hole-in-the wall spot on Eldridge Street where you can get six dumplings for a dollar, or this huge scallion pancake that they stuff with beef shin, cilantro, and pickled carrots, then douse with a soy vinaigrette. These two simple dishes just have so much flavor, which is it’s a reminder that the little things can surprise you the most. I have a huge amount of respect for a cook that can create the same thing over and over, every single day. Here at Superba we never keep one thing on the menu for longer than it needs to be (although if I took off the smoked bucatini carbonara, I think the customers would string me up by my toenails). Chef: Roy Choi Dish: Fried chicken at Church's Chicken I spent time in Atlanta a couple summers in my life. I'd walk into every home and there'd be fried chicken. A lot of things that I cook are eaten with your hands. At Kogi, it's tacos and burritos. At A-frame, it's pickles and tong dahk (chicken). I think it's because fried chicken was a big thing in my life, and I loved it. Maybe subconsciously, a lot of the food that comes out of me now, from the soul, is [made to be] eaten with the hands. Chef: Gabriel Rucker Dish: In-N-Out cheeseburger It is just the perfect cheeseburger. It is my last meal if I was on death row. I am lucky enough to be from California and have a reason to go down there every once in a while. When my parents pick me up from the airport, the first stop is In-N-Out. If I had the opportunity to open up an In-N-Out in Portland, I would definitely cash in everything else and go for that.

Mentions: 13

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Chef: Jamie Bissonnette Dish: Bean and meat chili My mom can only make three things that are edible, and chili is one of them. She makes it in a crock-pot with dried beans and a ton of Budweiser, and she cooks it for, like, two days. It smells so damn good; we’d eat it with a little pat of butter on top. Today, I always have some sort of chili incarnation on my menus. Chef: Miles Thompson Dish: Mom's Brisket My mom is Jewish, and we would always have brisket for Passover. The fatty side of the brisket was seared, seasoned with canola oil and salt, and braised in Lipton’s Onion Soup Mix with lima beans and potatoes. Then it was cooled and sliced; a really simple, very brown dish. But brisket fat is the most delicious thing, and braising it in onion soup makes the fat taste like onion soup—even better. When your mom spends two days making something, you can just taste that love and attention to detail—it always had to be this cut and this specific brand of soup mix. The results were just delicious. Chef: Alfred Portale Dish: Ravioli I come from an Italian-American family. My mother was an excellent cook and dinner was at 5:30 every night—you had to be at the table. One thing we cooked together was ravioli stuffed with ricotta that she served with sauce from her own canned tomatoes. She made large batches and froze them for special occasions. I always helped her roll and fill them. When I went to France to work, I noticed chef Michel Guérard made black truffle ravioli [at Les Prés d'Eugénie]. If he could serve ravioli, so could I, so I’ve always had some sort of raviolo or agnolotti dish on the menu. Chef: Anita Lo Dish: Steamed fish with scallions and ginger My mom was a very good cook, and she made a lot of different styles of cuisine. [There was] Chinese—my father was from Shanghai, but he died when I was there—and then my stepfather came into the scene and he had really strong New England roots, so we had a lot of that sort of simple New England food. My mother was from Malaysia and also spent some time in Tennessee, so we had that as well. She would come home from a very long day at work—she was a doctor—and she would cook for us. [She] would put, like, six different dishes out. She would make this steamed fish on occasion, and it was one of the first things I learned how to make – it’s one of the things that I go to all the time. If I’m ever alone and I want to make something simple for myself, I go directly to that. It's so easy. I did a special of it—probably at Maxim’s—and we served it for Mother’s Day. Chef: Sean Brock Dish: Chicken and dumplings [This is] hands down the most important dish of my entire life, and the most complicated adventure I’ve ever had trying to replicate a singular dish, from any cook in the world. I still can’t make it like my mom. Because, while it seems quite simple—broth, dumplings, chicken—it’s really a perfect example of how amazing southern home cooks are at intuition and cooking by feeling. There are all these little techniques and tips and tricks. For instance, you bring up your broth to a simmer, and right where each little bubble happens, that’s where you drop a dumpling—it boils it off the spoon, and that force molds the outside of the dumpling. This was my first cooking lesson as a kid, but it wasn’t until we were filming for Mind of a Chef that I picked up on some of her tricks. That’s what I love about it—it’s this thing that I’ve been chasing, but I’ll never be able to master it quite like my mother. I’ll never be able to get the dumplings just right, or the broth that delicate, but I’ve accepted that, and it’s okay. Chef: Harold Dieterle Dish: Blue crab with spaghetti I love blue crabs—really all types of crabs, but blue crabs are the one I grew up with as a kid on Long Island. We'd catch them on the docks near my home and my mother would cook up a huge pot of crab gravy, or red sauce. The family recipe has always been onions, garlic, fennel seed, fresh red pepper, and tomatoes—at the end you drop in some basil leaves from the garden. It was a favorite of mine then, and it remains a favorite today. Chef: Christina Tosi Dish: Million Dollar Cake My mother and grandmother used to make it. It’s rich, it’s dense, it’s gooey, it’s sweet. I loved to study the different layers of the gooey texture. I didn’t really think I could put gooey butter cake on the menu at Milk Bar, but I needed something that would be that same gooey-sweet-sugary mix. I’m a really big creature of crunch, but in a baked good, it’s about the gooey. Chef: Andrew Weissman Dish: Kugel My mom's noodle kugel for the Jewish High Holidays is awesome. Raisins, cinnamon, Corn Flakes on top for crispiness. That's a huge dish for me. Chef: Ashley Christensen Dish: Fried chicken My Memphis-born mother's fried chicken is of my most texturally vivid food memories. From start to finish, the smells, sights, and sounds of the whole process are ingrained in me. She would soak the chicken in buttermilk and then shake it in seasoned flour dredge in one of the week’s brown paper shopping bags (the original recycling plan). Next would come the crackling of hot oil tested with drip water, and then the gentle sizzling of the battered chicken slowly rested into the oil by my mother's deft hand. Then the silencing of the oil by the removal of the crispy-skinned chicken and the promise that the dinner bell was soon to ring (if the smell of browning chicken skin hadn't already given that away). As my father was a hobbyist bee keeper, wild-flower honey was always the condiment of choice. This near-weekly childhood experience made such an impression on me that a year and change ago, I opened Beasley's Chicken + Honey in downtown Raleigh.

Mentions: 8

Highlights

Chef: Chris Cosentino Dish: Trippa napolitana When I was growing up in Rhode Island, I spent a lot of time with my great grandma, who was from Naples, and she still cooked like she was from the old country. She made tripe all the time for my great grandpa. As a kid, I loathed the flavor and smell of tripe. I would run from it. I refused to eat it. Her version was prepared beautifully, with red wine and tomato and herbs, but I just couldn’t handle it as a kid. I didn’t like tripe until years and years later, after I traveled and cooked in California and France. Now it’s a staple on my menus, and I make it like my grandma did—brick red and spicy. Chef: Jonathan Benno Dish: Eggplant parm My grandmother, on my dad's side, did most of the cooking in the family. She was of Italian descent and I vividly remember her eggplant parmigiana from when I was a little kid–especially in the summer, when she used eggplant from the garden. She dusted it in flour, shallow-fried it in oil, and used fresh basil. Chef: Sean Brock Dish: Biscuits and gravy That was a staple. We had it five times a week probably. It’s in your DNA. It’s in your bones. You wake up every morning smelling sausage gravy and biscuits—it’s a smell you never forget and it means so much more than just a plate of food. Every single time I eat it, I think about my grandmother. I had it for breakfast this morning. I had it for breakfast yesterday. It was one of the first cooking lessons my grandmother gave me—the art of Southern biscuit-making. I was a very small kid—maybe seven or eight years old—and I got it down. It’s crazy to think about—making a roux, whisking in the milk, bringing it to a simmer, rendering down the sausage—it was pretty complex stuff for a little kid. And so, when I got to culinary school, my first class was "Stocks and Sauces," and we start talking about the mother sauces. We get to béchamel, and I’m like, Béchamel? That’s gravy, dude! It was one of those things where you’re learning a very fancy technique, but you’re learning it in a black skillet in your grandma’s kitchen. I am proud of maybe one or two things that I cook—extremely proud—and I am extremely proud of the biscuits and gravy that I make. Chef: Anita Lo Dish: Chicken paprikash We had all different kinds of nannies, but the nanny that stayed with us the longest grew up in Hungary, so she would make us chicken paprikash. It was one of my favorite dishes growing up, and I loved to watch her make it. Sometimes she would make it with rice, which I didn’t like—I mean, I liked it, but I didn’t love it. The best were her dumplings; she would make homemade dumplings and float them in the broth, which was awesome. I never got that recipe; I’m kind of upset about that. I've tried to recreate it and it just wasn’t the same. [The rest] is so easy to make. I made it throughout college, I used to make it for staff meal here [at Annisa], I used to make it in France when I was in cooking school—instead of using sour cream I’d use crème fraîche. Chef: Jackson Boxer Dish: Macaroni cheese When I was turning thirteen my parents asked how I wanted to celebrate what they generously considered my maturity. All I wanted was a dinner cooked by my grandmother, in her beautifully ordered flat—a place I have always, since I first used to go with my brother to stay as small children, associated with everything being right with the world. She thought and thought what elaborate dish to cook, and eventually settled on a nursery favorite, macaroni cheese. It was, certainly, the platonic ideal of a macaroni cheese, with a complex blend of nutty cheeses and firm noodles hiding slices of slow roasted Italian tomatoes. It seemed such a clever synthesis of childhood and adulthood, and so perfectly executed, with such thought and care, that I’ll never forget it, nor all the other wonderful things I learned from her, and still do.

Mentions: 4

Highlights

Chef: Jackson Boxer Dish: Chocolate cake When I was in my late teens I was often broke, as was my dad. I was writing, as was he. The greatest solution to these two intractable problems was discovered in the Bonnington Café, a community vegetarian café in London’s most beautiful enclave of squatters, skaters, and characters: Bonnington Square, SW8. On the occasion that one of the regular operators would take a holiday, we’d rise at dawn to scavenge for deals at New Covent Garden Market, then spend the day cooking enormous minestrones, dahls, and ribollitas. A somewhat erratic cook at this stage, my attempts at vegetarian cuisine were pretty hit and miss, though they were greeted with huge encouragement from my father, who’d always make this excellent dark chocolate cake of Elizabeth David’s for pudding. Whatever disaster I’d caused for the first two courses, my dad’s cake—served with whipped cream—would salvage. A good lesson I think. Chef: Alex Stupak Dish: Pork milanesa When I was as a kid in Leominster, Massachusetts, my dad did all the cooking, and he would always let me get involved. Every Friday, he pounded out thin slices of pork tenderloin, dipped them in egg and 4C seasoned breadcrumbs, then fried them in a little FryDaddy kettle. That was where I learned how to properly bread and fry food. I didn’t know what a milanesa was until later, but that’s what my dad was making, even though he just called them cutlets. When I was growing up I thought it was the best dish on earth—I felt super manly because they’re so thin that I could eat a ton of them. Chef: Jonathan Benno Dish: Cucumber and tomato salad My father knew how to make bacon, French toast, and this salad. To help out, he would walk around our garden and pick the cucumbers and tomatoes. I learned early on from watching him how good fresh produce can be. He used Newman's Own dressing. Since Paul Newman lived in Connecticut, I grew up on it. To this day, I have three bottles at home. They are staples. Chef: Paul Liebrandt Dish: Cheese and tomato toastie My dad was a busy guy, and I came from a busy household—this was something he would make me when I was at living at home as a kid, when I was young. Multigrain bread with sliced plum tomatoes, salt and pepper, and slices of sharp cheddar over the top, put under the salamander and melted. It’s a very classic flavor combination, cheese and tomato, and it’s a good balance, you know, especially when it’s warm and melted. It’s very flavorsome. Cheddar is particularly good for it—Montgomery cheddar. There’s no food background in my family and I didn’t really come from a 9-to-5 family, so boarding school was really it. When I would come home on weekends, once a month, we’d maybe go out to dinner or have a spaghetti Bolognese or something that my father would make. He did most of the cooking.

Mentions: 2

Highlights

Chef: Chris Cosentino Dish: Clams on the half shell My grandpa was an amazing man—a man of the sea. We’d go down to the beach and he taught me how to go clamming with my feet instead of a rake. Our family made clam chowder and stuffed quahogs at our big seafood boils, but my grandpa taught me to eat them raw, on the half shell, with a drop of tobacco or fresh horseradish. We ate them right there on the rocky beach. They had such a strong flavor—this rich, briny crunch, and I could taste the ocean very powerfully. It was such a surreal flavor profile to experience as a young kid, and I love them still to this day.